In 2003, Milwaukee-based Decapitado released their Blacked CD, a collection of ridiculously heavy (yet also surprisingly catchy) songs that instantly marked them as a band to keep a close eye on. But year after year passed, and next to nothing was heard from the band. Now, more than five years later, the group has emerged with a flurry of shows and an ambitious recording schedule. Perhaps wanting to make...

"It was like hooking up with an ex-girlfriend; it was like, 'Why did we break up?'" Nicholas Stuart reflects on that one, chance occurrence after a major breakup. This particular occurrence? An impromptu practice. The major breakup? His roots-rock band, The Wildbirds. After calling it quits following a tough time on the road, a musical rendezvous with former band mate Hugh Masterson was clearly the right...

Back when bassist Larry Kubiayk and drummer Bruce Cole started playing in Milwaukee bands, rock 'n' roll still smelled as new as a car on the dealer's lot, and had many miles to travel before reaching that point where many say it's all been heard before. As a member of the '60s garage-punks The Henchmen, Kubiayk...

"It all just worked out really well," Crystal Rausch, also known as "Critter," says about the formation of The Barrettes' lineup. The four members include Joey Zocher on guitar and the melodica, JoAnn Riedl on guitar and uke, the mononymously named "Joolz" on drums, and Rausch on cello and French horn. They explained the band's origin over drinks...

In the eight years since Coo Coo Cal's single "My Projects" ignited as one of the biggest, most inescapable rap songs of 2001, the Milwaukee rapper has weathered a succession of ups and downs. "I had my run-in with drugs and alcohol, the whole nine," Cal explains. "I've been in jail; I've been in rehab, fighting my drug addiction...

"When you ask someone what kind of music they're into, they'll say, 'Oh, I like everything but country;' we're trying to turn the tide of that opinion," says Austin Dutmer, one of two DJs behind Hot Dog!, a monthly country spin at Burnhearts. "There are decades of music just as good as rock and soul that people really don't [give credit] to," Dutmer muses. "Maybe there's too negative...

"We got to the point where we were ready to do a record," Riles Walsh of The Candeliers says about the timing of the group's long-overdue first album. "We're coming into our third year as a band and we had all these songs; we were just to that point." Walsh and his folk-pop troupe had...

The first time I saw Pamela Means, she was absorbed with her acoustic guitar in the dim back stage of Shank Hall, quietly working out a chord progression. She was ready to open for someone else's show (if memory serves). It was circa 1990, and Means was already making her name in Milwaukee's neo-folk-acoustic-whatever scene, flourishing on the fringes of rock clubs, bookshops and poetry readings...

David Greenberger met Herb on a trip to Palm Springs, Calif., when he was in his 20s, and their encounter changed his life. Herb wasn't like anyone Greenberger had ever met, and they quickly hit it off. Although Herb was more than three times Greenberger's age, Greenberger didn't view him as just some octogenarian. He saw him as a friend.

Talent, as just about every band can attest, isn't the only thing that secures bookings. In many cases, talent is far less likely to rope a gig for a band than outside factors like predicted draw, promoter ties, venue biases, promotional budget and the like. The music scene can sometimes suffer as a result, with proven entities monopolizing coveted venues as deserving lesser-knowns scratch and claw for a break...

The '80s are far enough away for nostalgia to set in. For Milwaukeeans involved in the '80s alternative scene, it was a decade of great promise, a time when bands such as the Violent Femmes, Die Kreuzen and the BoDeans appeared poised to conquer at least a corner of the world outside. Atomic Records was a hub of Milwaukee's alt scene in those years, and when it closed earlier this year, some of the record shop's fans felt...

"Fully Bonded," the opening track off Disguised as Birds' 2008 rock record Seeds, epitomizes the band's dual singers' lyrical cohesiveness. Not only do the dueling Christophers, Chris Chuzles and Kris Endicott, harmonize concurrently throughout most of the record's tracks, they also collude on song crafting duties as well...

Dan DuChaine may be the only record store owner who's actually trying to drive traffic away from his shop on Record Store Day, an annual event created last year to draw attention to independent record stores. While shops around the country will be celebrating with in-store performances and promotions on Saturday, April 18, DuChaine is instead pushing a Pabst Blue Ribbon-sponsored Bay View pub crawl, which...

Sleep Tight Co. may be one of the poppiest bands in the city, but that doesn't faze them at all. In fact, they revel in pop music and culture, working proposed covers of Prince's "Raspberry Beret" and Madonna's "Borderline" into their practices, writing songs in the wee hours of the morning about yogurt, orange soda and baking soda volcanoes and headlining shows...

Several years ago Jerry Grillo was one of the most prolific jazz performers in town, recording no less than seven CDs from 1994 through the middle of the present decade and singing consistently in local clubs. He didn't fall silent as much as he became quieter, playing modest duets at Paddy's Pub and weddings and corporate parties with the Nick Contorno...

Milwaukee is blessed with a number of high-quality metal bands, and Northless holds a place at the top of the pile. "Temples of...

Though it spotlights less prosperous neighborhoods than the Milwaukee tourism bureau undoubtedly would, Streetz and Young Deuces' "Welcome 2 Da Mil" is one of the most spirited tributes ever recorded to the city, a cavalcade of loving shout-outs to 66th, Burleigh, Capitol Drive and North Avenue. A reliable set-closer, the song doubles as Streetz and Young Deuces' mission statement. "We rep the Midwest, we rep Milwaukee," says Young Deuces, half of the...

"We got asked to do my buddy's Christmas party in L.A.," Kevin Meyer, one half of Milwaukee's Get Drunk DJs, recalls. "There were Mexican wrestlers and he was trying to get a donkey. He was going to fly us out. I don't know why we didn't end up going-it was really heartbreaking. It was some crazy marketing, hipster industry party. He was making us sound like the greatest DJs ever...

Julie B accepts the label of progressive rock for her new band, The Julie B Well-but not without qualifications. "Lots of prog bands are motivated by the desire to be complicated," says the vocalist and keyboardist. "I'm not doing hard chord changes to be complicated, but to express a mood, a line of lyric, an emotion. The music takes its shape from that...

"I would do it the same," says Vinnie Kircher of the latest recording session by his garage-pop band, Jail. "I guess when you're done, you think you could have experimented more, but at some point you've gone overboard and you've got to let some things go." Kircher's belief of losing the bells and whistles that hundreds of musicians tie themselves to is refreshing. The singer/guitarist isn't shy about his...

Kid, You'll Move Mountains often seem torn between two eras. Their songwriting nods to the insular, folded-arms indie-rock of late-'90s Polyvinyl bands like American Football, yet they perform them with the communal, clap-along spirit of so many modern indie-pop bands. Singer/guitarist Jim Hanke, late of the cherished Milwaukee power-pop band El Oso, admits that it can be tough to find the balance between audience participation and self-parody...

Atomic Records wasn't just a passive observer of the Milwaukee music scene, explains Damian Strigens. It actively shaped the scene, fostering local bands and, sometimes, even birthing them. Strigens, a one-time Atomic employee who now plays with Testa Rosa, was in one of those bands, The Mustn'ts, which he formed with another Atomic alum...

"It's been doing really well out of state," Zack Pieper of Farms in Trouble says of his band's recent 27-song, 42-minute album, The Gas Station Soundtrack. "Some people are really into it in Philadelphia, some people really like it in Seattle, and in Minneapolis a guy is putting out a kind of beautiful, handmade cassette for us. "One thing really cool that I didn't realize is that cassettes...

The irony of MTV's ongoing music-video purge is that it may have actually created more opportunities for independent musicians than a decade of "TRL" ever did. With so many hours of reality programming to soundtrack, MTV has turned toward small and emerging artists for songs.No Milwaukee-area singer/songwriter has benefited more from MTV's aggressive song licensing than Jayme Dawicki, who in the past eight months has lent five songs-one half of her 2008 album Shatter Queen-to different incarnations of "The Real World." Most recently her song "Here I Go" appeared in the January season premiere...

In May The Delta Routine confronted a pressing dilemma that would completely change the face of this raw, Milwaukee rock group. A car accident that injured the band's bassist left the group a week to find a replacement before its show at RiverSplash. With just three days until the gig, Evan Paydon stepped up, quickly learning three hours of set-material and eventually becoming a permanent member of the trio. "I didn't think he could do it," recalls lead singer and guitarist...