What makes the Lawrences an unusual punk band, aside from their conceptual albums and duet-style vocals, is their fierce hatred of the Warped Tour (and not because the group hasn’t been invited to it). The band played on the tour in 2002 and was kicked off for criticizing the tour…

Though he has only recently released his second album, Beto Hale has been a musician nearly his entire life. Performing at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City when he was eleven, Hale got an early start crafting his unique blend of pop-punk, Brit-pop, and New Wave. He learned the drums…

After releasing countless EPs, Dominic Angus has made a name for himself as the harder and more experimental voice of dance music. Performing under the name Dom and Roland (Roland referring to Angus’s drum machine) for the past ten years, Angus has always followed a darker style, especially when compared…

After a summer of touring behind their new full-length album, the twee-poppers of Miami’s Baby Calendar return to finish where their journey began — at Churchill’s. There the bandmates hosted a CD-release party in May for their third LP, Gingerbread Dog, and then went on a nearly three-month trek of…

Born Jasiel Robinson in Atlanta, Georgia, Yung Joc had a childhood nearly as aggressive as his lyrics. He got into fights, kicked out of schools, and arrested, all before he received his high school diploma. Young Joc, whose album New Joc City debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop…

Zac Brown is a younger Jimmy Buffett, assuming Buffett traded his margarita for a beer and hung out with bikers. The lead singer and guitarist of the Zac Brown Band, Brown belts out sentimental lyrics with a hint of a Southern drawl over catchy, acoustic guitar notes and the backing…

Jamaican-born Eddie Kirkland has toured with Otis Redding, performed with John Lee Hooker, and has played guitar during a televised performance while standing on his head. Brought up in Alabama, Kirkland learned guitar, harmonica, and vocals before moving to Detroit, where he first met and recorded with Hooker in 1943…

Rapping and singing love-torn lyrics over jazz-tinged guitars and hip-hop beats on “Ms. Used” — the first track on Tiffany Miranda’s debut album, I Speak Music — Miranda has a genuine knack for blending R&B, jazz, and hip-hop into something refreshingly different. Now living in Miami, Miranda was born in…

Ryan Cabrera began his musical career in Texas playing guitar in a noisy punk band before discovering Dave Matthews and deciding he wanted to make music that sounded softer, trading electric for acoustic and forming alt-rock band Rubic’s Groove. The band grew popular in Dallas, opening for acts like Cheap…

Having made mix albums for parties hosted by P. Diddy, Lenny Kravitz, and Shaquille O’Neal, DJ Tom Laroc has become a popular musical source among those who are incredibly popular. However, it’s not just celebrities who appreciate Laroc’s unique ability to mix R&B, reggae, and hip-hop into energetic, danceable music…

At the age of seven, when you’re supposed to be eating Oreo cookies and watching Batman cartoons, Paquito D’Rivera was already a paid musician with an endorsement deal from Selmer saxophones. Born in Cuba and musically trained at age five by his father, he has performed with the National Theater…

Renowned for the tango hits he made over the course of his roughly twenty-year career, the late Adolfo Tudisco (stage name: Horacio Deval) would appreciate the tango-tinged event being held in his honor. “This is an homage to him, a tribute to who he was as a person and as…

You can be thankful that members of Awesome Cool Dudes don’t think their band name is that great, either. “We just got really drunk and tried to pick the worst possible name that we could come up with,” says singer and guitarist Cory Plump. The band kicked off in Indiana…

Jamaican-born Monty Alexander shares more with Bob Marley than a homeland. Though Alexander is a jazz pianist, his penchant for reggae runs deep throughout his music. One of his first albums released was Stir It Up, a Marley tribute, and although Alexander has since experimented with other genres such as…

At the age of eighteen, Niña Pastori became one of the youngest rising Spanish stars when she released her flamenco-pop debut album, Entre Dos Puertos, which sold more than 150,000 copies and spawned a hit single, “Tú Me Camelas,” that was played on radio stations and in clubs across Spain…

With an album titled Stars Invited Me to Fly Through Time, it isn’t surprising that Dyslexic Postcards are a tie-dye rock band. “The basis of all of our sound just comes from psychedelic rock,” says singer and guitarist Ely Bacoy. “But there’s also a bit of a punk rock edge…

Naeem Juwan, better known as Spank Rock, has a debut album called YoYoYoYoYo, and his hit single is about an “ass-shaking competition champ.” It’s pretty clear that Spank Rock is absolutely insane. And considering other songs on the album deal with everything from the abilities of his tongue to the…

Although the issue of selling souls tends to come up in church and in movies like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the act of marrying a soul is difficult to come across, making Jaguar Wright’s latest album, Divorcing Neo to Marry Soul, even more labor-intensive. Compared to Aretha Franklin and…