Dance music fans likely know Gary Richards for Hard. That rapidly exploding brand of parties and shows includes local events like Holy Ship, the all-electronic music cruise that departs again from Fort Lauderdale next January, as well as a two-night stand at Grand Central in Miami that starts tonight. But…

Tonight’s Moombahton Massive party at Grand Central marks the first of two back-to-back, Hard-sponsored nights at the venue. As that name indicates, the entire late-night party is devoted to the breezy, 110-ish-bpm bass sound that’s currently burning up the underground the way dubstep did a few years back before it…

It’s no surprise that Dutch DJ demi-god Tiesto again headlines Ultra Music Festival this Friday. For him, it’s now a yearly ritual. “It’s actually the only festival in the world I can play every year. All the DJs over the world come together to go to Miami that week, so…

Australia native Tommy Trash might not yet be a household name for the average casual dance music fan — but give it time. The producer/DJ is currently only part of the way into his first headlining tour, ever, but he’s already got the support of some of the highest-powered names…

In Steven Blush’s American Hardcore, the definitive oral history of the punk-offshoot genre, there’s a passage in which Corrosion of Conformity’s Reed Mullins made life as a punk in the South sound pretty grim. The band’s drummer recalled being chased by rednecks with baseball bats around the band’s native Raleigh,…

A few South Florida bands are currently floating around Austin — from Broward and Palm Beach Counties, we’ve got the Band in Heaven and the Jameses, and from Miami, we’ve got a few acts like Plains and ANR. The Band in Heaven is perhaps experiencing the most intense trial by…

If anyone defines street punk, it’s the English group the Business, one of the original boots-and-braces bands that took the peacock style of punk and stripped it down to its bare bones. The Business, and its fans, preferred an aesthetic of shaved heads over Mohawks and of raw, pub rock…

As contemptible a label as it is, “frat rap” is here to stay, at least for a while. The loose term has been applied to a new class of MCs who make no bones about their suburban privilege or subject matter, which usually revolves around partying and first-world problems. Fair…

New Orleans quartet MuteMath is one of the few currently commercially viable rock bands that truly seems undefinable. Though the group creates the kind of melodies that are punchy and memorable enough for alt-rock radio, how exactly those unfurl is rarely predictable. The group freely switches between off-time, jazzy bits,…

Canadian act Comeback Kid has lasted so long — marking a full decade this year — that they’ve managed to last until a renewed scene interest in more pure hardcore sounds. The quartet, despite forming at a time when post-hardcore was in its trendy infancy, was never interested in softening…

With Winter Music Conference and the madness around Ultra in full swing next week in Miami, don’t be alarmed if it seems like the entire county is pulsing to an unending four-four beat. Leave it to Bardot, a boutique venue with increasingly interesting programming, to book a show for that…

Asher Roth, the not-long-ago poster child of suburban rap, had either a wise or misguided marketing plan when he first hit it big. In 2009, his single “I Love College” was inescapable and remains his best-known song to date. The ode to wanton first-world privilege and lazy binge drinking was…

For fans of that very West Coast low-end, post-hip-hop sound, here’s the latest producer for you to love: MiMOSA, or Tigran MiMOSA depending on which of his internet sites you happen to click. He’s got the hometown and adopted-hometown credentials down pat, having come up in the Bay Area scene…

Since 2010, the series of tri-county concerts dubbed “The Rising” have been devoted to pushing forward music made by true hip-hop heads, for true hip-hop heads. For the first few months of its existence, the then-monthly event took over the late Transit Lounge in downtown Miami, before moving to other…

“My girl tastes like pork chops,” begins one of the new songs by the Two Man Gentleman Band, a duo (obviously) that hails from Brooklyn but draws from older, inner-country musical traditions. Clearly, they don’t do that too seriously — the group’s take on rockabilly, Western swing, and jazz is…

Much like Owl City — or any number of bedroom projects started by former scene kids — Canadian electronic artist Lights clearly boasts a past that includes pop-punk and other recently popular rock styles. Her singing borrows the alternately pinched and drawn-out vowels and other stylized vocal inflections of the…

It’s been a couple of months since Miami band Astari Nite last played north of its county line, but the wait was on purpose. When the group hits favorite stomping grounds Respectable Street on Saturday, it’ll have a little more new material to air out. After several years as a…

We can likely blame this on the ’60s and the musical shift therein, but since the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll as Serious Art Form, there remains a pervasive opinion that Serious Rock can’t also be fun. As a related argument, then, there’s also the argument that pop automatically can’t…