Like his Christian name, Xela Zaid has taken the pretty melodies and emotional, solitary songs of the singer-songwriter and turned them inside out. The songs on his second independently released EP, Beloved, ride upon dark, acoustic guitar hooks, backed by the white noise of a transistor radio “played” by noise…

Elefant must have stolen a bottle of essence du T. Rex and stashed it somewhere. The band’s debut album, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid, features some of the catchiest and cheekiest rock to be heard since the late great Marc Bolan haunted the early ’70s glitter rock scene. “Fuck yeah, that’s…

I can’t! I don’t want to go through the misery again,” stutters Aidan Moffat in his thick Scottish accent, as thorny ex-girlfriend memories tear through his mind. Each time Moffat, lead singer and songwriter of the alternative-folk duo Arab Strap, enters the studio with his guitar-toting partner, Malcolm Middleton, it…

Virginia-based Mae has packed together a background in hardcore, a love for Bruce Hornsby, and a wild-eyed aesthetic theory to produce some of the most bombastic rock ever to come out on an indie label. Singer/guitarist Dave Gimenez cracks a boisterous guffaw when it’s suggested Mae’s luscious debut, Destination: Beautiful,…

Tokyo’s Melt-Banana — just two guys and two girls in their late 20s — defy traditional definitions of speedcore, avant-metal terror, or even Japanoise. Naturally, that hasn’t stopped niche-makers from branding the band with such labels over the course of its ten-year life. Though Melt-Banana has achieved much recognition for…

Aspiring songwriters are known to bleed, weep, and sweat while dreaming, praying, of inking a recording contract with a reputable label. Guitar-playing Miami singer/songwriter Samuel Beam recently sealed a deal with esteemed Seattle-based, Nirvana-birthing, indie imprint Sub Pop — without even trying. “I had no real plans for getting signed,”…

Conor Oberst hates to talk. The 22-year-old singer/songwriter behind the ambitious indie-rock success story Bright Eyes halts and hesitates between every phrase during a telephone interview from his Omaha home. As if he’s constantly rethinking what he has to say, his words fade and falter just short of stuttering. His…

Twenty-one-year-old South Florida singer/songwriter Isaac Lekach, the one-man band known as Poulain, would seem to be a solitary sort, spending lonely hours composing his delicate, cleverly arranged songs. Yet it’s collaboration with contemporaries around the nation that has breathed life into his stylish tunes (glistening wet with Belle and Sebastian…

Arrive at a local show early and you may find the opening act a more compelling listen than any of the headlining groups — especially if that act happens to be a trio of young Miami musicians who call themselves Faller. Faller’s intricate music, which craftily brings together elements from…

Jeff Rollason, lead singer and guitarist of Miami’s experimental rock outfit the Curious Hair, is not at all interested in the music industry. “That’s not what I think about every day,” the long-haired 29-year-old professes before a late-night performance on the patio of a Coral Gables bookstore. Behind his small…

The San Francisco-based quintet Vue, a band in touch with the purest of rock ‘n’ roll’s primordial ooze, is regularly hit with observations regarding its similarities to other seminal stalwarts. Guitarist Jonah Buffa puts up with the volleys of comparisons but defies anyone who would try to pigeonhole Vue as…

Back in the 1990s, Kathleen Hanna kicked off the riot-grrrl movement and kicked ass on the male-dominated punk/hardcore scene with angry albums from her group’s self-titled Bikini Kill (1992) to PussyWhipped (1994) to Reject All American (1996). Now Hanna is back with the all-womyn electro/punk-rock trio Le Tigre, a group…

Many a musician has written a song about love, but few enjoy discussing them. Andy LeMaster, singer and mastermind behind the rocking, synthesizer-heavy Now It’s Overhead, kindly volunteers some of his feelings about his relationship-themed, self-titled debut album and its inspiration — as painful as it sounds for him to…

By the time Trans Am arrives in South Florida this weekend, it’ll have a new paint job. Valves will have been adjusted. That sticky window vent will be fixed. Since 1993, the Washington, D.C.-based indie-rock trio has garnered a reputation as a purveyor of eccentric instrumentals that merge the cold…

Pinback affirms that music created just for the thrill of it, under no self-consciousness or pressure to sell records, can be just as catchy as anything on commercial radio. When guitarist/vocalist Rob Crow and bassist/vocalist Armistead Burwell Smith IV took advantage of free time from other musical projects in their…

While defying the barriers of his preceding albums, Spiritualized mastermind Jason Pierce cleaves to a few signature elements. He’ll always dwell obsessively on lyrical themes of Jesus and existentialism, as well as both love and drug addiction. The guitar work consistently has an interstellar/psychedelic vibe, recalling Pierce’s legendary former group…

The members of The Faint are in limbo, between two stops on their five-week tour in support of their newly released album, Danse Macabre. The industrial-strength, new-wave quintet is on its way from Urbana, Illinois, to Bloomington, Indiana, as one of the headliners at Bloomingtonfest, a three-day weekend festival of…

Whirlaway makes its entrance in a wash of loud guitar atmospherics and a flash of psychedelic lighting effects. Singer Adam Rosenberg takes center stage, bathed in the glow of a red light that spills over the stage to cover the rest of the group. A projection of multicolored bubbles appears…

The three members of Carnival Waste sit outside a local Starbucks, sipping coffee just before closing time. Cars rush by on darkened U.S. Highway 1 as the musicians try to agree on the cover art for … A Perfect Day, their forthcoming album. The South Florida band’s frontman-keyboardist, Robert J…

In his tiny bedroom at the top of the steep, white-tiled stairs of his family’s modest South Miami-Dade County townhouse, Richard Rippe strikes a blow against everything that is wrong with the music industry. The 24-year-old’s afro-topped, six-foot-three frame is folded over his Apple Powerbook, his long fingers gently brushing…

In just a little more than a year since its inception, See Venus has generated more buzz than most local bands do in their entire careers — and thanks to the Internet, the band has done it without performing a single live show. Thirty-year-old founder and guitarist Christopher Moll has…