​Coldplay announced today via their website that they will be streaming a new single on their website this Friday, called -- wait for it -- "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall." Naturally, this announcement has been met with more than a few stifled giggles across the blogosphere, mostly because the title sounds like it should have been a hidden track on a Dashboard Confessional album circa 2001.

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Photo by Stacy Schwartz

Red Pens' Howard Hamilton

​Nothing says summer like hawking all your wares at a garage sale or flea market, which is the basis for this Friday's Rock 'n' Roll Swap Meet at the Hexagon Bar. As organizer Howard Hamilton of Red Pens says, there are "NO RULES and it's FREE," which means that everyone from jewelry makers to clothing designers to collectors of vintage knick-knacks to people just looking to unload a few extra items around the house are welcome to set up shop at the Hex.More >>

Photo by Denis Jeong Plaster

Big Boi

​Soundset 2011More >>

Photos by Ben Clark

At the end of this year's Soundset (read our full recap here), Face Candy closed out the Fifth Element stage by turning their set into a collaborative freestyle that was dedicated to the group's founder, Micheal Larsen, and it carried a somber tone that contrasted quite vividly with the rest of the jubilant performances at the festival. With Big Boi blaring just a few hundred feet away, a crowd dressed in handmade Eyedea t-shirts gathered to watch a moving tribute led by Face Candy core members Casey O'Brien, JT Bates, and Kristoff Krane, with cameo appearances by Carnage (who hosted the Fifth Element stage this year), Joe Horton of No Bird Sing, Sadistik, 2Mex, Bleubird, and Irenic.

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​People of the internet, meet Gramma's Boyfriend: frantic and frenetic, this budding new punk band is a far cry from the lush singer-songwriter fare normally offered up by Haley Bonar. But Bonar has never been one to let her music fit squarely into one category, and her new side project -- which features familiar faces Jeremy Ylvisaker, Jacob Hanson, Luke Anderson, and Michael Lewis -- is a fun foray into a sparser, heavier style of music.More >>

Photos by Nick Wosika

​Arctic Monkeys and the Vaccines
May 28, 2011
First Avenue

Touring for an album that hasn't been released yet is typically quite a challenge for a band. They run the risk of the crowd standing there oblivious, or, even worse, bored, while they are playing songs that their fans don't yet recognize and haven't taken to heart. But in this day and age, where most albums leak far before their actual release date, those fears are frequently disregarded. In the case of Arctic Monkeys' packed performance at First Avenue Saturday night, none of that mattered one bit, as the show sold out immediately and the rabid crowd went crazy for songs both new and old during the Sheffield quartet's stormy, 75-minute set. More >>

Photo by Tony Nelson

​Just when you're ready to write of Weezer as the perpetual party band, so extraordinarily tongue-in-cheek that maybe their whole take on surfy indie rock was just a parody, dear god, WE HAVE BEEN DUPED, they drop this little bomb on us all: A video of the band in the studio laying down a cover of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android." And it's not awful, not even a little bit, nope. Rivers Cuomo doesn't even smirk or anything. How could this be?More >>

​With the Midwest's biggest indie hip-hop festival, Soundset, just days away, Minneapolis rapper MaLLy (who we highlighted as one of this year's most promising up-and-comers) is getting amped for the festivities by dropping his first music video today. The video is for MaLLy's track "Renaissance," one of the songs he released last fall with the Sundance Kid as part of their ongoing "Free on the 15th" series, and features the emcee prowling through the West Bank and Midtown area of Minneapolis.More >>

Photo by Thierry Arditti

​When it was time for Greil Marcus to start his reading last night at Magers and Quinn, he suddenly realized that his emcee had gone missing--off, he later suggested, to use the bathroom. So the 65-year old author, perhaps the most famous of all living rock critics, walked over to the podium and got things started on his own.

"I don't think I need an introduction," Marcus smiled politely from behind his small, round eyeglasses. "I know who I am." Then, with the aid of his latest book, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, he summed up his plans for the evening in simple, even humble terms. "If there's an arc, it's what's most remarkable about Dylan's career," he explained. "It's a chronicle of one person's experience with another person's music."
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​It's hard to believe that Grand Old Day is already just around the corner, but "St. Paul's first rite of summer" is happening next Sunday, June 5. For the first time this year, Gimme Noise is sponsoring one of the stages at the festival, which will be located in the parking lot outside of Walgreens near Grand and Grotto and features Communist Daughter, Chris Koza, and the Arms Akimbo.More >>