HEY YOU! You could WIN A COPY OF SMILE SMILE’S LATEST CD “TRUTH ON TAPE”. Also: read on about this Texas twosome and find out why The Swell Season aren’t the only folkies who can date and break up and still make good music. Make with the click-through action.

MUSIC IS POWER! And we’ve got a nice little Bonnaroo playlist to help you get through the fact that this weekend you’re probably doing laundry. We’ve got music from Kings of Leon, Phoenix, Temper Trap, The Dead Weather, Crystal Method, Nas and Damian Marley, and, as they say, “more.”

Backstage Rider checks out San Fran indie band GIRLS before the rest of the world gets to see them on the the festival circuit. What was it like? WHAT THE HELL HAS HAPPENED TO CHRISTOPHER OWENS’ HAIR? The music? Yeah, pretty. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m off to slow dance with a guy with a crew cut at the sock hop. Hope he likes my poodle skirt…and my flask of whiskey, garter, and new anchor tattoo.

Heard of Turin Brakes? No? If you were living in the UK in the early aughties, you’d not be able to escape their brand of edgy folk-rock. But 10 years on, Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian find themselves having to reintroduce the band and their new album Outbursts… but are all the more relaxed for it. Read on in this exclusive Backstage Rider interview.

UK folksters Turin Brakes hit the West Coast for their first North Uhmerican gigs in 5 years in Vancouver. Check out the extensive gallery from the May 9 Venue show.

Amazing live photos! Words and subjectivity pertaining the live performance of a band from Texas called Spoon! And their opening act, Deerhunter! And a tenuous reference to Captain Picard! Chickens! Eggs! A man called Britt! Hipsters! Oooh, it’s a good one.

Denton, Texas’ Midlake stopped by to drop some heavy flute and guitar action on Vancouver. And it was good.

What’s Stuart Braithwaite’s favourite Mogwai song? Are they louder than Dinosaur Jr? If the universe were to implode in on itself taking with it every guitar effects pedal except for one, which one would Braithwaite choose? Find out the answers.

From disastrously sleepy to utterly sublime: how Hal Willner’s Neil Young Project was saved from snoozeville by Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Metric and a few other indie rockers.