Last week, influential L.A. funk and hip-hop club the Root Down returned from a year-long hiatus after more than a decade running. With a new location (the G-Club in Hollywood), a new host (KG Superstar), plus a handful of familiar faces and an always booming sound system, the Root Down......
New York-based techno0pop champ Matthew Dear plays the Vanguard on Friday night, and in honor of that, we've got the exclusive free download of the single, "You Put a Smell on Me." From his label, Ghostly International: "Its drums are militant, its pace is unswerving, and the squarewave synths that......
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All strike again with another boundary-pushing collision of abstract electronic beats and heavy, death-obsessed raps. Yes. Also, a lyric about large, flippered marine mammals: "We march through streets like a pack of walrus," from "Brain." Hard. Mellowhype is OFWGKTA crew members Left Brain and......
Two of the most original voices in the L.A. beat scene come together on this fantastically lush remix of Nosaj Thing's "Light #1" by Take. We first met Nosaj Thing in May of 2009 on the verge of releasing his debut album Drift, now considered a classic entry in the......
Bay Area rapper Lil B -- the one who brought you "Ellen DeGeneres," the song, only two weeks ago -- has struck again, releasing a new free song called "I Killed Hip Hop," subtitled ... "MESSAGE TO KANYE WEST." Lest you think it's little more than an attention grab (as......
He was a member of Sonic Youth during the band's most experimental phase. He won a Grammy for the "Best Alternative Album" of 2004 for his work on Wilco's A Ghost is Born. He's scored films by Werner Herzog. But the most subversive move of Jim O'Rourke's career may be......
We thought we'd seen the end of FreshStepGate 2010, but some enterprising young reporter has actually managed to get Glenn Danzig on the horn about his recent kitty litter purchase. O - M - G - ! Yeah, we're totes excited to hear what he said too. I mean, there......
In a just released video, Soft Cell's 1981 megahit "Tainted Love" gets completely reinvented by neo-soul maverick Bilal, electronics genius Daedelus and classical virtuoso Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. The result is a little bit jazz and a little bit funk-soul, with a whole lotta stomp. That, as it turns out, is far......
Things are getting weird at Stones Throw, but we suppose that's what happens any time things get too damn funky That, or someone got into MED's medical marijuana stash. Former Slave frontman Steve Arrington ("Just a Touch," "Slide"), who's been working on an album with Dâm-Funk, came to town recently......
Recent L.A. Weekly cover star JD Samson, also of Le Tigre, has release her new band MEN's first video, and it's full of sweat-dappled bodacious bods bumping against one another. It's not what you think, but it's no less hot. The song itself is an upbeat dance anthem called "Off......
