Mears Park

For Minneapolis based musician, Kevin Anthony, whose musical life experience has brought him from Galveston, Texas, up to Houston, would bring him even farther north to New York City in 1993 and then jetted him to Minneapolis where he has made his home since 2005. He’s been playing with his group, the Twin City Playboys ever since, where their mix of Cajun and Country made them a local staple. This month he releases North Star, his fantastic new record.

With an album on Paste Magazine's Top 100 of 2007 and comparisons popping up all over the place between singer/songwriter Ben Kyle and both Jeff Tweedy and Ryan Adams, it probably won't be too long before you'll no longer be able to catch these guys in such a cozy venue.

Pippi Ardennia describes her style as PipJazz--! Music with a purpose, music that becomes your lifestlye, music that makes you FEEL GOOD! Pippi A is more than a song writer/song stylist. Her voice has been described as an instrument, she loves the music and you can see and hear it.

Influences: Bowie Velvets Smiths Pulp Cash Spiritualized Houllebecq Stones Beatles Oasis Dandies dandyism Wilde Beardsley Erik Satie Claire Rimbaud Baudelaire Le Petomain driving fast T. Rex Gilliam The City of New York in 1978 The City of Minneapolis in 2008 The Princess and the Pony Lennon

Her guitar playing is good enough to stand alone and so are her voice and her songwriting. It's a pleasant surprise to find all three in the same person. Her voice is a shade lighter than someone like Fiona Apple, but some might draw comparisons to Fiona and to Norah Jones.

"The result is a gorgeously sad and luscious album, Soundtrack to the End...Steeped in '60s-era Beach Boy harmonies and expansive, sunny choruses, Solomon's upbeat pop arrangements are contrasted with lyrics about loss, cynicism, and struggle, in a narrative that tells far more than Solomon would ever confess in an interview." - Andrea Swensson, City Pages

Huna and Deurloo’s collaboration has resulted in a collection of songs for his first album, A Neighboring City, that have a great mix of folk, contemporary pop/alternative, and a little splash of retro 70's sound that will never leave you feeling that you have “already heard this”. He has already taken first place on ourstage.com in two different channels in back to back months with his songs “Alibi” and “A Neighboring City.” He is gaining an audience who are falling in love with the lyrics and story telling, saying the songs have great depth, substance, and emotion.

Take a banjo, a fiddle, the guitar, drums and some damn fine hats, and you've got the Minneapolis-based A Night in the Box. The image is easily described, but it is slightly more difficult to characterize their sound. Started in 2006 by three high school friends, Alex Dalton (drums, vocals), Clayton Hagen (lead vocals, guitar) and Travis Hetman (banjo, vocals, guitar, harmonica).

While many rock stars got their start in the garage, Woodbury Middle School student Elliot Starke has found himself practicing in the attic. Starke just wrapped up his first “season” at School of Rock, where he was named “student of the season” and received the gold record award.

Such is the music of Minor Kingdom’s mastermind Kristian Melom, a well-bearded, Minnesota-based singer-songwriter whose debut record My Back Will Bend strives for the same sort of disaffiliation rust-folk heroes Sun Kil Moon and Bonnie “Prince” Billy founded an entire career on. Each of the 10 songs are openly slow-paced, usually guided by little more than a gently strummed guitar and Melom’s own downhearted tenor.

A paradox is not an impossibility. ‘Zoo Animal,’ the band’s self-titled second record, reveals itself to uphold such a maxim with a sharp yet subdued sound that is informed by equal measures of classical minimalism and ‘90s grunge. This contrast is just one of many as Zoo Animal’s stark, articulate pop music vacillates between gentle and aggressive, volatile and peaceful, light and dark. It’s graceful, hushed, soul-stirring music, yet it rests atop traditional rock instrumentation – simply guitar, drums, bass – that can turn visceral at the drop of a drumstick.

The Spectaculars continue to turn heads and stir imaginations with their sophomore effort, "You Can Look Up Now." The Minneapolis-based, genre-bending band is nominated for two pieces of hardware at the prestigious Los Angeles Music Awards. Specifically, the group is up for "Video of the Year" and "Record of the Year.

Most hip-hop fans around the country know there's something strangely special about the Twin Cities scene. They can flash their indie cred like a fanned out fistful of Franklins just by rattling off a few of the most recognizable names -- Atmosphere and Eyedea & Abilities come to mind. But there's another duo that has quietly helped define their city's place in hip-hop culture since the turn of the millennium: The Unknown Prophets.

With the release of their debut CD, Backyard Tent Set, Caroline Smith and the Goodnight Sleeps have demonstrated to be a great new emerging band in the local music scene and are proving that Lucy Michelle is not the only female led quirky folk-pop game in town.

"You won't find Halloween, Alaska, anywhere on a map. Instead, this Minnesota band inhabits a sensual, weightless world of sweetly brooding electronic pop. ... Their third album refines that warily optimistic worldview, with drummer David King (also of the Bad Plus) adding tastefully muted beats while James Diers' abstract lyricism wraps you in a sleepy caress." - Spin