Urban Heat shares origins & 2024 outlook at Darker Waves Fest

In November 2023, the inaugural Darker Waves Festival wowed New Wave fans with its impressively iconic 80s and darkwave headliners, such as New Order, Tears for Fears, She Wants Revenge, and Echo and the Bunnymen. This festival also featured a slew of great performances beyond the headliners, with many festival-goers finding new bands to love […]

Anticipating Bluphria’s upcoming album drop

The life of a music obsessed journalist can at times be daunting. On almost a daily basis my inbox is filled to the brim with new music to check out. Press releases coming to me from all ends of the music industry spectrum and only so much time to write about the bands I want […]

Rising Artist Spotlight: Splitworms

Welcome music lovers to this week’s Rising Artist spotlight! Today we feature the hard rock stylings of UK upstarts Splitworms. Splitworms are one of the latest UK indie bands to catch my attention, which is not entirely surprising since I spend so much time scouring England for new and exciting bands. In my humble opinion […]

Five Finger Death Punch gears up to drop ‘AfterLife’ album

Starting out in 2007, Five Finger Death Punch has been set on world domination and they’ve definitely achieved it. The band’s debut album, The Way of the Fist, put them on the map with songs such as the in-your-face track “Ashes” and my personal favorite, “The Bleeding”, which is about a relationship gone bad. The […]

Eclectic Soundtrax Podcast, Ep. 70: Zarate Zaaló

On this episode of Eclectic Soundtrax, hosts Skunk Manhattan and Victor Ramos chat with Karate Zaaló (aka, Squiggly Finesse) — keyboardist, vocalist and mastermind of the Bourgeois Mystics. This fantastically eclectic group of intergalactic eccentrics currently reside at their 38-acre Austin-based commune (definitely, not a cult) and make outer-worldly music to inspire (or conquer?) us mere […]

Reflecting on Papa Roach & their forthcoming ‘Kill The Noise’ LP

If you’ve been living under a rock, Papa Roach is one of the most soul-crushing established rock bands out there. Known best for their hit “Last Resort” off of the band’s first album, Infest, Papa Roach is here to stay. It was that album released in 2000 that helped the band climb to fame, featuring […]

Getting to know art punk band Gustaf

Some bands are exceptionally talented and some bands are just lucky; Brooklyn’s avant-garde art punk icons Gustaf are both. What began as a series of ‘fortunate’ events on the way to SXSW has blossomed into something quite magical for this group of five rock ‘n roll misfits. Not many artists can say that one of their […]

TSM #HotList: Holiday 2019 Edition

Host Alexia Johnson has the hottest new music finds in this holiday edition of Top Shelf Music’s Artist #HotList! In this late December installment, Alexia lets you check out the latest jams by Ocean Beach band No Kings, roots reggae family band The Lambsbread and two amazing collabs: Tropidelic teaming up with Flobots’ Jonny 5 […]