As proven by Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut, the intersection between the ever-changing music that we’ve dubbed “folk” and “indie” continues to be interesting. The problem with this intersection, and defining it, is that these two brands of music are shifty and inherently lack definition. In this case, Fleet Foxes could be best described as a band that bridges the musical traditions of America’s coasts. Here, the psychedelic sprawl of the west mingles with the tightness of eastern roots traditions such as bluegrass and country-blues. But that doesn’t really cut them any slack as a pop act, which — strange as it might be to some — they are.

Upon first hearing “Highly Suspiscious,” from My Morning Jacket's newest LP Evil Urges, one of the — what do you call them? Singles? Whatever a band releases to the internet to preview its forthcoming record — I felt a sort of dismay. Having grown to adore My Morning Jacket for the searing, epic guitars (especially as exemplified on the band’s double-disc live opus Okonokos), the folksy charm, and Jim James’ falsetto-reverb vocals, the fact that “Highly Suspiscious” sounded like a band trying to cover Prince disturbed me greatly. Was this the band I had claimed to love? Praised endlessly? Pushed on so many people?

Psych lovers, beware: If this article is introducing you to The Black Angels, there is reason to heed a real fear that, in the very near future, you won’t be removing this record from the player for months. Yes, we writers operate almost exclusively by use of hyperbole, but in all frankness, Directions to See a Ghost is the most illuminating psych record to have any popular appeal in my recent memory.

Richard Swift is a shapeshifter, a musical sorceror of mythical proportion. Each of his releases shows a mastery of a different affect of pop music, and each one is unique in its own way. Pending the release (some as Richard Swift and some as Instruments of Science and Technology, his electronic moniker), you’re likely to find a completely different sound, but what’s been clear all along is that Richard Swift’s forte is using the elements of popular music to turn popular music on its ass. In that sense, As Onasis is perfectly in form.

Jim McHugh is buying coffee in Austin, Texas, and asks that I call him back in five minutes so he’s not the guy waiting in line on his cell phone. I appreciate this and gladly hang up. I give him seven minutes, knowing how those lines sometimes go, and when I call back he apologizes.

“I’ve been a service industry douchebag too many years to be that guy,” he says.

There are fundamental questions to ask before opening a discussion of The Felice Brothers, namely regarding what many consider to be “throwback” music: when an artist creates music that strongly hearkens to music of the past, notably of the sort that returns to a form of the basics, it should be assumed — at least for the review that follows — that we can declare a sort of unique brilliance. But to what extent do shoot-em-up romps, trips to the circus, and murder ballads apply to our contemporary lives? And further, to call a band (or record) brilliant, do the songs have to apply?

This, of course, is where metaphor becomes one of our greatest friends.

The Felice Brothers play a brand of what can only be described as folk music, and as such inherently is bred in a sort of tradition. The band strongly recalls Dylan’s foray with The Band (notably the infamous Basement Tapes) and, at times, the carnival-esque atmosphere of choice Tom Waits compositions and the wry humor (and dry drawl) of John Prine’s early records. But as with most old sounding records, this self-titled gem boasts an airiness whose climate could only be modern.

To compare M83’s proprietor Anthony Gonzalez to Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is perhaps old hat, but what’s now the most remarkable aspect of this comparison is how Gonzalez continues to nurture Shields’s influence while still creating interesting, progressive music. Shimmering, shoegazey electronic music it’s not, exactly; on Saturdays=Youth M83 sounds more like the New Wave reborn, as Gonzalez seems to channel Tears For Fears (pick any song from the Donnie Darko soundtrack, really) more than anything else. While this might seem the classic case of trying to fix something that isn’t broken (the band’s 2003 Dead Seas, Red Cities, and Lost Ghosts is brilliant in every sense of the word), Gonzalez has still managed to corral a sharp, spacious musical texture with that distinctive ring of fresh influence.

A show like this, on the surface, sounds like something of a novelty: hip-hop and indie rock? Together? This is the stuff that gets pulled off on major festival circuits, but how will it fare in the C-U community? Perhaps that’s putting naïve words into the mouths of our hyper-educated viewers, but it’s a question worth asking despite the fact that this type of show has gone on for quite some time around town. Krukid shows up here, Larry Gates shows up there; at The Great Cover-Up, rock bands cover hip-hop acts for a full set, from Absinthe Blind performing as the Beastie Boys on through Beat Kitchen’s rendition of Run-DMC. Point in case, though this might be the first to call attention to the relationship between hip-hop and indie rock by name, the C-U music community is no stranger to cross-genre shows.

Also of note is that the pairing of these genres, increasingly related in terms of PR if nothing else, makes a whole lot of sense: In both cases, grassroots promotion plays a giant role in getting the word spread about the quality of musical acts, from venues such as MySpace to the traditional word-of-mouth. To boot, independent acts of both the rock and hip-hop varieties (not to mention most other genres) are the ones who consistently expand upon respective boundaries, the proverbial meal tickets for the future of music.

There once was a moniker named Manitoba, and behind the mask was Dan Snaith — Ontarian musicmaster, purveyor of a style bred in isolation and unpredictable as such, a blender of styles as diverse as Kraut-rock, dance, ‘90s indie, techno, and the twee jangle of certain classic rock maestros. After two records and a bizarre lawsuit over his nom de plume, Snaith re-emerged as Caribou. He’s up to the same old business — a strange mix of progress and homage — and along with two records, The Milk of Human Kindness and 2007’s Andorra, Snaith has also re-released his records previously available as Manitoba (Start Breaking My Heart and the enigmatic Up In Flames). Each of these records boasts its own vision, an installment of sorts in Snaith’s catalog of musical mania. The progress has seen Snaith grow from recording electronic music in his bedroom to a highly ecstatic, organic style that transcends genre altogether.

There are many notable things about Bon Iver. The first is that the band name is purposefully misspelled, according to the press kit, and is pronounced "bohn eevair;" I’m not sure this is the technical language of pronunciation, but those with even menial training in French can recognize this as a version of the French for “good winter.” The second thing is that Bon Iver is the stage name for Justin Vernon, who sometimes has a couple of bandmates in tow despite the fact that he wrote and recorded the brilliant album For Emma, Forever Ago in literal isolation in the woods of northwestern Wisconsin. (For Emma was self-released in 2007 and picked up by Jagjaguwar for its February 2008 wide release.) Tonight, Vernon will play a sort folk music for you.

Before Attack and Release, The Black Keys had never recorded an album outside of their Akron, Ohio, basement. They had never worked with a producer and had always recorded and mixed all of their own records. All of this is simply the beginning of a musical story that boasts the stuff of musical lore. The story goes like this: Brian Burton (a.k.a. Danger Mouse) called Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney (a.k.a. The Black Keys) to ask if they want to write and record some songs for the forthcoming Danger Mouse-produced record by soul/r&b pioneer Ike Turner. Unfortunately, Turner passed away in December and the record — as of now — seems as if it was not far enough along to complete in any way, shape, or form. For The Black Keys, though, recording with Burton was something of a watershed moment and they immediately asked him if he would produce their next record. Attack and Release is the result.

There is always a certain amount of justifiable skepticism involved when approaching a record performed by an actor or actress. Sure, some of these folks are probably more extensively (and arguably better) trained than a good number of our favorite musicians, but that’s the point, isn’t it? We don’t want to hear a hundred records per year by classically trained musicians. We want music that’s unbridled, that seems to come naturally to the performer, that’s off-kilter enough to question training in the first place. We don’t want a publicity stunt. And though I adore both Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, the duo behind the moniker She & Him, I approached Volume One with a skepticism similar to that with which I’d approach any of the above performers.

There are two major schools of thought when discussing bands in terms of their elements: one faction contends that there is infinite possibility in music — that each time a guitar is picked up, originality is possible, regardless of the history, influence, age, etc. The other faction argues that music, particularly rock ‘n’ roll, paints with a limited palette — that musicians are merely a sum of their parts, and particularly of their influences, and that—basically—what any critics might call “originality” is simply luck.

This, in some ways, is not so different from the argument between Creationists and Evolutionists.

Perhaps of lesser global significance, this division of music critics yields strange similarities: it produces the strange nomenclature of “musical gods,” of worship, rumors of unearthliness, and simple declarations that the premier progressors of rock ‘n’ roll not only will never be surpassed, but can never be surpassed.

A long-time Crowes fan through the missteps that were the years 1998 through 2006, save a couple of damn decent solo records from frontman Chris Robinson and the 2000 collaboration/tour LP with Jimmy Page, Live at the Greek, it was easy to be skeptical about the first Black Crowes studio record in seven years. Many of these years were spent releasing misses of records and self-indulgently releasing as many B-sides and live shows as possible. It all felt money-grubbing, considering the band was on hiatus for at least half of that time. Frankly, though the Crowes are a great rock band, and in this reviewer’s estimation a great rock band is always relevant, it was difficult to tell—through all of the sibling rivalry and Hollywood press—whether or not brothers Chris and Rich Robinson could get it together long enough to recognize this relevance. Needless to say, here we are in 2008: The Black Crowes are no longer on hiatus, and Warpaint is, surprisingly, a solid record.

Imagine: You’re in a suburban field in east Memphis in the middle of a sweltering summer afternoon. You’ve walked past a stand selling Pronto Pups, and one hawking Red Man spit-and-chew tobacco; behind the curtain of one booth you can see the world’s smallest horse, and behind another you can see a spider with a human head. You realize that the Delta Fair and Music Festival is quite a misnomer: this is a suburban county fair. You’ve come here to see The Avett Brothers, a North Carolinian band you expect no one has actually heard and who, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews, are a true independent, still releasing music on the small N.C. label Ramseur Records on which they started. And then it happens: the band, a three-piece dwarfed by a giant stage on which you’d expect to see the Charlie Daniels Band or Willie Nelson, starts to play, and suddenly you realize you’re surrounded by fans who know all the words; by people, young and old, hopping in time to the music, some dancing a jig and others with their fists pumped like they’re seeing the Sex Pistols.

This is the power and the glory of The Avett Brothers.

Now and then a band comes out of nowhere for what seems like the express purpose of blowing our collective minds. Of course, no band literally “comes out of nowhere”—this particular one came out of Columbia University’s dormitories—but with the right kind of hype that’s both fast-tracked and warranted, these diamonds in the rough (and let’s face it, it’s pretty rough out there) seem to materialize before our eyes. We, as musical scourers, live for bands like Vampire Weekend. Akin to finding a pristine vinyl collection priced-to-liquidate (remember that scene in Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity?), or that perfect piece of vintage clothing hidden amidst the wreckage of your favorite thrift outlet, these bands remind us why we bother to search in the first place. And somewhere along the way is the inherent true definition as to why we love music, and it’s not to listen, over and over, to the same Beatles record we’ll hold over the heads of all other records; it’s to find something that’ll finally challenge those lauded unbeatables.

Bufo Alvarius is Eric Gross, a C-Uite who has honed his skills across two very different records — 2006’s instrumental seven drops from the wax and 2003’s brash mix of cartoonish, sometimes vulgar hip-hop, Comedy and Tragedy — not to mention a stint in Chicago. Propaganda is a culmination of Gross’s talent so far, a musical collage of hip-hop, electronica, and rock ‘n’roll (varying from lush acoustic layers to more sonically challenging effect-heavy guitar contributions) for good measure, paired with an intense examination of nostalgia.

Not surprisingly, this project’s name comes from the infamous psychoactive Colorado River Toad (aka Bufo alvarius) that secretes hallucinogenic alkaloid bufotenine; this juxtaposition of the natural and the unnatural aptly represents the Bufo Alvarius code of existence. Propaganda finds Gross composing sound musical structures that are laced with a hallucinogenic tone, prompting a strange paradox between the record’s often peaceful sound and the purported concept of the album, which (according to its press release) has “nostalgic undertones which analyze and targets the downfall of America.”