Tonight Australian-American singer-songwriter Rick Springfield (LAist Review) will be performing at Club Nokia. Social Distortion (LAist Review) front man Mike Ness is closing out his extensive stay at the El Rey Theatre. Grammy Award winners Los Lobos will be rocking out at the House of Blues Sunset. Local musician/producer extraordinaire Jon Brion (LAist Review) is slated to jam with friends at the Largo at the Coronet. The Hotel Café will kick off their three-night "ho-ho-tel" holiday extravaganza with an impressive array of singer-songwriter types, like Meiko (LAist Review, #2, #3, #4), Greg Laswell (LAist Interview, Review, #2, #3) and Gary Jules. And, lastly, LAist favorites Radars to the Sky (LAist Review, #2, #3) are slated to celebrate the release of their forthcoming full-length at Spaceland with Swedish husband/wife act Wildbirds and Peacedrums. But we recommend doing whatever it takes to get into the Troubadour. Phantom Planet, who have struggled endlessly with their musical identity since the untimely departure of Jason Schwartzman (LAist Review), will be playing their last show ever! more ›

Everybody's doing it, right? I don't pretend to be hip or edgy or rebellious. I mean, I grew up on Billy Joel and Madonna and Motown and then the Gen Xer's basic dichotomy of KROQ versus Top 40 in the 90s. I find it increasingly harder to fall in love with albums in the downloading age, and am one of those people who obsessively compiles mixed cds for friends and iPod playlists full of individual tracks from a broad sampling of artists. The three places I'm most thankful for getting me turned on to new music would be my fellow LAisters, the awesome site 3hive, and good ol' KCRW. So without further ado, here are my pics for the 2007 releases I most enjoyed: more ›

Released: May 19th, 2007 more ›