Lifesavas are a rap trio that come from Portland Oregon, and they're playing a show in LA, June 12th @ the Roxy. Members Vursatyl, Jumbo, and Shines have been proving that you don't need the cliché bling, bitches, and 40's to make great rap music. All you need is to keep it real, bust your ass, and make better music than everyone else. Easy, right? We sat down with Vursatyl to ask him what's crackin'.......

Whoever is booking the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax deserves a raise. Recently they got Henry Rollins and Janeane Garofalo to do a show there, and now we find our favorite bald Irishwoman Sinead O'Conner is going to play a gig there next month. In what seems to be one of her two "intimate" acoustic shows in the States (the other will be in NYC), as O' Conner prepares to go on a world......

Fri 5/5 - Islands @ The El Rey ($12) – Montreal’s Islands are an eccentric indie pop band that formed out of the ashes of the Unicorns. Don’t hold that against them, they’re much better than the Unicorns. The band can still be too cutesy at times (the song “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby” doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Whitney, Bobby or Curtis Mayfield) but the arrangements are more fleshed out......

We're not in love with the Curtis Mayfield Remixed album. Outside of an excellent reinterpretation of Superfly as a latin dance joint by Little Louis Vega and our love of Freddie's Dead in any form, it's simply OK. Tonight's birthday tribute to Mayfield at Little Temple, though, should be anything but just OK. DJ Jeremy Sole and KCRW's Tom Golubic (who is also the music supervisor for Six Feet Under *ahem* Contest!) should be......