Janelle Monae

Coachella 2013 Takes It Back to the '90s

Coachella, the Only Music Festival That Matters (or so we're told), announced its 2013 lineup late Thursday night, no holograms or Rolling Stones included. Instead, two beloved '90s UK acts whose popularity in the U.S. is spotty at best, Blur and the Stone Roses, headline the first night of the tw ... More >>

5 Albums I'd Like to Read

I suppose it was inevitable that Rush wrote a book. To move from long-form albums with intricate plot-lines and involved character development to a multi-hundred-page novel with the same isn't really much of a leap, after all, and prog has always been at least a bit about bombast. What could be more ... More >>

14 Brand-New Houston Bands You Should Know About

Thursday night in New York City, Houston promoter The Convoy Group and several other companies (including Brooklyn Vegan's Austin bureau) co-sponsored "The Texas Takeover," an evening of all-Lone Star music at Chelsea drinkery Rebel NYC, part of the famous emerging-talent festival CMJ. On the bill w ... More >>

Spotify's Houston Top 10 Singles Is, Uh, Yeah...

This past weekend I was at Academy near my house filling out paperwork to buy a shotgun and the One Direction single "What Makes You Beautiful" was playing over the store speaker system. Before that moment I had thought that One Direction only existed in emails from PR agents, my music listings, and ... More >>

Women On Top: 10 Female Artists We're Way Into Right Now

March is Women's History Month, and Rocks Off has been thinking a lot lately about the indelible contributions to popular music made by women over the last few decades. After all, where would Elvis Presley be if it weren't for Big Mama Thornton? Probably still dead, we guess, but you get the point. ... More >>

Estelle

You Bettah Work: 10 Rock/Pop Musicians Who Could Take Up Modeling

Lucky for Lana Del Rey -- whose awkward-at-best Saturday Night Live performance last weekend left indie critics second-guessing her skill -- she has a backup career on which to fall, if needed. Last week, days before becoming a poor bundle of nerves on SNL, the up-and-(maybe)-coming songstress signe ... More >>

Distant Early Warning: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Steve Aoki, Mountain Goats, Heartless Bastards, Voodoo Glow Skulls

​ Red Hot Chili Peppers, Janelle Monae: Thu., March 8. Toyota Center, 1510 Polk, Houston. Agent Orange: Tue., Feb. 21. Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. "Burned Out" With Chase Hamblin, The Literary Greats, The Sideshow Tramps: Sat., Jan. 21. Fitzgerald's, 2706 White Oak, Houston. C ... More >>

Five '60s Soul Stars Jay-Z & Kanye West Should Hit Next

thelocal478.comWelcome back to Billboard, Otis.​Say what you will about Watch the Throne - and people, including several members of Team Rocks Off, have said a lot - but it's all anyone in music seems to be talking about these days. Which makes sense; it's not every day that two megastars (the ... More >>

Sia

Last Night: Kid Cudi & Chip Tha Ripper At Reliant Arena

Photos by Larami Serrano​Kid Cudi, Chip Tha Ripper Reliant Arena July 19, 2011 6:58 p.m.: Pulling up. Holy crap. There is (what seems like) a neverending line of kids waiting to get in. Crazy. There's also a KRBE truck here. Is Kid Cudi a KRBEian now? What's happened? 7:29: Inside. 7:31: T ... More >>

Butterflies

Fierce R&B creature Marsha Ambrosius loses herself on debut Late Nights & Early Mornings...but only a little.

Last Night: Bruno Mars & Janelle Monae At Reliant Arena

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Bruno Mars, Janelle Monae Reliant Arena May 18, 2011 See Bruno Mars, Janelle Monae and their fans, just the way they are, in our slideshow. Somewhere, Michael Jackson is smiling again. At last. The King of Pop may be gone, but he was very much there in spirit Wednesd ... More >>

Music's Top 10 Most Fashionable Women Right Now

GroovehouseThe Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O at the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival​Fashion, like songwriting and other artistic outlets, is a form of self-expression. It adds to one's aura; it speaks on her behalf. Yet fashion sometimes gets overlooked in music, and undeservedly so. Follow ... More >>

Upcoming: Das Racist, Echo & The Bunnymen, Surfer Blood, Etc.

​Arcade Fire, Explosions In The Sky: Wed., May 4. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Bob Schneider: Thu., April 7. McGonigel's Mucky Duck. Cory Morrow: Sat., April 23. The Firehouse Saloon. Das Racist, Fat Tony, Muhammadali, Simple Success, DJ iPod Ammo: Tue, March 22, Fitzgerald's. David C ... More >>

Rocks Off's Favorite Albums Of 2010

​Editor's Picks: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Mojo: Big surprise, I know. But not only did "I Should Have Known It" vault into my Top 5 Heartbreakers songs the first time I heard it - and make me a bigger Led Zeppelin fan in the process - but others like "Candy" and "Good Enough" also held ... More >>

Music's Biggest Surprises Of 2010

Faith Silva​Editor's Pick: The renewed, and continuing, interest of local indie-rockers and hipsters (and people who are a long way from neither) in traditional honky-tonk as played by Robert Ellis & the Boys and as documented by a certain Lonesome Onry and Mean and myself this summer. Encoura ... More >>

Top 10 Worst Top 10 Lists Of 2010

​Now that's a headline, ladies and germs. It has the added benefit of being succinct as well. That's exactly what we're summing up here, the worst Top 10 lists our peers have written this year. Let's get started, as we've got a lot of ground to cover. 10. This One Not really, this is just t ... More >>

Katy Perry? For Album Of The Year? Seriously?

​Don't get Craig's Hlist wrong, we think that Katy Perry is extremely attractive. In fact, if we think about her long enough, it makes us want to cry and punch a wall. She's a buxom, bubbly, raven-haired pop star who dresses like she's expensive grandma candy. We even interviewed her last ye ... More >>

Last Night: Of Montreal And Janelle Monae At Numbers

Photos by Marco Torres​Of Montreal, Janelle Monae Numbers November 4, 2010 At ACL we lamented that The Flaming Lips performances have evolved to be less about the music and more about the floor show. You know what you're getting when you pay for a Lips concert ticket - Wayne Coyne will get in ... More >>

Janelle Monae

I Put A Spell On You: The Vixens And Visuals Of Voodoo Fest

Photos by Mark C. AustinMGMT: "Ruh Roh! Better play something off the first album!"​Village Voice Media dispatched Houston photographer Mark C. Austin to New Orleans this past weekend for the Voodoo Music Experience, the Crescent City's annual three-day Halloween engorgement of live music and ... More >>

Young Mammals Emerge From Hibernation At Big Star Tonight

​Rocks Off is still getting used to running into (or emailing) local musicians we haven't seen for a while, asking them where they've been and getting the answer "on tour." We're not complaining. That's the case with Young Mammals - after a sharp set at Free Press Summer Fest, the band virtua ... More >>

Upcoming: Chris Isaak, Dr. Dog, Misfits, Of Montreal, Slayer, Etc.

​Black Congress, Omotai, Side Arms, The Formations: Sat., Sept. 4. Walter's on Washington. The Bloody Beetroots: Sat., Oct. 23. House of Blues. Chris Isaak: Sun., Oct. 17. House of Blues. Corinne Bailey Rae: Sun., Aug. 15. House of Blues. Cory Morrow: Wed., July 28. Pub Fiction. Deniz Te ... More >>

FAIL: Weezer, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, ASCAP

​Weezer to Team Up with Ryan Adams: Set Expectations Bar to "Low": Remember when Bryan Adams teamed up with Rod Stewart and Sting on that song "All For Love" on the Three Musketeers soundtrack? We bring it up not to once again give Ryan Adams shit about his name, but to point out that all thre ... More >>

Into the Jungle

The Jungle Rockers are wound too tight for Vietnam...what about Texas?

Sage Francis Transcends Genres At House of Blues

Photos by Marc Brubaker/See the slideshowSage Francis with members of Free Moral Agents​Sage Francis' new album Li(f)e should have received better reviews than it did. Although the reviews it got weren't terrible, none of them seemed to acknowledge that Sage managed to marry rap and rock witho ... More >>

Erykah Badu, Hotter Than July At Verizon

Photos by Jody Perry / Click here for a slideshow​Erykah Badu is a vanishing specimen, a pop star who courts controversy - see the "Window Seat" video, coming soon to a Dallas courtroom near you - not out of some narcissistic need to be in the headlines, but because she is legitimately differe ... More >>

F**k You Very Much, Austin

• Talk about buzzkill. During All Time Low's Bamboozle Roadshow performance at Six Flags in Arlington last week, amusement park security pepper-sprayed a handful of preteens who rushed the stage in a surge of prepubescent hormonal musical bliss. The band gave the security an earful of Fuck You! a ... More >>

FAIL: Jeff Beck, Jonas Brothers, Lilith Fair, ACL Fest

If you're reading this, you're either on the Internet, or else you've mastered multi-dimensional thought-projection processes that would make Michio Kaku cry like a little girl. We'll assume the former, and just in case you don't already know, the Internet has decided that the word "failure" is too ... More >>

Beyoncé: I Am...Sasha Fierce