M.I.A. (Musician)

SXSW: Mala Rodriguez at SESAC Day Stage Cafe

XM Nation: Catching Up and Moving On

Top Ten Dance Collections of 2008, Both Mixed and Unmixed

Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry ... More >>

Top Ten Pop Songs of 2008

Pop music often gets a bad rap for being disposable or vapid, and in many cases that's true. (Katy Perry, Danity Kane and the Pussycat Dolls, step right up!) But every year, a few irresistible bits of innovative ear candy rocket up the charts and seep into our subconscious. The following ten singles ... More >>

Organ Failure's M.I.A./Santa Claus Mash-Up

Local Beefheart-style rockers Organ Failure have recorded a parody of M.I.A.'s late-blooming smash "Paper Planes" with a Santa twist. The Sri Lankan indie-rap star's Clash-sampling hit gets turned into the Santa-hustlin' jam "Christmas Wrapping Paper Planes."  "Paper Planes" was everywher ... More >>

Freddie Krc

Local Beefheart-style rockers Organ Failure have recorded a parody of M.I.A.'s late-blooming smash "Paper Planes" with a Santa twist. The Sri Lankan indie-rap star's Clash-sampling hit gets turned into the Santa-hustlin' jam "Christmas Wrapping Paper Planes."  "Paper Planes" was everywher ... More >>

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion

www.myanimalhome.net

Raheem DeVaughn

Love Behind the Melody

Our Favorite Albums of 2007

Panning for gold in an avalanche of 2007 releases

M.I.A.

Panning for gold in an avalanche of 2007 releases

Being There

The Sixth Annual Austin City Limits Festival feels like home...almost

M.I.A.

Kala

Lost in Rotation

Rounding Up Recordings by HPMA Nominees

Desi on Deck

Rounding Up Recordings by HPMA Nominees

7L and Esoteric

A New Dope

Lady Sovereign

Vertically Challenged

Electronic Music

The year in review

Riot Girl

Kitchen-sink revolutionary M.I.A. has the beats to make you bang

M.I.A.

Arular

Aftermath: Santigold at House of Blues

Photos by Kim Douglass Puff-paint, splatter-paint, welcome to the hospital - the sterility of a trash heap greets you. Santigold = the moment hipster-embraced globalism became a commodity, and why globalism doesn't matter anymore; i.e., we're all the same.  Seeing her at House of Blues is ... More >>

Love and Theft

The decade with no name left behind plenty of memorable music.

Food, Fun, and Frivolity at Menu of Menus

​This Tuesday, hundreds of hungry Houstonians joined me at Houston Press's annual gala to sample some of the tastiest treats our local restaurants had to offer. The event was held indoors this year at West Ave. Though last year's event at Discovery Green was more casual, this year people were ... More >>

At 4:20 On 4/20, Music's Biggest Burnouts

​ You should all know what today is. Today is the day pot-smoking amateurs giggle to one another about how high they're going to be all day, while the real potheads simply wait with stoic stoner patience for the magic hour to roll around. Yeah, you'll know the real burnouts when you see them. Not ... More >>

Musical Moms That Make Us Melt

​ With Mother's Day fast approaching, we can't help but recognize all the hot rocker mamas out there making music and babies. It can't be easy to write the next great pop song and have a tiny human being inside you sucking nutrients from your body, in the process girding their loins for making you ... More >>

Acts We Think - OK, Hope - Are Playing ACL Fest This Year

​By this time Tuesday, we will all know who is playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival in October. Damn, it seems like we have speculating about the line-up since, well, we got the last of the "Dillo Dirt" out the middle of our toes after last year's muddy and rainy ACL weekend. Tuesday brig ... More >>

Which ACL Headliners Will Play Houston?

www.eaglesband.comWho knew the Eagles shot their publicity stills for The Long Road Out of Eden at ACL 2005?​When the Austin City Limits festival lineup is released every spring, one of Rocks Off's favorite parlor games besides wondering what sort of Biblical weather-related calamity God will visi ... 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 >>

FAIL: Crystal Bowersox, Bee Gees, Dave Matthews, M.I.A.

​ American Idol Runner-Up: Kick Her While She's Fail: In case you haven't heard, Crystal Bowersox was kicked off American Idol when it was revealed that her entire career path had simply been one of Hurley's delusions while still locked up in the psych ward, and that Seacrest Island had never even ... 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 >>

"Monkey With Arthritis": Top 10 Cattiest Musician Insults

​Think of Tony Bennett and you'll probably picture the kindly older gentleman crooning "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" and any number of other pop standards, or perhaps the guy who upstaged Alec Baldwin as "Anthony Benedetto" (his birth name) on a 2006 episode of Saturday Night Live, turnin ... More >>

ACL Fest Releases Schedule; Adds Black Lips, Silversun Pickups

black-lips.com via FlickrBrand-new ACL 2010 adds The Black Lips​The Austin City Limits Music Festival released the schedule grid for this year's gathering in Zilker Park Oct. 7-9. The festival also added several bands, including Atlanta garage-punks (and recovering exhibitionists) the Black Li ... More >>

Toy Story

How Transformers led to underground MC Mic Skills's rap career.

Sammus: The Femme Rapper/Producer's Top Five Remix Tracks

The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place - lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good - so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email it to sheaserrano@gmai ... More >>

Friday Night: "Jai Ho: The Journey Home" At Toyota Center

Photos by Marco Torres​A.R. Rahman "Jai Ho: The Journey Home" Toyota Center September 17, 2010 The Indian film-score composer A.R. Rahman, now widely known as the winner of two 2009 Academy Awards for Slumdog Millionaire, is the master of the movie-musical genre known as Bollywood. He is also ... More >>

ACL Day 2 Recap: M.I.A., Gogol Bordello, Deadmau5, Mouse Masks

credReturn of the Bamboo Banger: M.I.A.​Aftermath was eager to catch Gogol Bordello, only because our companion had missed their last Houston show at Meridian in 2008. We were convinced he'd get a kick out of them so we dragged him over to the AMD stage early in order to get a good view. One ... More >>

Capital Steps

Dispatches from ACL 2010

Top 10 Pop Songs With Children's Choruses

​On the way home from ACL this past Sunday night, Craig's Hlist had his Rdio account humming over the speakers playing one of his playlists (phlayhlist?), but not the sad-bastard mix we rocks whenever we are at work alone. It was the life-spanning one we have been making since we got on the mu ... More >>

Top Five Musician/Journalist Feuds

"Like, what is your problem?" Jason Nocito​Hell hath no fury like a spurned musician, but a critic's vengeance doesn't lag far behind. This week in the Houston Press, you can read an interview Noah Bailey at our sister paper the Dallas Observer did with Dr. Dog's Scott McMicken, who says he h ... More >>

10 Music Stories We Wish We'd Ignored This Year

​We in the alternative media - not necessarily the Houston Press and/or Rocks Off, not all the time - enjoy calling out our mainstream brethren. Whether it's ten books that didn't make The New York Times' "Best of 2010" list, or "10 Stories Our Print Version Accidentally Overlooked," us "under ... More >>

Pre-Bieber, Five Memorable Musician Interview Gaffes

​Remember in the days before "Bi-winning," when Twitter was all up in arms about Justin Beiber's interview with Rolling Stone? Was it really a surprise that some of the pop star's opinions, as told to the magazine last month, would be half-baked and maybe even a bit ignorant? Put aside for a ... More >>

Wild Flag, Wu-Tang, Erykah Badu and Yelawolf: Liveblogging the Village Voice Media SXSW Showdown

Marc BrubakerTimes New Viking gets the party started.​The doors didn't open exactly at 5 p.m., but that didn't stop the Austin Music Hall from filling quickly just before Austin-by-way-of-Houston locals Ume took the stage, the first band in the all-night line-up for the 2011 Village Voice and ... More >>

Sony May Reunite Destiny's Child If Beyonce Album Stiffs

Daniel KramerBeyonce at Toyota Center, July 2009​Following the lackluster response to Beyonce's 4, which leaked onto the Internet wholesale earlier this month, the singer's label has gone into crisis mode and is even considering another Destiny's Child reunion, The New York Post reported today ... More >>

Lord of the Hipsters

Whatever mashup-pioneering DJ Diplo decides to spin, it's a guaranteed party.

Five Musical MILFs Who Rocked Pregnancy

Beyoncé's ever-changing baby bump.​In the world of prominent celebrities, it's headlining news even if that famous person sneezes. So in when Houston's own Beyoncé announced her pregnancy at the 2011 VMA's in August, the media and fans went into a frenzy of reactions. Some were elated, some ... More >>

Pop Rocks: Finally, The Super Bowl Is Safe For PG-13 Rated Entertainment Again

The boob that launched a thousand obscenity complaints...​Over seven years after the FCC went into a tizzy over Janet Jackson exposing her breast during the 2004 Super Bowl (making a D-cup out of an A-cup, perhaps), a federal appeals court upheld its finding yesterday that the commission acted ... More >>

Bedtime Stories: The Naughtiest Madonna Videos Ever (Semi-NSFW)

That old special feeling...​This weekend, the grand dame of American pop music, Madonna, will grace the halftime stage at Super Bowl XLVI. This is a major improvement from last year's more-inhuman-than-human Black Eyed Peas performance, which tested the resolve our country, and even the world. ... More >>

Five Prop Bets For Music Lovers This Super Sunday

Photo by Allison Wagoner​It's time to be honest with each other for a moment: some people out there don't care about the Super Bowl. They may not care about sports at all. In fact, they might hate sports completely. Listen close and you can hear them roll their eyes at yet another blog post a ... More >>

Super Bowl XLVI: M.I.A.'s Bird Is The Word

That's correct, M.I.A.: the Giants are #1.​On it's best day, you can say the musical portion of the Super Bowl ranks somewhere below the fifth time you see the latest Go Daddy commercial and somewhere above that pre-game segment featuring an offensive lineman and his mother. I mean, who really ... More >>

Five Great Middle Finger Moments In Music History

Photo via Idolator​Monday morning, the Internet was awash in consternation and jpegs after M.I.A. flashed her middle finger during Madonna's Super Bowl halftime performance Sunday, meaning Janet Jackson is finally off the hook after all these years. To be honest, Rocks Off watched the entire h ... More >>

Killin' Them Softly: Celebrating 75 Years Of Roberta Flack

​To strike someone with the "underrated greatness" term always carries a bit of weight behind it. You know, the quick snap question of "do they deserve it" comes to mind. Sorry, in the class of underrated greatness, diva subsection, lives Roberta Flack who at the platinum age of 75 still take ... More >>