CD Review: hey willpower, Playing Both Miami and West Palm, Jan. 16 and 17

Scottish indie rock act Bis’ overtures were expressed rather neatly in its 1997 single “Tell It to the Kids”: “And now, coming through the airwaves into your home/Introducing the new transistor heroes.” San Francisco’s hey willpower lacks a similar expressive salutation, but it shares Bis’ affinity for trash culture, “kandy…

Yo Majesty to Try Miami Again, Jan. 20 at White Room

Little, it seems, can stop the improbable Tampa-based female party – rap juggernaut that is Yo Majesty. Not even the occasional almost-implosion of the group itself. Early last summer, some undefined internal meltdown sent home half of the group, the gospel – trained vocalist – turned – rapper Jewel B…

Smash Mouth

If a band exists solely to keep the party going — as California’s Smash Mouth clearly does — it makes perfect sense to catch that band in a tailgate-party setting before a huge football game. For this appearance, Smash Mouth takes a detour from its usual casino engagements to play…

Panic Bomber

Retro-videogame nerds, don’t get too excited. Friday’s guest act at The Vagabond has nothing to do with the mostly forgotten Nineties Nintendo game, but rather has appropriated the moniker, à la Crystal Castles, to broadcast a fascination with retro bleeps and bloops. The multicolor, eight-bit-style graphics festooning Panic Bomber’s various…

Love, She Wrote and Fallen from the Sky

Pat yourself on the back for attending Saturday’s early-evening, all-ages extravaganza at Revolution. It’s sponsored by Music Saves Lives, a California-based group that aims to “create opportunities for people to save lives with simple contributions, and to teach the facts about the effects of what they contribute to.” In other…

Combichrist

On Combichrist’s fourth and latest album, Today We Are All Demons, the band’s mastermind, Andy LaPlegua, effectively ups the ante on the tried-and-true answering-machine intro. It begins with a message from an unfortunate soul on his way to jail on a concealed-weapons charge. His girlfriend, meanwhile, is in the hospital…

PL0T Presents Tony Rohr Live at White Room This Friday

The peeps from PL0T were pretty busy in 2008 providing Fridays at the White Room with a classy selection of hot international techno acts. There were intimate performances by Lee Curtiss, Seth Troxler, and Bill Patrick, among others. And there was that sleek visual ambiance courtesy of the multimedia collective…

Hall & Oates to Play Mizner Park Amphitheatre on Feb. 20!

Credit it, partially at least, to the rise of smooth – jam – loving new indie-ish bands like Tigercity, the Yacht Rock series on YouTube, and the unexpected, fanatical boosterism from people like Travis McCoy of the Gym Class Heroes. The blue-eyed soul duo of Hall & Oates is experiencing…

Free MP3: New Mayday! Single — “On 2 Somth’n”

When New Times last checked in with Miami’s premier live hip-hop party, Mayday!, we were happy to see they had survived the wave of almost-hype in ’06/’07 and were back to the grind. (Nutshell refresher: The group recorded a track with Cee-Lo and DJ Craze called “Groundhog Day,” played a…

Sebastien Leger Hits Mansion This Saturday

This prolific French producer and DJ has been making waves in Europe for nearly a decade, and his original and eclectic forays into progressive-yet-funky tech house are gaining more and more worldwide praise. He’s remixed the likes of Daft Punk, Justin Timberlake, and Duran Duran, and delivered outstanding DJ performances…

Last Night: Billy Joel at Hard Rock Live

Sayre BermanBilly JoelFriday, January 2, 2009
Hard Rock Live, HollywoodBeing a piano man in a rock ‘n’ roll world can be a precarious proposition. Unless you have the cool of, say Jerry Lee Lewis, with the attitude and swagger to match, it’s tough not to look like a dweeb sitting stationary…