Ah, Sesame Street - who among us doesn't long for the idyllic setting of Big Bird, Snuffalopogus, and Cookie Monster? Sometimes it's easy to slip away and imagine sitting on the stoop, sharing a juice box with your buds Bert, Ernie, and Grover after a hard day at the grind; even if rote memorization of multiplication tables are far in our rear view mirror. RCKNDY owner David Dennis, though, is living proof that Sesame Street......

Gregg Gillis studied biomedical engineering in college. He's also been playing music since he was a teenager. Combining that interest in breaking things apart and seeing how they work with his love of music, maybe it's not all that surprising that Girl Talk was the result. Girl Talk, as anyone who's been to a dance party in the past few years probably knows, is Gillis' stage name; he mixes samples of dozens of songs......

You don't need to be told who Sarah Vowell is anymore. You can immediately recognize her voice from years and years of This American Life appearances, her role in The Incredibles, and her road-trip ready audio books, especially Assassination Vacation. Maybe you find her nasal tone irritating, maybe you don't, but you know that she has an uncanny ability to nail down the unique contradictions to be found in the stories of Americans. You also......

Shudder to Think was one of only two bands to ever make the jump from local indie stalwart Dischord Records to a major label. In the mid-1990s they signed with Epic, and released Pony Express Record, still one of the finest pieces of art-damaged post-punk ever produced by a band in this town. It was an odd record for a major label, deeply complex, with shifting time signatures and singer Craig Wedren's distinctive falsetto taking......

It's safe to assume that when April Hill left the relative stability of her job at a Wall Street powerhouse firm to pursue her love of music, she couldn't have predicted that the country's financial sector would sink to shockingly low depths and her drastic career shift would seem like a smart move. But it has. Hill was recently selected by readers of the independent soul movement's standard bearing web site, SoulTracks, as co-recipient of......

For those of us who spent our childhood (or adulthood) glued to oldies radio stations, reliving a mythical golden era, Martha Reeves is more than just a household name. Her years with the Vandellas constituted one of the most successful runs during Motown's halcyon days in the mid-'60s. You can't flip on BIG 100.3 FM or go to a wedding these days without hearing "Dancing in the Street" or "(Love is like a) Heat Wave",......

Trouble the Water directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin Tia Lessin's path to her first feature documentary as a director started right here in Washington D.C., and carried her through production duties on some of the biggest profile documentary projects of the past decade, including three Michael Moore films (and his TV series), and Martin Scorcese's Dylan doc, No Direction Home. With her co-director Carl Deal, she has created one of the definitive documents......

Keyboardist and producer Lorenzo “Zo!” Ferguson may not be a household name but he's been quietly amassing a strong list of credentials, particularly in the world of hip-hop, in D.C. and beyond. He's contributed his talents to projects by Slum Village, Little Brother, and Kev Brown as well as released nine solo projects. A native of metropolitan Detroit and former collegiate baseball player, Zo! was an integral part of the music scene there until he......

As a recent MFA graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Sebastian Martorana has found a calling in stone. A sometimes over-looked medium, Martorana creates work that is often somber and other times light in emotion. This fresh face in the art world is still finding his way as a sculptor as his style progresses, but he's one to keep your eye on. You can see a sample of his work at Irvine......

Those of you who caught Motel's performance at Unbuckled 7 will no doubt remember the scorching axe work of John Lee. The self-described "Chinese-Irishman" is a fixture on the local music scene, playing with a multitude of bands around town. The 28-year old guitarist's journey began at the age of ten, when MTV hair bands like Warrant, Poison, and Motley Crüe inspired the young Lee. In high school, he became a fan of improvisational music......

When the biggest names in jazz come to D.C., they generally play Blues Alley or the Kennedy Center, choosing the sterility of Georgetown or the concert hall setting and thereby only increasing the separation between jazz and the community from which it originated. But back in jazz's heyday, if you wanted to hear the best jazz in the District, you had to go to U Street. Unfortunately, with the death of Dr. King and......

Neelam Patel ... and Neelam Patel Local actress/poet/dancer Neelam Patel’s first foray into the arts was through the world of dance, training and performing in the classical Indian styles of Bharatanatyam and Odissi. An injury forced her to take a hiatus from dancing and in order to feed her creative hunger, she began taking acting classes at Studio Theater, Dody Desanto's movement-based classes at The Center, as well as classes in New York. Patel......

It's clear from the moment they hit the stage that Pattern Is Movement want to become everybody's friends. The Philadelphia duo immediately invite everyone down to the stage, eliminating the awkward horseshoe shaped barrier that sometimes exists between band and audience and immediately plunge into their visceral yet symphonic tunes from last month's release, All Together, that include such disparate influences as Radiohead, math rockers like Deerhoof and Broadway musicals. Then they ask the audience......

When blogging about books in D.C., you tend to receive more press releases about political non-fiction than any other genre — so much that it starts to make you cynical. Most of the books read like armchair quarterbacking with an unhealthy dose of rhetoric. But Matthew Yglesias' book, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, manages to break out of that mold. Yglesias, an......

Last month was National Poetry Month. But for poets and proselytizers of poetry, the work never stops. Local poet and human dynamo Deborah Ager is the driving force behind 32 Poems, one of the most respected poetry journals in the country, one that has, in the short time its been around, attracted the attention and the work of such notable poets as Brigit Pegeen Kelly and former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Ager and 32......

Nathaniel Rich is unquestionably a big name in the young, New York-based literati scene. He went to Yale, is a senior editor at Paris Review, and carries the high expectations that come along with an impressive pedigree: his father is New York Times columnist Frank Rich, and his brother, Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich, famously inked a book deal with Random House before he even graduated from college. That's got to be a lot......

It's about that time, folks. Unbuckled 7, taking place this Thursday at DC9, is almost upon us, and we have an incredible bill featuring Muhsinah and Motel, two up-and-coming acts from the District who blur the lines between R&B, jazz, and hip-hop, as well as DJ v:shal kanwar, who is making waves in the city's electronica scene. Matt Grason, a bandleader, bassist, and composer, is the brains behind Motel, a jazz/hip-hop collective that pairs D.C.'s......

After having toured and recorded for over a decade, Robert Cray had a breakthrough with his 1986 release, Strong Persuader, which included his signature tune, "Smoking Gun". Though the subject of criticism in those early days because of his willingness to embrace contemporary production techniques and incorporate soul and rock elements into his version of the blues, Cray's recorded output over 30 plus years on the scene and continuous touring around the world prove that......

Kate Nash is tired. It's 9 p.m. and she's on her first major U.S. tour, knitting a scarf in her hotel room in Atlanta and occasionally yawning. And for good reason — it's been a busy couple of years. The 20 year-old English singer-songwriter wrote her first song and played her first live gig two years ago, then went from a spot in Lily Allen's Myspace Top 8 to the top of the English charts......

Toronto-based indie rockers Broken Social Scene have spawned some of today's most popular artists, including Feist, frontman Kevin Drew, and Metric's Emily Haines. One of these breakaway solo artists, Jason Collett, has been wooing fans on both sides of the border with his Dylan-esque vocals and folky, upbeat style. Cross-collaboration is practically the raison d'être being a Broken Social Scene bandmate, and Collett has had his fair share of guests on his early albums. But......

Ilana Trachtman is a television documentary producer by trade, but when presented with the story of Lior Liebling, she jumped into the choppier waters of independent filmmaking for the opportunity to make her debut feature. Lior is a young man with Down Syndrome, born to two Reconstructionist Jewish rabbis in Philadelphia. From an early age, he showed an unusually ardent interest in davening, the recitation of Jewish liturgical prayers, reciting the melodic prayers along with......

There are several layers to D.C.'s jazz scene, and each boasts its own set of musicians and strengths. National acts generally play at the larger halls, such as the Kennedy Center, or Blues Alley, if they choose to play a club date. As far as the local scene, the older musicians tend to play the same rooms, or places where the crowd is generally older as well, such as Jazz Night in Southwest. The most......

The Apes are not afraid to be loud. They are not afraid to be weird. They are not afraid to be abrasive. Should you be afraid of The Apes? Only if you need your music to be pretty and unobtrusive. At a time when it seems like a lot of bands want to be pleasant, and seem content to provide listeners with some vaguely edgy but ultimately bland background sounds, The Apes refuse to bleed......

Director Alex Gibney was recently nominated for his second consecutive Academy Award for his documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. Gibney has a history of scathing documentaries investigating corporate and government wrongdoing. His previous film (also nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar), Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, examined the shocking levels of corruption at the top of one of America's largest corporations that ultimately led to its downfall, and before that he adapted......

As the region continues to mourn the loss of Sean Taylor, some hopeful news has come to light in the search for his killer. Over the course of the week, officials have stated that they have "no reason" to believe that Taylor was anything more than the random victim of a botched burglary. However, in a story broken by the Miami Herald, a relative of Taylor's has announced that three men have now been detained......

After a fire gutted Eastern Market last April, the stretch of 7th Street SE adjacent to the market building was closed off on weekends to accommodate vendors, construction of the temporary East Hall and reconstruction of the South Hall. In an interview on WTOP (link to audiostream) last week, Ward 6 Council member Tommy Wells said he wants to keep 7th Street that way. The Hill picked up the story on Wednesday, and the Hilleast......

In the midst of trying to pull the Capitals out of last place, new coach Bruce Boudreau (2-1-1) has the challenge of finding enough playing time to let the young guys--and except for goalie Olaf Kolzig and a few free agents, they're all young guys--develop to their potential. Boudreau has already won top marks from embedded blogger Mike Vogel for letting Steve Eminger play his second game of the season. It will be interesting to......

The name may be unfamiliar, but the players behind Club Tiger Promotions are highly recognizable to any one who follows the D.C. music scene. Local artists Carol Bui and Jay Smith of Middle Distance Runner have started an all-ages venue, The Lab in Alexandria, which will both give under-age bands a place to play with their more seasoned peers and serve as an environment where, as Bui puts it, "kids feel totally comfortable and safe......

>> A solid small local show at the Red and the Black tonight, with the pleasing rock of The Charm Offensive, Cheverly Hot Noodle, and Baltimore's Lawnchair. $8, 9:30 p.m. >> It might be easy to dismiss Galactic as some frat boy-friendly jam band, but the funk and jazz-influenced quintet are practically royalty in their hometown of New Orleans, and tonight they'll perform with a series of well-respected MCs in support of their latest......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......