Our annual DJ series Mission: Beat returns featuring sets from Laurel Halo, Btsunami, Pat Blin, and Shea Delany.
Makaya McCraven is a beat scientist. The cutting edge drummer, producer, and sonic collagist is a multi-talented force whose inventive process & intuitive style of performance defy categorization. Called “a sound visionary”…
Becca Mancari is rewriting the rules. Born in Staten Island, New York, to an Italian-Irish preacher and a Puerto Rican mother, Mancari has lived a life of transition – from working as a janitor in South Florida, to writing songs with train hoppers in the Blue Ridge Mountains…
Chef PZ (Sepehr Sadrzadeh) and The Cubist (Tyrell Thornton) first collaborated in 2015, when Sadrzadeh was the executive chef of Pullman Bar & Diner and Thornton was producing music in the Hall Mall in downtown Iowa City. The two artists quickly formed an alliance after their first studio session together, which created the format for their “off the cuff” freestyle studio sessions…
After kicking around in other bands for years, Amanda Crosby, Sarah Mannix, and Rachel Sauter formed Younger in 2014 as an experiment. What could happen if songs were written as a complete collaboration? Their original aim was to geek out about weird song structures and challenging harmonic intervals without being a real band at all. Inspired by their excellent public school music education and deep love of art rock…
After studying avant-garde jazz and improvisation with jazz legend Anthony Braxton, Nat Baldwin started writing songs featuring double bass and vocals. Nat’s AUTONOMIA I: Body Without Organs represents a departure from the rich body of solo work he’s amassed as a songwriter and core member of the band Dirty Projectors. It instead marks the return […]
Pulsing is the Quad Cities’ video game rock band! Pulsing uses guitar, drums, and gameboy to create energetic 8-bit tunes that will keep people dancing, laughing, and feeling like kids again. Hyper melodies, frantic beats and happy bleeps bring back memories of playing videogames at a friend’s house on a Saturday night. Pulsing is about […]
Katherine Paul is Black Belt Eagle Scout. Released in September of 2018, Mother of My Children was the debut album from Black Belt Eagle Scout, the recording project of Katherine Paul. Heralded as a favorite new musician of 2018 by the likes of NPR Music, Stereogum, and Paste, the album was also named as a […]
Iowa City-based producer/vocalist Jim Swim crafts wavy and warm hip-hop that snaps with substance. Swim’s songs unwind like good conversation, moving from the everyday to the abstract, the personal to the universal, with honesty and ease. A lyricist first and foremost, Swim doesn’t shy away from depth, but he also makes bops. There’s a sense […]
The Necks are one of the great cult bands of Australia. Chris Abrahams (piano), Tony Buck (drums), and Lloyd Swanton (bass) conjure a chemistry together that defies description in orthodox terms. Featuring lengthy pieces which slowly unravel in the most mesmerizing fashion, frequently underpinned by an insistent deep groove, the eighteen albums by The Necks […]