When Portlandia debuted exactly one year ago with its shoestring budget and home on a specialty cable channel, the show's quick rise to cult-status favorite was pretty predictable. The bigger surprise - evident during the sold out Chicago stop of "Portlandia: The Tour" Wednesday night - was how adeptly the show walks the sometimes-blurry line between satire and cynicism. more ›

Proceeds from the Jan. 4 kickoff event go to the Casa Catalina Basic Human Needs Center in Back of the Yards. more ›

Home is where the heart is so they say, and being that many of us grew up here in the big city, or have transplanted and now consider it home, we stay on our own turf when the holiday season rolls around. Luckily for us there are a merry myriad of magnificent musical events taking place over the holiday weekend. Take a gander at some of our favorites and spread the holiday cheer accordingly: more ›

This year, Tomorrow Never Knows is branching out to the Hideout, and to comedy. more ›

For their second cookbook, Soup and Bread is throwing a balls-out party. With soup and bread. more ›

The Onion's A.V. Club successfully threw its hat into the ever growing ring of publication sponsored music festivals last weekend. They took over the street outside The Hideout and filled it with food trucks, beer, fundraising efforts for Rock For Kids and a strong two-day bill of musical acts. more ›

Tokyo Police Club is remembering the first decade of the Aughts by recording a new cover daily to correspond with each year. Today's cover lines up with 2008 as the band tackles M83's sublime "Kim & Jessie" and they do it up right. It's slightly sloppy but that meshes well to offset the pristine perfection of the source material and allows Tokyo Police Club to stake their own claim to the tune. more ›

Hideout may be just the place for you on Sunday night when the Chicago Short Film Brigade and Logan Square International Film Series present the Bike-In Movie Theater.more ›

Lizz talks to the Fiery Furnaces' frontwoman in advance of her show tonight at the Hideout. more ›

Last night at Hideout, were treated to a little Swedish surprise: Scandinavian heartthrob singer Peter Morén of Peter Bjorn and John popped in to play a short, 25-minute secret set. more ›

Much as we love us some Neko Case, the (not-so) secret weapon in her touring band and on her albums is the incomparable Kelly Hogan. What is the secret behind former Hideout bartenders that makes them able to sing the White Pages and make it sound beautiful? more ›

It's looking to be a heavy week for literary events in Chicago. So strap on your reading glasses and peruse the events on our radar that we think it worthwhile to check out. more ›

We mentioned this weekend's Roommate show at Hideout already, but neglected to point out that Chicago's SHAPERS are also on the bill. The make-up of the band is shady (not really, they basically grew out of the now defunct May Or May Not with a decidedly more experimental bent) and their intentions remain a mystery (or not since they seem to really just enjoy playing with perceptions of musical genres as they poke into dark and not so dark corners of exploration). more ›

Back in June, a group of musicians, artists and puppeteers staged a shadow puppet show at Three Brothers Arts Garage. The centerpiece of the show was a mesmerizing performance of "Jabberwocky," Lewis Carrol's classic poem of nonsense that added such words as "galumphing," "uffish" and "chortle" to the English language canon. The complete spectacle was brought to life in arresting visuals and the haunting narration of Sally Timms. more ›

Patrick Somerville’s momentum has been gaining momentum. His first book of stories, Trouble, was published in 2006 and Time Out Chicago named it the year’s Best Book by a Chicago Author. He then published The Cradle, his first novel, in 2009 and was also awarded the 2009 21st Century Award, given annually by the Chicago Public Library. And now, he’s back again with another collection of stories. The Universe in Miniature in Miniature is about a guy who is given a supernatural helmet that allows him to see inside the minds and souls of people around him. The short stories in the book are their stories. The book release for The Universe in Miniature in Miniature is Thursday night at The Hideout, so we chatted with Somerville about the book and his writing. Stay tuned for more on the book tomorrow. And if you’d like to learn more about the author, check out this interview with Bookslut. more ›

Chicago is seeing two upcoming shows from indie-rock guitar wizards. First up is Marnie Stern, who is touring behind her current, self-titled release. Second is Ponytail guitarist Dustin Wong, who hits the Hideout on Sunday in support of Infinite Love, his latest solo album. more ›

While we've been digging the amazing cover done by JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound, the souped-up soul version of WIlco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", we're even more excited by the fresh material the Chicago soul group has coming down the pike. more ›

Yet again, another weekend full of solid choices to get your dance on. It's hard keeping up with you, Chicago. Sharam's spinning electro at Spy Bar on Friday, Toy Selectah is hitting Smart Bar with solid tech house on Saturday, plus we've got some other good choices scattered throughout the city. For this week, though, we're gonna keep it local with no frills and go with monthly dance party Life During Wartime at Hideout for this week's Weekend Dance Party. more ›

Running down a few of the great literary events going on around the city over the next couple of days. Check out more inside. more ›

Veggie Bingo, the popular Wednesday event at Hideout where a CSA of produce from a local farm is awarded as a prize for playing bingo, among other prizes, has canceled its September events. more ›

This weekend Mad Decent is curating the yearly Hideout Block Party. Having a dance-o-rama for the yearly block party might appear to be a bit of a step sideways for the Hideout but it makes total sense as the little club tucked away in an industrial wasteland has been making quite a name for itself through it’s DJ sets. The concert schedule is still dominated by rock and country acts, but the late nights belong to the dancers. more ›

Fire crews are on the scene of an explosion at Sipi Metal Corporation, located in the 1700 block of N. Elston (more likely recognized by readers of this site as just a block away from The Hideout). Teachers at Creative Scholars preschool are considering an evacuation of its children due to the incident. Elston has apparently been blocked off around the building. More as word comes in. more ›

We noticed yesterday that Hideout hadn't announced its yearly block party yet. In previous years it's been slowly scaling down since its peak as the touch point for the Touch & Go curated weekend, with last year's installment acting as Bloodshot Records' anniversary party. We reached out to the club and were told that yes, indeed, they were having a block party this year on August 21 and that details would be available shortly. more ›

Future Islands’ star has been steadily on the rise following a positive reception to the recently released “In Evening Air,” coupled with the active blog-fueled chatter surrounding the band’s genre bending, blending and self-classification as “post-wave.” Rising stars they may be, the band exploded into something positively meteoric for Saturday night’s show at the Hideout, handily convincing us that they are, in fact, deserving of the hype. more ›

The three-day weekend probably has you reeling with possibilities so allow us to try and narrow down your options for you and send you off to see Coupleskate at The Hideout tonight. The quartet pens the sirt of indie pop that would fit perfectly on any circa '97 college radio playlist, owing more than a little debt to the Teenbeat Records sound. The girls have been on hiatus for a while so we're happy to see they've taken the dropcloth from over the drums, dusted off the tubes in their amps, and started gargling with whiskey and honey to get those voices into shape. more ›

Let’s be honest, another hip and edgy, term defining a genre of music is exactly what we don’t need. Post-wave? Really? We have post-punk, post-rock, new wave, no wave, low-fi, glo-fi and now post-wave? Lucky for us while it appears Future Islands has decided to define their sound using such a general -- and some may say pretentious -- term are really just a bunch of synth-pop music geeks from North Carolina. The band’s recent migration to Baltimore made them another appendage of the avant-garde Wham City Collective started by the ultimate music geek and prankster, Dan Deacon. Wham City prides itself on making music that rides a fine line between low-fi brilliance and sheer comedic, psychedelic fused pop. more ›

We gushed about Pontiak's backwoods chest-crushing psychedelia in the past, and the trio of siblings doesn't stray too far from that course on their recently released album Living. There is a newly injected sense of Southern boogie coursing through the songs that cause hips to sway along with the heads already attuned to their earlier swamp-deep sonic constructs, and that is a welcome addition. more ›

We don't quite know how to classify Mi Ami's music, but a good place to start would be to call it demento dance. On "Latin Lover" Damon Palermo's drums and Jacob Long's bass lock together to urge your torso forward while kicking your legs out from under you. Over it singer / guitarist Daniel Martin-McCormick lays chicken scratch sandpaper guitar riffs and tops of the rhythmic stew with his strained and strangely androgynous singing. more ›

Columbia College, 916 South Wabash Building, room 150, 7 p.m., free more ›

I had such a great time participating in Hideout's Soup and Bread series last year that when Martha Bayne was putting together this year's schedule I immediately signed on for a return engagement. This time around, however, I'm bringing reinforcements. more ›