It may be too cold for 70's gym shorts (a la the Pitchfork Music Festival), but you can bet that tonight's Vampire Weekend show at Schubas will double as a winter fashion show/breeding ground for Chicago's hipsterati. The NYC quartet's kinda creepy, kinda awesome take on indie rock "world music" has earned them plenty of blog love, packed houses, and a contract for their first full length release with powerhouse XL Recordings. more ›

The Empty Bottle just announced that Black Kids will be playing the club's New Year's Eve show this year. The band walked away from this year's CMJ as the clear winner of the "Most Breathlessly Admired by Bloggers and Mainstream Press Alike." However there's still no word on whether Black Kids will be this year's Arcade Fire (massive!), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (petered out!), or Voxtrot (fizzled before anyone actually saw them!). more ›

What Made Milwaukee Famous is the quirky kid with the dorky name in the back of the class whom no one notices until he gets his braces off, gets into MIT, and scores a summer internship with NASA. Kicking around the Austin scene since 2004, WMMF has put together a kind of indie-rock dream team: management through Fourth Floor, a division of powerhouse promoters Capitol Sports & Entertainment (Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits), booking through Monterey... more ›

We’re busy people, and you probably are, too. So if you’re not getting out to the clubs to see enough live music, this edition of Friday Afternoon Diversion is for you. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah haters will want to skip this clip of the band's recent appearance at the Vic. Turn down your speakers a little for this Wolf Parade clip from Metro back in August, when they peformed a new song called... more ›

We hope you’ve been saving your money, because the shows we’re looking at this week are a bit pricey. We’ll be scanning Craigslist for someone looking to offload their tix cheap. Why, oh why, isn’t there a Hot Tix for shows? Now removed from the avalanche of hype that surrounded their last shows here, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah returns to town for a pair of shows at The Vic. Expect fewer people who “heard... more ›

The first time Chicagoist saw The National it was at The Pontiac Café. The ratio of polite humility in contrast with blinding talent was incredible at the time and the group has remained a favorite of ours when we feel one of those torturous dark moods laced with betrayal coming on. As the years have passed the group has moved steadily up the food chain into more respectable venues as the independent press around them has grown into a quiet roar. The band plays dark melancholic music marked by slow burns and rising crescendos that are quite moving. For this tour – one preceded by even more critical praise for their new disc Alligator and that hits Schuba's tonight -- they decided to bring some fellow Brooklynites along to open for them in hopes of giving their pals more exposure. more ›

Do you talk about bands your friends have never heard of? Do you often rate the things around you in tenths of a point? Do you dislike money? Then perhaps an internship at Pitchfork is for you! more ›