Kimya Dawson is best known for her collaboration with Adam Green in The Moldy Peaches, an oft-cited instigator of the anti-folk scene, which seeks to extract the self-seriousness of 60s folk while keeping the earnestness and emotion. Since the duo went on hiatus in 2004, Dawson has been busy cutting intimate, lo-fi solo albums, touring and raising a family (pictured). Some of her songs will be familiar to those who’ve seen the indie sleeper hit......

With many people trying to keep up that perennial New Year's resolution to lose weight/work out/get in shape, they're hitting their computers (or CDs!) to create the perfect soundtracks for their workouts. The other day, the NY Times chatted with a number of experts - physicians, life coaches, workout music producers - to figure out what makes a good work out song. Of course, different music rhythms work better for different levels of activity.......

Salt & Samovar are a Brooklyn band that sound more like they're just visiting here from Upstate...or a Coen brothers film. Their live shows are described as "pentecostal revival-like performances that evoke the musical and spiritual heirlooms of a cherished American past." A simpler and simply transporting sound that'll have you pining for the past. Come check out their revival-rock this Friday at Mercury Lounge -- get your tickets here. Where did your band name......

A poignant week for LAist as they lose their trusted and amazing editor Tony Pierce to the LA Times, but what a blast his last week was. He shared his 25 Favorite CDs of 2007 and wrote a great review of just a good movie, No Country For Old Men. At UCLA, thousands of students celebrated the end of their quarter by running around campus in their undies (lots of photos in a two-part......

1) Features about the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes, in anticipation of this year's Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The NY Times looks how performances from the 1930s and 1940s inspired this year's show while Newsday notes on the technology being used. Both focus on the amazing synchronized dancing. 2) Starbucks has decorated its stores with Christmas decorations and has started to use Christmas/holiday themed cups. Cajun Boy in the City also counts Josh Grobin......

Jonny Greenwood was named the BBC’s composer-in-residence in 2004; during this time he debuted "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", a twenty-minute work for string orchestra inspired, in part, by the phenomenon of white noise and Penderecki’s "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima". Tickets are on sale for a two-night performance of the composition at The Church of St. John the Apostle in January as part of The Wordless Music Series; works by John Adams and Gavin Bryars......

Ira Glass is the brains, heart and larynx behind the wildly popular program This American Life; each show employs a theatrical, multiple-act structure to carve strange slices of life out of a unique thematic pie. The show began almost 12 years ago as a Chicago public radio program but has since mutated into an Emmy-nominated TV series on Showtime – a leap that prompted Glass and his team to relocate to New York City, bringing......

Earlier this year bootleg DVDs became even more illegal in New York, and now there's a new way "the man" is cracking down on the bootleggers: with puppies! Metro reports that: “Dogs are used to sniff out bodies, bombs and drugs,” said Malcolm, who’s now the chief of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America. “We just needed to see if they could be trained to smell the unique chemicals in DVDs.......

Earlier this month ASCAP was making headlines with their lawsuit against some of New York's (and the nation's) venues. To clear things up on how the company works, and why they do what they do, we asked the senior vice president of licensing and the director of general licensing some questions. How do you find out if bars/clubs/restaurants/venues are playing ASCAP bands without a license? First we know which establishments are licensed. ASCAP does not......

You may know Peter Yarrow best by his first name. He was part of the '60s folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary. The group launched their career at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village in 1961 and went strong for nine years. Tonight Peter Yarrow is at Barnes & Noble (Lincoln Center) at 6pm for a performance as well as to sign copies of Puff, the Magic Dragon - which he's turned into a children's......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Secrets of New York: New York's Firsts: Pioneering Moments (Sunday, 8:30 p.m., WNYE 25) Kelly Choi takes a look at some New York firsts. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Monday, 7:30 p.m. HBO) To commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the first bombing of civilian targets with nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, HBO airs this look at the two deadly attacks through archival footage and......

Back in 2005, the MTA imposed new rules and fines for a variety of subway offenses, such as a $50 fine for putting your foot on a seat or platform bench. Or a $100 fine for wearing skates. One of the rules included was a $75 fine for walking or riding between subway cars because the MTA wanted to make sure riders weren't exposed to dangers of riding/walking between cars, emergencies or smelly people......

The Brazilian street artists have landed, and we're tracking their every move as they get ready to launch Ruas de Sao Paulo: A Survey of Brazilian Street Art at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery this Saturday. Here’s an account of the movements of Boleta, Fefê, Highraff, Kboco, Onesto, Speto, Titi Freak, and Zezão. Feb. 14 – The Installation: The artists installed their work at the gallery. Flavio Samelo captured some moments of the installation at his......

Happy Holidays! Chances are, you're reading this the day after Christmas, back at your day job after all-too-short a holiday, and the last thing you want from us is stuff about the holidays. But that's just too bad. Because, see, here in the Ist-A-Verse, we do things ahead of time. It might be December 26 for you, but that's what you get for not checking your Favorite Local Blog on Christmas Eve. Austinist is......

- New York State is trying to cut down on pirated CDs by reducing the number of discs that constitute a felony from 1,000 to 100. - We feel ill just thinking about eating 26 cannolis in an hour! - The truth comes out about the first immigrant to to be processed on Ellis Island. - On the same morning that Karen Ann Allende was supposed to meet with the cops about her ex-husband,......

Jim Gaffigan has released six CDs, has both half hour and hour long Comedy Central specials, and has appeared in numerous television shows and films. What sort of place is Chesterton, Indiana? I actually grew up in Dune Acres, which is a suburb of Chesterton. Chesterton is the sort of place that didn't have a McDonalds until I was in high school. It was a very boring place. We would ride our bikes six......

Bradford Reed is the inventor and probably the only player of the pencilina, an instrument that he describes as "an electric ten-stringed collision of the hammer dulcimer, slide guitar, koto and fretless bass with six pickups of varied types" and looks something like a surf board caught up in a fishing net. He has played with King Missile, the Blue Man Group band and has composed for film and animation. He has appeared on MTV,......

LAist has so much fun this week! They go to E3, where they overhear the timeless remark "Man, this is where nerdy girls get laid." Is that a promise? They also give us this week's best CDs and make us realize that LA is the best place to use Zillow. Ah, Houstonist. They're biking to work, that is, if they can figure out how to get there. That's right, Mapquest says "Houston had the......

The last vestige of 1970s SoHo is about to disappear: Rocks in Your Head, the record store on Prince Street, is closing after twenty-eight years of business. Manhattan's loss is Brooklyn's gain: the store is moving to North 5th and Roebling Street in Williamsburg. The Villager reports: “I’ve been losing money for the last few years, and the rents being what they are, business hasn’t been good,” Barouch said on Monday. “The name of......

The September 11th emergency response tapes were released today downtown. For $13, any accredited reporter could pick up a set of CDs containing 130 edited messages. The recordings were excerpted, because the city decided that they didn't want to release recordings of any voices they couldn't identify. More than twenty callers were identified, and those two-way conversations were also released this week. All of the city newspapers are busy preparing transcripts, which we'll link......

Last night we headed up to Washington Square Park to catch the beginning of Phil Klein's Unsilent Night procession. It was amazing-- a few hundred people showed up with boomboxes, and more were given out-- then everyone switched on the tapes and CDs at the same time and started to march. The ambient noise was beautiful but really hard to describe, so a bunch of us recorded some video: Gothamist's 1 minute video at......

Gothamist can't imagine that being a high school basketball coach is all that easy, but does it mean you should be spanking your 16 year old players? By laying them across the lap? Oof. Drew Sanders pleaded guilty yesterday to "forcible touching" and will be placed on the sex offender list. Sanders lives in New Sprinville, Staten Island, and was accused to making the players strip off their shorts and underwear to be spanked either......

You'd think that being a tourist from Baltimore, you'd be able to get away from shootings, but on Saturday, a woman visiting from Charm City was shot during a botched robbery. A group of men were trying to steal DVDs and CDs from a vendor at 1204 Broadway, around 29th Street, a building full of vendors; Newsday reported that two men argued with the vendor about the movie selection, in order to distract him......

After reports of a raid, it turns out that employees at the Mondo Kim's on St. Mark's were arrested for making illegal CDs and DVDs in a back room. The police took "hundreds" of illegally made discs during the afternoon raid, and charging five workers with trademark counterfeiting. The NY Post says that some "record-industry executives joined cops outside the store and helped point out what police said were the 'mixes of a variety of......

Carrie McLaren,
Editor, Stay Free!...

Bobby Short, the irrepressible entertainer who sang and played the standards at the Cafe Carlyle, Arts > Music > Bobby Short, Icon of Manhattan Song and Style, Dies at 80" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/arts/music/21cnd-short.html?hp&ex=1111467600&en=49eab08251a9d060&ei=5094&partner=homepage">died at age 80 yesterday from leukemia. While Gothamist never got to see him perform in person, we always equated him with a beautiful, serene and, yes, very Woody Allen version of New York where people would just sit and listen to wonderful renditions of......

Darci Ratliff, Kittenpants ...

Sara Dobbs, Actress/Singing Waitress...

Ray Castoldi & Mark Lee, Music Directors At Madison Square Garden...

Kevin So, Musician...