MUSIC: If you aren't at your local hometown bar this Thanksgiving-eve, drinking with old high school buddies -- we suggest a sonic alternative. Tonight The Hold Steady and Art Brut do their best at making Terminal 5 feel a little bit cozier this holiday season. Buy tickets here. 7:30pm // Terminal 5 [610 W 56th St] // $30 MUSIC MOVIES: If you're sick and tired of the bands playing around town, go check out two......

Project Jenny/Project Jan are: Sammy Rubin (Programmer/keyboardist) and Jeremy Haines (Vocalist) At the last Movable Hype, we genuinely loved all the bands that played. Opener Project Jenny/Project Jan was no exception. It's easy to make a band based around slightly tongue in cheek joke songs, but to combine that with the talent and bravado of these two is not so common. What stood out was how impressive the actual music came across. Rubin's electronic......

Siren is always a half-empty/half-full type situation. On one hand, you're getting top tier indie bands playing in New York City for free. On the other, you know going into it the sound will be lousy, the crowds unbearable and the heat incapacitating. Depending on how you play your expectations, it can be a great day or a miserable one. This was my 4th Siren, and while always prepared for the worst, it turned out......

We survived Siren for another year. Though we did spot a...shipwreck? The weather wasn't as hot as expected, the crowds seemed a bit thin, at least during the first half of the show, and the sound was, as usual, not too great (so much bass!). But overall we had a great time at Siren this year (though nothing will ever really beat the year we met the Gibbard). There aren't that many videos on YouTube......

Frog Eyes and Sunset Rubdown (despite having border problems) will be taking over Mercury Lounge two nights this week. Sunset Rubdown is Wolf Parade keyboardist Spencer Krug's side project, and he produced a beautiful album this year entitled, Shut Up I Am Dreaming. It got an 8.6 on Pitchfork, just a few points below last years Wolf Parade rating. Anyway, point is...it's good. If you go to the show tonight you can catch Beirut as......

With KEXP in town there's a lot more music than usual. Check out their in studio shows online while you're at work this week. Off the airwaves there's a lot to see, hear and enjoy as well. Tonight and tomorrow night, Angels and Airwaves and I Am The Avalanche play Bowery Ballroom. If you walk by the venue to see a cluster of pierced tweens waiting to get in, it may help to know that......

For a long time we didn't listen to Wolfmother just because they had "wolf" in their name. We were sick it. Wolfmother, Wolf Eyes, We Are Wolves..."how could any of them be better than Wolf Parade?" we thought. Then in a warehouse in Austin this March, sometime around 3am, we were sipping on our nth PBR and who came on stage? It was that nice gentleman with the crazy hair that we rode the hotel......

There is a band playing Northsix tonight called Duran Duran Duran. We don't know anything about them, but based on their name alone we'll suggest checking them out. If you want to go with the safe bet though, head to the Delancey where Pela starts off their April residencey tonight. Art Brut is all sold out, both Tuesday and Wednesday, so if you didn't get tickets (or if you just don't like them - it's......

We're not just talking about the outsiders who come in to the city via public transportation every weekend (we do love that painting of the MetroNorth trains though!) The Outsider Art Fair is this weekend - and of course taking place in our crazy little city, it's dedicated to catering to the painfully "so hip they're unhip" art world. While the Fair runs Friday through Sunday, there is a preview starting tonight, as part of......

"When Mawangu Mingiedi, 72, a musician and truck driver from Kinshasa in Congo, built a sound system for his street band, Konono No. 1, years ago, he wasn't aiming for sonic innovation." [NY TIMES] All the way from Africa, Konono No. 1 make their NYC debut at Joe's Pub on Wednesday. The dance party continues Thursday at S.O.B.'s with an early and late show. Joe's Pub is way sold out, but tickets for the......

A few times a week, Gothamist publishes music reviews by our contributor Jeff Baum. The opinions below belong entirely to the author. The Test Icicles are far from your usual Brit-hype product. They are not your new favorite band, as Amy Philips at Pitchfork so brazenly declared a few weeks ago (see the last item). They aren't cute and cheeky and they don't play songs with instantly recognizable hooks or insightful lyrics. They're simply a......

The Art Brut hype started around June when the critics universally praised the UK rock band's debut album. Tiny Mix Tapes wrote, "I feel strange writing this review considering how big Art Brut will become over the next few months. No American dates are scheduled thus far, but they’re doing the UK festival circuit this summer and are poised to win just about everyone over." Eventually American dates were scheduled, and as usual NYC......