Based on sound alone, The Donkeys come off as pretty mature. The San Diego band plays a tender, starlit kind of Rock with a folky side that isn’t too sleepy, an AltCountry side that isn’t too twangy, a Blues side that isn’t too reverb-heavy and a Psych Rock side that isn’t too psychedelic.   

People about to change the world rarely look like people about to change the world. Take Gold Shoes — central casting didn’t assemble a new millennium Monkees to storm the music world with calculated precision. Gold Shoes is comprised of oddly yet perfectly meshed parts.   

Between bodies, equipment and ephemera, we’re packed tightly into The Ready Stance’s rehearsal space, possibly a converted coal cellar in the basement of guitarist/vocalist Wes Pence’s beautiful old Newport home.  

St. Vincent’s music is rife with contradictions. Take the first song on the outfit’s most recent album, last year’s Strange Mercy, which opens with this vague but provocative imagery, delivered by Annie Clark — the band’s 29-year-old creative ringleader.   

Sharon Van Etten began winning admirers with a pair of intimate, soul-bearing albums — 2009’s Because I Was In Love and 2010’s Epic — that explored love gone bad via a voice that was so big and expressive and sad-sounding that one feared for the woman from which it was emanating.   

Hanni El Khatib’s world is a dangerous place. The San Francisco-raised Los Angeles resident prefers to fill his musical terrain with outlaw characters and disastrous circumstances. At least three of Khatib’s releases, including last September’s full-length debut Will the Guns Come Out, have covers adorned with the mangled remnants of car wrecks.  

Thanks at least partially to our proximity to Appalachia, Greater Cincinnati has long had one of the finest Roots/Americana music scenes in the region. And the finest band from that impressive batch of artists right now is Magnolia Mountain, the band formed by Rock veteran and singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Mark Utley about five years ago.   

Some bands work for years for even the smallest scrap of national attention. For Cincinnati’s Bad Veins, that recognition came just after their second show in 2006 and has hardly abated in the subsequent six years. 
  

Sometimes the universe offers options you might never have otherwise imagined. Post Rock/Prog trio Pharaoh Loosey had already decided on the Mad Frog as the venue to celebrate the release of its debut CD, (h)wak formal, but when they ventured into the Corryville club’s catacombs, they found an ideal gig location.   

MusicNOW is aptly named. Founded and still nurtured by local native Bryce Dessner, the festival has consistently delivered an eclectic mix of “contemporary music” since springing to life in 2006.  

Oliver Ackermann has a Cincinnati story he enjoys sharing: Back when his band, A Place To Bury Strangers, played the Contemporary Arts Center during the 2010 MidPoint Music Festival, Ackermann’s Shoegaze/Noise Rock band wreaked chaos on the Sixth Street space’s electrical system.    

Rap MC Mark Aaron Glacken — aka Trademark Aaron — exudes quiet confidence, sharp focus and clear humility when discussing his music, life and goals.  

It’s been three years since my introduction to The Pinstripes, interviewing the band in the cramped rehearsal space they dubbed “The Good Stuff.” We discussed their love of Ska, Reggae, Dub, Soul and all points between and beyond, as well as their recordings to that point (Higher Ground and The Decay) while downing a few lightly chilled Pabst Blue Ribbons.   

Mike Oliva and I agree — Batman is cool, but The Joker is simply badass, with his dark sense of humor and creepy, wide smile. There’s something intriguing about his slick, sarcastic ways, and, hell, there’s no forgetting that horrific laugh.    

Five surf-rockers, two go-go dancers and a guy in a gorilla suit walk into a bar … That’s either the weirdest setup for a joke ever or it means that Cincinnati’s only Surf Rock band, Doctor Bombay and the Atomic Bachelor Pad, has arrived.