Tim Hecker is a music critic’s wet dream. Every dripping piece of poetic hyperbole that can be lavished upon Hecker’s latest offering will be. When the New York Times characterizes your work as “foreboding, abstract pieces in which static and sub-bass rumbles open up around slow moving notes and chords, like fissures in the earth [...]

Pieta Brown is many things. She is a beautiful woman with mesmerizing lips from nowhere, Iowa. She is Greg Brown’s daughter, Bo Ramsey’s wife, a rising singer-songwriter, and a new member of Red House Records.
BBC called her a Folk Goddess, a title she certainly deserves — she is comfortable with herself and familiar with [...]

The Hood Internet are a 2000s curiosity, something that could only have gained “mainstream” recognition in that decade of piracy, mash-ups, and instant aquirability (matched with equal disposability). If you don’t know: the Hood Internet are a couple dudes from Chicago who have brains that play musical Tetris. They fit songs together so seamlessly, and [...]

The Daredevil Christopher Wright will likely be one of those surprising new finds for many Mission Creek attendees this year. Driving but a handful of hours to Iowa City from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the band has an enlightened sound without the frills of familiarity.
Perhaps that last statement is false. The Daredevil Christopher Wright [...]

In an ongoing series previewing 2010 Mission Creek performing artists, we turn to Brian Johannessen for a personal take on Headlights. I graduated from high school in 2006, while the vast majority of my high school friends graduated in 2005. Being from the western Chicago suburbs, many of my friends and classmates funneled into either [...]

In a continuing series, we’re previewing artists that will be performing in Iowa City during the 5th annual Mission Creek Festival, taking place March 30-April 3. Today, Brittany reports on the Cave Singers. As Todd described in my original post, I recently moved back to Iowa City from Seattle, where I worked in the coolest [...]

In a continuing series, we’re previewing artists that will be performing in Iowa City during the 5th annual Mission Creek Festival, taking place March 30-April 3. We love us some Anni Rossi. The Chicago songwriter, originally from Minneapolis, created a debut album (Rockwell, 2009) full of whimsical intrigue. Rossi, who plays viola, bears more than [...]

Today, to help you celebrate this Super-est of Sundays, we begin our exhaustive preview of the imminent Mission Creek Festival. Check the blog every Sunday and Wednesday (and more often as March 30th draws closer) for artist bios and personal essays about the stunning cache of talent we have slated for the 5th installment of [...]