Four years ago, I sat, a fresh-faced prospective intern, across from WW’s notoriously cantankerous assistant Arts & Culture editor, Steffen Silvis, and told him I wanted to write about music. He said, “You and everyone else in this town.” So, you can imagine my surprise at eventually landing the music editor job in the fall [...]

Mike Dixon doesn’t cater to just your average nerd. He may be a high-school accounting and introductory computer teacher in nearby Olympia, Wash., but the bespectacled 29-year-old spends just as much time selling limited-edition vinyl to record geeks as he does teaching adolescents the ways of grosses and algorithms.
The founder of bedroom label PIAPTK—(very) short [...]

Christian rock is probably the furthest thing from most kids’ minds when considering ways to rebel. But Greg Glover—host of KRNK’s Sunday night program, the Bottom Forty, and founder of local label Arena Rock Recording Company—was originally attracted to an album by “the father of Christian rock” with parental defiance in mind. “It was [...]

At the end of the South Park episode where the Cure’s Robert Smith defeats a giant, monstrous Barbra Streisand—she plays “Mecha-Streisand” to his “Smithra” in a battle of Godzillian proportions—Kyle yells, “Disintegration is the best album ever!” as Smith walks off into the sunset. It’s an unabashed declaration of love for the Cure’s 1989 gloom-pop [...]

I have a lot of faith in Colin Meloy. The Decemberists frontman is capable of many wondrous things: writing a pop song that casually employs the word “balustrade,” for one; convincingly delivering lines like “My name is Leslie Anne Levine” in tenor, for two. And, truth be told, he’s written four full-length records that, [...]