The rear cover of American Gonzos self-titled debut album gives almost as much insight into their story as the music itself does: three bros chilling on an anatopic couch in a setting that’s somehow both an example of bucolic country living and urban stagnation.

Economy of both music and words abound in Mebane duo Be the Moon’s debut release, creating an absorbing, if somewhat uneven blanket of warm, familiar Americana to wrap up in.

You know the truly great R&B and soul singers have a way of distinguishing themselves on record in a way that there’s no mistaking them. Bobby Womack’s plaintive melisma at the beginning of Across 110th Street.

In their attempt to run away screaming from the pop-punk status quo of music so empty and insincere that anyone could write it, the Radio Reds made an EP last spring that was dogged primarily by the unwieldy, inscrutable themes it tackled.

Seven mixtapes. That’s a fairly impressive discography for a veteran rapper, but it’s mindboggling to consider that’s what DC emcee and Guilford College student Beau Young has done before even hitting the legal drinking age with yet another on the way.

“Quiet Friends� starts off like the soundtrack to a gondola ride in Venice and quickly turns into the melody from Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire� set to Gregorian chants.

Given how quick the music press has been to stigmatize rock-reggae hybrids in recent years, it’s fitting that the genre experiences a mini resurgence thanks to the introduction of a few new ideas. Among the bands making the strongest music is the Silver Springs, Md.

For all the ways that John Howie, Jr. has divided his creative attention in the past year, one would think that it would dilute his efforts toward his principal band the Rosewood Bluff, but that’s absolutely not so.

Casual Curious will perform with Burn Doordoordoor and the Old One-Two at Artistika on Dec. 12..

The sound that results is loud and urgent, yet crunchy and a little bit shambolic at the same time, but it’s no accident. The members of Estrangers are all music vets in their own right.

In all seriousness, sometimes contemporary folk and stringband music can take itself too seriously. One album after another that can be described as “gorgeous� or “moving� eventually deadens the senses to all of it. Then, something like The Last Night of the Revels,.

It’s likely that just about every reasonably large metropolis has one: a prolific singer, songwriter and performer who perpetually flies under the radar, never really getting his or her due, but very quietly being great anyway. Bruce Piephoff is that to the Triad.

Given the moniker adopted by songwriters Stephanie Morgan and Chuck Lichtenberger, it’s a safe assumption that the evolution of Stephaniesid from barroom folk to glistening dream-pop has been driven purely by the pleasure principle. It could have been assumed that the Asheville band’s last album, Warm People,.

The first and last sounds one hears on Future Islands’ captivating third album On the Water.

Born into a devoutly musical family, Winston-Salem rapper Trib has quietly cut tracks under various independent imprints for the past decade as prolifically as he he cuts hair. Most recently working under the banner of his own studio Rellwenz Entertainment, his newest album Total Package.

Like Tom Waits, Ryan Adams will forever seem far older than his age. The life of the plucky, oftentimes brilliant singer-songwriter from Jacksonville has been like a movie cliché since he left the great alt-country band Whiskeytown.

North Carolina Hip-Hop Day saw one small town rapper claiming the Billboard.

Theres generally some reading between the lines to be done when an established band self-titles an album several discs into their catalog. Its as if theres a sort of Bayesian inference to be made into the bands future whatever can be assumed from what happened prior to that point is invalid.

When it comes to the expression of an idea, Greensboro songwriter Daniel Levi Goans leaves nothing to brevity. His second album proper, entitled BrotherStranger,.

Nineteen-year-old Porter Robinson has been touted as the face of electro to come since his debut single Say My Name exploded onto the Beatport charts in 2010 before ever stepping foot into a DJ booth, and since that time the Chapel Hill product has done nothing to bring his anointment, however spurious, into question.