MATTIE is easy to crush on. The Dallas musician and hairdresser is a force of creativity whose work is boundlessly original. She’s a superb live performer with a transfixing onstage act rooted in storytelling. Offstage, she’s just as fascinating, an all-caps mystic with inimitable style. Here’s why we love her…
People gathered outside of an old Dallas shopping strip. Some wore masks and others openly carried firearms. One held a flag that bore the words: “Trump 2020 — Make America Great Again.” They were rallying in support of Shelley Luther and her business A La Mode, the Dallas salon that decided…
Like many of us these days, Nicholas Altobelli has abundant time on his hands. And, like some of us these days, Altobelli is making productive use of it. As a lark, the musician recently wrote, recorded and released a new EP — the evocatively titled I Took My Hockey Stick…
Dallas folk duo Penny & Dime first met in the summer of 2016, through a Craigslist ad. The meeting culminated in what may be one of the best albums of 2020 with the band’s eponymous debut EP. “Because we were both transplants to Dallas, we didn’t really know where to start,” Kylie…
Our woman crush this week is Denton-based singer-songwriter Lorelei K. The excitingly ethereal avant- popstress is not only a local queer icon, but a collaborative artist who keeps the music scene at large thriving through connectivity. This week she premiered a video for “White Dress,” the closing track on her…
Mike Brooks is a longtime Observer concert photographer who has shot seemingly every type of artist at every type of local venue. Here he breaks down five of his favorite concert photos. Five pictures, five stories. Or, 10 pounds of talent in a 5-pound bag. I’ve been lucky enough to…
Every year, 10,000 members of the Juggalo diaspora embark on a mass pilgrimage to Insane Clown Posse’s annual Gathering of the Juggalos festival, and the band’s fandom has a zeal that’s undeterred by the event’s frequent location change. This year, it was supposed to take place at Nelson Ledges Quarry…
As protesters across different states demand that their respective governors put an end to imposed business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, some North Texas businesses are taking things a bit further than holding up “I want a haircut” signs. One Fort Worth music venue, The Basement Bar, announced Tuesday night that…
Pop music, historically speaking, isn’t kind to maturity — doubly so when it comes to women. You need only look as far back as the late 1990s and early 2000s for ample evidence of this: Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera — the Helen and Clytemnestra of tweenaged Y2K bubblegum pop…
Lucinda Williams didn’t have to think twice about returning to her nitty-gritty Southern roots in making Good Souls Better Angels, the 13th studio album in a prolific Do-It-All-American career that dates to the 1970s. Though she moved to Los Angeles for the first time in 1984, Nashville keeps finding a…
North Texas’ biggest and brightest artists will get us through our isolation with an abundance of much-needed new music. We approach summer 2020 with a hoard of new music from the freshest crops in the Triple D: Tay Money, Trapboy Freddy, K Breezy and others who are also expected to…
Effective May 1, concert promoter AEG Presents will give ticket holders an opportunity to request refunds for shows that have already been rescheduled, The New York Times reports. “That means that fans holding tickets to shows that have been delayed but not rescheduled will have to wait,” the article states…
Like old Rose says in Titanic, “It’s been 84 years” since we started social distancing. For live music fans, it feels even longer than that. We are lost without our favorite venues, where we get half our dopamine from watching great bands perform and consume half our calories through each…
If the pandemic distance didn’t force us closer in spirit, one thing certainly will. It may not be a COVID vaccine, but a true gift to the world has finally arrived with Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple’s fifth album, released Thursday evening. The title, taken from a line spoken…
There’s no right way to quarantine. Some of you are spending your time looking at online museum tours while others are making it their life mission to make “Carole Baskin killed her husband” the new “Epstein didn’t kill himself.” We feel morally compelled to remind you, however, that our music…
As their band’s name suggests, Overshare holds nothing back. The Dallas alt-pop duo, which consists of vocalist and producer Eric Rosener and guitarist/bassist Connor Cameron, released their debut single, “Flaws,” and its music video, just last month. In the single, Rosener sings of his struggles with bipolar disorder and the…
With the rest of the school year canceled, many parents will be at home with the kids indefinitely. Home schooling is already hard enough, but teaching music doesn’t have to be, especially the type of music education they likely won’t get when the class bell rings again. This week we…
Mandy Moore isn’t a mother (yet), but she plays one of the best matriarchs ever written for a network television drama. Rebecca Pearson is a loving wife who’s devoted to her family, one that famously includes boy-girl twins and an adopted son on NBC’s This Is Us. When Rebecca’s hopes…
We’re coming up on nearly a month of state-ordered quarantine and although it has monumentally sucked, artists are still finding ways to connect with their fans. Dominican singer-songwriter Amara La Negra is encouraging fans to stay safe and remain creative while in quarantine. The Love & Hip Hop: Miami breakout…
Dane Manshack and Adrian “Scrapp” Brackens are an unlikely duo, with just the exact amount of opposing qualities needed to make a musical masterpiece, which they’ve been doing, on and off, for over 20 years. It hasn’t always been an easy ride, and their journey to their latest album has extended…
In the ancient period of two months ago, there was a tacit social contract between artists/businesses and fans/customers wherein the latter bought branded merchandise from the former to help keep them afloat. This ran like clockwork — artists bought Gildan T-shirts in bulk, printed some cool design on them and…
After teasing their collaboration for months on social media, Leon Bridges finally released his new song featuring John Mayer at midnight this Friday. The slow-simmering R&B track is called “Inside Friend,” and like the name suggests, makes a choice soundtrack to a national mood: quarantine and chill. In the single,…
