Even if you haven’t heard the classifying term prog-rock, you’ve likely heard the music.

It’s pretty likely you’ve never heard of the most popular band on the planet right now. The act is fittingly called Arashi, Japanese for “force of a storm.”

The first time I heard Head Hunters in its entirety was in my sophomore year of college as part of a jazz history course.

The trickle down effect from a still-suffering economy is real and will no doubt be lasting.

Booze is woven into the lexicon of American music, most notably in country form.

You may not know the name Jay Boberg, but you certainly know his work.

A decade on as a band, Autonomics feels as if they're still in their formative years.

Somewhat quietly, Rio Grands has pushed along the past few years as one of Portland's greatest sun-kissed lounge acts.

Since releasing his promising debut two years ago, Kyle Craft has stayed busy.

Contrary to how it's often seemed the last six years, Nurses never broke up. But they did slow down.

An eclectic smattering of bands rounded out the bill, from alt-country act the Fruit Bats to Bed, Portland's foremost slow-fi trio.

What began as a duo in 2013 has swelled into the nine-piece act known as Roselit Bone, purveyors of twisted twilight country.

There is a sinister magnitude to Skull Diver's sophomore record, Chemical Tomb.

It's an image straight out of the Museum of Country Music Stereotypes—a musician by the name of Outlaw, barreling through the dusty highways of Texas with his band amid a sleepless tour that may or may not bring in any cash.

Nothing if not abrasive, Lithics' brand of pop is made up of angular guitar work, surfy dissonance and the jittery pulse of punk rock.

In many ways, Organic Light Factory, the new album from singer-songwriter Jackson Boone and his band, the Ocean Ghosts, feels like a baptism. 

Musical duos tend to operate with a tightness that's often lost on acts with larger membership. The creative pop outfit My Body is a perfect example. 

It felt strange to see Kyle Morton playing solo—a feeling emphasized by the grandeur of the Old Church, where he performed on Jan. 6.

Moon by You isn't just a soulful five-piece space-rock band, it's a micro-culture.

Ten years after being voted WW's Best New Band, Marius Libman's Copy project continues to thrive.

It's safe to say Aan set the bar pretty high for itself with long-awaited 2014 release Amor Ad Nauseum.

For the past decade-plus, the sprawling collective known as Loch Lomond has embedded itself in the lexicon of Portland music.

For some, September will mark the end of a vanishing act. Portland's much-admired Latin-folk act Y La Bamba will release its first full-length in more than four years—a deeply personal record called Ojos del Sol.

Whitney's Julien Ehrlich has played more live shows than a lot of musicians twice his age. But when you've been commanding the drum throne since age 2, perhaps it's not entirely surprising.

Country music isn't limited by geography. It's a folk-rooted style built of traditional instruments and tried-and-true techniques, but it is by no means anchored to them. 

You can take a man out of Shreveport, but whatever's in the water there tends to stick. 

As members of a self-described "slow-fi" band, Sierra and Alex Haager aren't apt to rush into anything. Well, except marriage.

It felt like we got away with one, standing against the bar, watching half of the brains behind the calamitous and ever-buzzed-over band Foxygen take over a venue the size of large living room. 

Zombies. Sharknados. Mad Max. Katniss Everdeen. As pop culture testifies, we're obsessed with the end times.

On paper, Blitzen Trapper's new album is built for the road. These are 10 short tracks of souped-up Americana, about first loves, hard work, vices and trusty old cars.

Judging by his music, it's easy to imagine Nick Waterhouse spending his free time holed up in some vintage-decorated apartment—cigarette in one hand, Agatha Christie in the other—with an old soul B-side perpetually spinning in the background.

Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman perfected a lush, majestic sound as Pure Bathing Culture with 2013's Moon Tides.

There's an audible codependency on Cold Moon, the new album from singer-songwriter Alela Diane and Balkan guitar specialist Ryan Francesconi. 

Dan Bejar, the fast-firing brains behind Destroyer, has been called a lot of things.

Stray from Interstate 5 a ways and Oregon gets a little bit country. “A little bit country” also describes the Lonesome Billies, four childhood friends turned western roadhouse band from just outside of Vancouver, Wash.

Most video-store clerks aren’t writing music in the shop after hours and falling asleep in their guitar case.

There’s an intriguing dichotomy at work with the Domestics, one that enhances each musical story of heartbreak and longing told by principal members Michael Finn and Leo London.

Benjamin Wuamett sings with the nasally scratch one might associate with a rusty Victrola. 

Like a proud father, Portland has watched the Helio Sequence grow over the years, from Beaverton startups playing the 24-hour Starbucks to Sub Pop darlings. 

Spirituality is as subjective as music taste. It can be accessed and expressed in countless ways. For songwriter Johanna Warren, orchestrator of brainy, atmospheric folk, it’s about submitting to something much bigger than herself. Like, say, the moon.

Most people who’ve been to Eugene know Sam Bond’s Garage. The small, rustic bar’s rickety old stage has played host to an impressive cast of characters over the years. It was from that stage that art-rock act Talkative discovered its identity—literally overnight.

Jackpot’s original Hawthorne location (the larger downtown store closed last year) is as small and charming as an ice-cream parlor.

For a fourth year festival, Treefort is pretty mature. Over a five-day stretch, some 400 bands play about a dozen venues throughout downtown Boise, from impromptu outdoor stages to small clubs and arcades.

Whereas debut albums often begin with a bang, sophomore records tend to start with a statement. Lost Lander hit the ground running in 2012 with its excellent first album,DRRT, pairing orchestral rock with rich vocal harmonies and a Sufjan Stevens-like dose of wide-eyed curiosity.

Last year, on a balmy night in mid-August, a trailer rolled up in Old Town carrying a bunch of gear and two masked men in full-length druid cloaks.

Song From Far begins exactly as that: a quiet cacophony of atmospheric rustling that sounds like faraway spirits tuning their collective voice.

Don’t let Mick Learn’s calm demeanor fool you: He’s put in the hours. From his knob-and-dial-filled station in the basement of the cabin-like Doug Fir, Learn has helped transform the club, which opened a decade ago this month into a Graceland for audiophiles.

At Dub Narcotic Studios in Olympia, less is more. Calvin Johnson’s audio office is a place for artists to bask in their idiosyncrasies, and it’s a fitting context for Portland’s J. Han, who plays bony DIY folk as Cotton.
 

While it's easy to bask in the warm glow of Sam Smith and the Black Keys individually these days, why not embrace an artist who evokes both?

In 2009, Brooklyn trio the Antlers released Hospice, a sobering concept album equating a decaying relationship with terminal illness. It was a quiet, intelligent record constructed from orchestral elements and frontman Peter Silberman’s bone-tingling falsetto

The byproduct of rocky relationships, loneliness and one too many drinks,Rowdy Love is nothing if not downtrodden. Denver’s sophomore record speaks to midlife troubles with the wisdom and sincerity of someone on their deathbed.

The first few moments of Amen Dunes’ latest record, Love, may well sum up the band. There’s a gentle, pacesetting guitar rhythm being chased by another lumbering guitar that can’t quite find its footing.

Neal Morgan is best known for his percussion work with Bill Callahan and Joanna Newsom. With Newsom, in particular, Morgan has contributed some of the most meticulous yet minimalistic drumming around, especially on the gorgeous triple-disc Have One on Me.

There’s something interesting happening in Boise, Idaho: It’s the Friday morning of a busy festival weekend, and the locals are still in town.  

Eric Pulido hardly hesitates when asked the obvious question. “No, we never thought about quitting,” says Midlake’s founding guitarist and new frontman. “We had a record to finish.”

James Mercer is part of two very distinct—and very popular—bands: the Shins and Broken Bells. 

In the decade we’ve been polling Portland’s most knowledgeable music fans and professionals to compile our annual Best New Band list, we’ve learned one thing: Bands here don’t just break up and disappear. They evolve and regenerate. They add a guitarist, lose a cellist, and emerge with a new Bandcamp page.

When Neil Young delivered the keynote address at South by Southwest last month, a lot of musicians were listening. He was pushing his new project, PonoMusic, a portable music player rendering digital audio files with the rich, analog sound of the Harvest Moon era.

In addition to his tremendous songwriting prowess, Mark Kozelek’s interest in fascinating subject matter has earned him a huge cult following. Since forming Sun Kil Moon in 2002, the Bay Area-via-Ohio folk-rocker has worked around themes of loss and mortality.

With the help of a looping mothership known as the Gibson Echoplex, Bearcubbin’ builds towering math-rock monuments via off-tempo rhythms, percussive guitar, effects-pedal tinkering and ferocious drum work.

When good bands curate festivals, good things generally happen. Such is the case with Austin Psych Fest, the pet project of Black Angels now in its eighth year. Set on a working ranch ten miles outside of Austin, the context is ideal: A reasonable number of stages (3), a meandering river for company, and a bill of acts that could rival most festivals ten times its size.

It seems it’s always been a two-way street with Chan Marshall. The smoky-voiced multi-instrumentalist behind Cat Power has nine studio records to her name, from cover albums that beautifully re-imagine songs we once thought untouchable to painstakingly honest original material that tends towards her bluesy Georgia roots.

I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I’m convinced I can’t fully capture it.

In 1971, Bernhard Mikulski started ZYX Records, feeding an insatiable Western appetite for dance music. The German label clasped dance to rock using newfound electronic instrumentation.

Noah Lennox has some advice for bands on the international touring circuit. “Don’t say you’re in ‘a psychedelic experimental band’ when going through customs,” says the artist better known as Panda Bear, a member of veteran psychedelic experimental band Animal Collective.

A great cover album not only pays homage to a beloved musician but reimagines the music itself. And while there’s little new about covering My Bloody Valentine, Portland’s Kenny Feinstein has succeeded in adapting the band’s 1991 shoegaze landmark Loveless via an extreme rearrangement.

On a tour that is selling out significantly larger venues like Lincoln Hall in Chicago and New York’s Bowery Ballroom, Kurt Vile gave Portland a true gift in performing at the Doug Fir.

Winston Yellen was probably right when he said any one of the three performers from last Sunday night at the Doug Fir could have played headliner. The choir-voiced frontman for Night Beds seemed honored to play, remarking that a previous show in Kansas attracted a total of seven people. Surprising, given the Nashville band’s recent comparison to some dude named Bon Iver.

By the fourth song on Broken Bells’ sophomore album, After the Disco, you get the sense that, at some point during the recording process, Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton told his Portland-based bandmate, James Mercer, to sing from his heart.

Alsea is a woodsy outpost roughly halfway between Corvallis and the Oregon Coast. It’s the kind of place that’s colored with every shade of green and brown, a logging target and sportsman’s dream.

Coachella is an ancient Native American word that loosely translates to “obsessed with the past.”

When Austin City Limits Music Festival began in 2002, it lasted two days and attracted close to 40,000 fans. Wilco, Shawn Colvin and hometown guitar hero Gary Clark Jr. occupied a bill of 70-some acts.