On Friday, March 20th 2015, Louie’s Trophy House Grill is hosting the third and final WIDR Week 2015 showcase.

Headlining the night is Cheap Girls, a power-pop trio from Lansing, MI. These dudes are taking a break from touring with huge national acts like Andrew Jackson Jihad, The Hold Steady, and Against Me! to close out the live music portion of WIDR Week 2015.

Cheap Girls’ rhythm section are literally brothers, which imparts a pre-lingual connection to their performance, while Adam’s guitar lines alternately evoke Peter Buck or Jeff Tweedy.

Check out how big three dudes can sound in their official video for “Ruby”:

And for an idea of what Cheap Girls will sound like at Louie’s this Friday, watch them perform “Slow Nod” live at Hurley Studios last fall.

Bike Tuff is the hardest rocking Kalamazoo band you’ve never seen. Watch them get the crowd riled up at Fat Guy House:

And then take a listen to Bike Tuff sing an ode to the now-departed Oak St. Market, which sounds like it could have been performed by Jimmy Eat World:

Finally, it’s been said many times before that Jake Simmons can go fuck himself, but he’s going to prove the haters wrong yet again as he employs his psychic powers to surround himself with Little Ghosts, who will teach us all a little something about Them, Them, and Us:

Best not risk it – if you’re 18 or older, come out to Louie’s this Friday at 8pm, for all things Cheap, Tuff, Little, and WIDR. Tickets are $8 in advance, $12 day-of-show.

Deerhoof’s sound has been evolving their sound for two decades, simultaneously to critical acclaim but with only a few blips on the radar of the mainstream. Three of their albums managed to land on the Billboard 200, but their reputation among independent music enthusiasts cannot be overstated.

Pitchfork calls Deerhoof The Best Band In The World. MLive named Louie’s Trophy House Grill one of the top ten neighborhood bars in Michigan. This Wednesday November 12th these two bests will collide for a singular night of psychedelic music from Deerhoof’s newly released album La Isla Bonita.

Whether you put on Milk Man, The Runner’s Four, or any of their other eleven studio albums you’re guaranteed to find something you didn’t expect. Guitar lines that are intricate, melodic, but not afraid to crank up the gain when it’s warranted. Light airy and unaffected vocals floating around the rhythm section’s tight and measured framework.

Listen to Deerhoof’s first eleven albums for free on Grooveshark.

Yet Deerhoof is one of the rare acts that manages to reliably crank out interesting and truly inventive music without devolving into sprawling prog epics. On the contrary, their songs often clock in at three minutes or less, which means they can pack more songs into a set than Guided By Voices, while rivaling the complexity of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band.

For an example of how much four minutes of Deerhoof can include, listen to the title track from Milk Man:

But hey, lots of bands can bring proficient psych when they’ve got infinite retakes and overdubs, what do they sound like live? Watch Deerhoof play “There’s That Grin” just up I-94 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

Want to read more? The Kalamazoo Gazette ran an article about this show and the new album.

Opening for Deerhoof are White Reaper, and Priests.

Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 8pm this Wednesday the 12th. Tickets are available in advance for $13, or $15 at the door (if they’re not sold out).

RSVP on Facebook and let us know you’re coming – see you there!

Catch it before it’s gone, because I can 99.99999% sure guarantee this lineup will never reassemble on a stage anywhere in the world.

Despite her busy schedule, Jes Kramer comes to visit Kalamazoo a few times a year, and brings a solid catalog of pleasing pop songs, with layered harmonies assembled before your eyes with only her one voice, through the magic of looping. While carefully placing brick after vocal brick, she also controls the electronic drums, and accompanies herself on casio keyboards, and sometimes guitar.

Just take a listen, and let her steal your heart:

WhiteGold will be rolling up from Chicago to bring their fancy party rock to Kalamazoo. Take a look at the sights and sounds of their live show: 

Katy Needs a Life often manifest as a one-woman band, but sometimes conscripts other players to mount an all-out rock siege. Often frantic, other times touching, always entertaining. She’s also calling it quits soon, so this might be your last chance to see her do her thing. Check out this music video from a couple years ago to see what you’re in for.

All this is going on at Louie’s on Saturday the 6th, music starts at 9:30pm.

Hit us up on facebook and let us know you’re coming!

Oh, and it’s only FIVE BUCKS!

It’s safe to say that if you’re a fan of Kalamazoo music, you’ve probably seen the members of Overly Polite Tornadoes before, even if you hadn’t yet heard of OPT.

Overly Polite Tornadoes are two sixths of Kalamazoo’s shoegaze mainstays, Glowfriends.

Take a couple minutes and listen to OPT cover 20/20’s “The People in your Life”:

And if you like OPT, then you’ll probably also like Cardboard Highway, who is also performing tonight. Here’s a representative track from their Silverware EP:

Nathan K.  will be making the trek from Ypsilanti for this show as well, to play indie folk of varying tempos on a variety of topics, from intense relationships to the melancholy details of everyday life. Here’s the title track from his 2012 album “Dishes”:

Also rolling into Kalamazoo from westbound I-94 is Gifts or Creatures, whose Americana  tunes and cinematic soundscapes have been echoing through the midwest since 2010. Take a listen to “Relics & Ghosts” from their 2013 album Yesteryear Western Darkness:

Or better yet, have a look at this live performance of Woodrow, from the same album:

This all starts at 7:30 tonight (May 30th) at the Vine Neighborhood Association at 511 West Vine St (between Fourth Coast and Chenery Auditorium)

$5 suggested donation – all ages

Get directions / RSVP on Facebook

On May 19th 2014 at Louie’s Trophy House Grill in Kalamazoo, what you are going to experience is “an ass kickin’ bud whippin’ far out drop dead cool music from another solar system when the ancient gods still ruled the earth!”

Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. was founded by Kawabata Makoto, who serves as the antenna and amplifier of mind-altering psychedelic sound from around the cosmos. AMT has been touring the world since the 90s, inducing trance-like states in human minds, whether 100% sober or wildly chemically altered.

AMT’s music regularly contains long drone sections with spacey synthesizers slicing the atmosphere with a sharp glissando, twinkling grey noise, or a fiery low fuzz:

Sometimes the cosmic message comes in forms which require no electronics, or even instruments. In this 2013 performance in British Columbia, the group quiet their hands, and deliver an a capella section:

But it’s not all hookahs and rhythmic nodding – just a few minutes later in that same performance, a savage frenzy of shredded guitar, harsh synthesizer, crashing cymbals, and moon-patrol bass lines:

Coming along for the ride with AMT is “PERHAPS”, a band whose music not a divine message from ancient gods, but rather a carefully composed complex combination of jazz, progressive rock, classical, and noise. At moments, PERHAPS has technically precise but pleasing (almost jammy) guitar-riff driven sections such as this one near the start of their “Volume One” album:

For contrast, consider this chaotic-yet-sparse passage from later in that same piece:

But Kalamazoo is not just a consumer of experimental music! We are a supplier, and on that evening we’ll be supplying a healthy dose of driving rhythms, feedback, slow builds, phasers set to “wide sweep”, and windy atmospheric sounds, by Brown Company. If you want to cut straight to the badassery, see how hard Brown Company rocks on “Edwards” from their upcoming 2014 album:

If you want to see the details of how they arrived there, listen to the much longer “Tidal” from that same pre-release.

This 18+ show is getting started on Monday May 19th at 8pm at Louie’s, RSVP on Facebook to make your friends jealous!

Tickets are $10 in advance, or $12 at the door (if there are any left).

This Friday (April 18th 2014) at Louie’s, four bands will grace the stage.

Har-di-Har describe themselves as…

…an Iowa-based multi-instrumental glass-pop, synth-folk, husband/wife duo performing with the instrumentation of a four-piece band.

Their recent EP “Hard Parent/Thick Child”  is sometimes dark, sometimes ethereal, often driving.

There’s an official video for “Once Branches” from that EP, or if you prefer to see what the live experience will be like, here’s a clip of them playing “We’ve Been Missing” at the Octopus and College Hill Music Festival.

Also on the bill is the California-based Glimpse Trio, who add a dash of experimental sound and structure on top of the slow rock framework. Their self-titled album can be downloaded for free from their bandcamp site.

A little bit closer to home is Grand Rapids’ Filmloom – two multi-instrumentalist composers who painstakingly layered toy piano, horns, woodwinds, and a wide variety of percussion instruments on their chill-yet-exciting mini-rock epics. A great place to start is their song Isolation, which you can stream from their bandcamp right now.

And from right here in Kalamazoo, is the immutable Saxsquatch and the Bridge Band, with a core membership of three brothers who could be each accurately addressed as “J. Selner”, and a revolving cast of horns, woodwinds, guitars, and sometimes more. They bring a high energy live show with jazz, blues, and various grooves, all at the direction of the bombastic Saxsquatch, with periodic detours into the experimental and improvised.

The show starts at 9pm, with a suggested cover of $5. Go ahead and let ’em know you’re coming by joining the facebook event.

Come get shocked by two of Kalamazoo’s funkiest players on Friday, March 8th 2013 at Toad House!

WearWolf is a one-man band of Satanic Synthesizer music, guaranteed to damn you to electronic hell. Take a listen: 

A lot of rap acts are described as in your face, but The Wrap, and his backing crew The New Mutantz will get so close you’ll accidentally eskimo kiss them.

The fun starts at 10:05pm and of course it is free!