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Arcade Fire

The suburbs have always spawned poets who flee to the world's great cities. Montreal's Arcade Fire, however, return to the landscapes of their youth and return with the songs of The Suburbs: songs that draw on themes of loss and renewal, of drawing inspiration from scarcity, of generations past and future, of responsibility and maturity, of hoping that something pure can last.

The Suburbs, like its namesake, revels in open space, reflections on long drives, and contemplating possibilities.

Lyrics decrying wasted time, arms folded tight, and cities with no children are set to sparse pop, icy new wave epics, anthemic punk and lush balladry---all delivered with a breadth and beauty that expands the palette of a band that has never settled for the easy route out of town. (Photo: Nate Azark/WXRT)

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Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder is a legendary artist, songwriter, musician and producer who, over the course of his career, has been honored with 25 Grammy Awards and the prestigious Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He has been making music and enriching lives for more than four decades, demonstrating extraordinary humanitarian efforts, philanthropic leadership and generosity of spirit throughout his career.

From "Little Stevie Wonder" to adult superstar, Stevie is beloved for his monumental talent, his compassion for humanity and his desire to challenge injustice. In 1983 Stevie spearheaded the realization of "Martin Luther King Day" as a national holiday. His participation in the 1985 "We Are The World" fund-raiser for hunger in Africa was a music industry milestone, while his involvement to put an end to apartheid in South Africa is legendary.

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Kanye West

Kanye Omari West is an American rapper, singer, and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson. His style of production originally used pitched-up vocal samples from soul songs incorporated with his own drums and instruments. However, subsequent productions saw him broadening his musical palette and expressing influences encompassing '70s R&B, baroque pop, trip hop, arena rock, folk, alternative, electronica, synth-pop, and classical music.

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Coldplay

Coldplay have been a band since January 16th 1998, when four young university friends - Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion and Chris Martin - lost a demo tape competition on London radio station XFM.

Happily, things have improved since that early blow, with the band going on to sell tens of millions of copies of their four albums: 2000's Parachutes, 2002's A Rush Of Blood To The Head, 2005's X&Y and 2008's Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends. They've also toured the planet, playing life-affirming songs like Yellow, The Scientist and Fix You to a dedicated - and ever-growing - army of fans. And they've managed to fill their trophy cabinet with pretty much every major music award there is (including four MTV VMAs and seven Grammys). (photo: Getty Images)

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Jim James (photo Getty Images)

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Fleet Foxes

Hey, my name's Robin and I'm a singer in and songwriter for Fleet Foxes, here to write the promotional biography meant to accompany and explain Helplessness Blues. I'm just going to write down some thoughts I have about the album and give you some context. Let's do this.

So, for a bit of background: we're from Seattle, and the members of the band are me, Skye Skjelset, Josh Tillman, Casey Wescott, Christian Wargo, and now our buddy Morgan Henderson, who helped out on the album and will join the band on tour. The band began as just me and Skye in Junior High, playing songs in his bedroom, until we moved to Seattle, settled on a name, and began meeting other musicians and playing with different people until we met all the guys currently on board. Casey joined in 2005, Christian in 2007, and Josh joined shortly before our first album was released, but after we'd recorded it. So, that's some background information. Good luck working that into something intriguing.

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Alison Krauss & Union Station

Alison Krauss' most recent triumph, the certified-platinum Raising Sand, her 2007 collaboration with Robert Plant and producer T Bone Burnett, notched up a total of six Grammy® Awards, including Album of the Year and Song of the Year, bringing her unsurpassed total to 26. That mesmerizing modern-day masterpiece sets the stage for another stunner: Paper Airplane, the artist's first album of all-new recordings in partnership with her remarkably skillful and renown band Union Station since 2004's Lonely Runs Both Ways.

The players---Jerry Douglas (Dobro, lap steel, vocals), Dan Tyminski (guitar, mandolin, lead vocal), Ron Block (banjo, guitar) and Barry Bales (bass, vocals), with Krauss on lead vocal and fiddle---are five distinct personalities who come together to form something truly unique as a band. Each bandmate has his own bustling career, but when these singular musicians come together, they're an airtight unit devoted to the process of making music together. Indeed, their connection is so close and deep that they've come to think of each other as family.

Produced by Krauss and Union Station, with studio legend Mike Shipley engineering and mixing, Paper Airplane contains 11 songs of poignancy and austere beauty, chosen with the impeccable taste and unerring intuition that have characterized her entire body of work, delivered by this world-class unit with an immediacy that goes beyond mere virtuosity. (photo courtesy Rounder Records)

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Nas & Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley

With passion and a gift to speak for those who cannot always speak for themselves, Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley has worked hard to carve out his own place in music history. While his success has been steady, it is extraordinary that he can claim to be the first Reggae artist to win a GRAMMY for Best Urban/Alternative performance for his smash hit, "Welcome To Jamrock." The acclaimed 2005 disc of the same name also won a GRAMMY for Best Reggae Album the same year. Since the release of "Welcome To Jamrock," which the New York Times called the best Reggae song of the decade, the much lauded album and the critically acclaimed collaboration with Nas, 2010's Distant Relatives, the youngest son of legend Bob Marley has shown the music world that he has plenty to say.

When "Welcome To Jamrock" erupted onto airwaves halfway through 2005 it came as a shock to some but not to Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley. The song, the farthest thing from commercial music, was an outraged and unapologetic description of the poverty and political violence ravaging his homeland of Jamaica. Despite the gravity of the track - or perhaps because of it - "Welcome To Jamrock" became a massive hit, the result of years of work to bring that truth to light. "I spent a lot of time thinking and this is the fruit of that labor," explained Damian.

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Social Distortion

Here's how you know you've made it in the music business: You've stayed strong for three decades on your own terms, on your own time, by your own rules, and over that time your influence has only grown. Each of your albums has been stronger than your last. You've been brought onstage by Bruce Springsteen, because he wanted to play one of your songs. You've seen high times and low ones, good days and tragic days, but every night you give 100%, and every morning you wake up still swinging.

This is the short version of the Social Distortion bio --- the long version could be a 10-part mini-series. But over the past 30 years, the punk godfathers in the band have all but trademarked their sound, a brand of hard rockabilly/punk that's cut with the melodic, road-tested lyrics of frontman Mike Ness. Their searing guitars and a locomotive rhythm section sound as alive today as they did in '82, as do Ness' hard-luck tales of love, loss and lessons learned. "The most common thing I hear is, 'Man, your music got me through some hard times,'" Ness says. "And I just say, 'Me too.'" (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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Bright Eyes

The People's Key - the band's seventh studio album - is the eagerly awaited follow-up to 2007's acclaimed Cassadaga. Since 2006 the once revolving cast of Bright Eyes players has settled around permanent members Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott, with additional musicians joining them in the studio and on tour. Fully realized and bursting with charisma, The People's Key is an assured and accomplished album, artfully arranged and filled with the engaging and mesmeric songwriting for which Oberst is renowned.

Bright Eyes' success snowballed in early 2005 when the simultaneous release of the sister albums "I'm Wide Awake", "It's Morning and Digital Ash In A Digital Urn" saw the Nebraskans hurled into the limelight and the Billboard Charts. To say that the band became a household name would be an overstatement but for a few months they seemed ubiquitous; from magazine covers to late night talk shows, they were name-checked by everyone from sports casters to country stars. Conor Oberst has spent much of the last few years recording and touring with friends and musicians, The Mystic Valley Band, as well as releasing a a highly acclaimed album and tour as part of the so called indie supergroup Monsters of Folk.

FIJI Water At MSNBC Correspondents' After Party

Cee Lo Green

Internationally, Green is best known for his work within the hip hop duo Gnarls Barkley and their worldwide hit "Crazy" (2006), which reached number one in various singles charts worldwide including the United Kingdom. In the United States, "Crazy" reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100. The parenting album, St. Elsewhere was also a hit, reaching number one on the UK Album Charts and charting at number four on the US Billboard 200 album charts. The duo's second album, internationally less successful, The Odd Couple (2008) missed the top ten in both the UK and US, where it charted at number twelve in the US, and eighteen in the UK. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 2

Empire Of The Sun

The electro- psychedelic project is led by Luke Steele, the enigmatic wunderkind behind Australia's The Sleepy Jackson.

Exotic, lavish, larger-than-life, Walking On A Dream is a bold, visionary and quite brilliant album, which manages to sound exhilaratingly contemporary, audaciously forward-looking, yet also curiously archaic all at once. The singles "Walking On A Dream", "We Are The People", "Standing On The Shore" and "Without You" feature a groundbreaking aesthetic of electronic beats, pop melodies and psychedelic overtones. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images)

Santigold: Live from the Apple Store Soho

Santigold

Santigold is, on one level, Brooklyn-based singer Santi White.

But in the big picture, Santigold is White and her producer/songwriter partner-in-crime John Hill, aka "Johnny Rodeo" --- plus all of the talented other producers, DJs, musicians and "underground fly kids" who lent their skills, beats and inspirational vibes toward the creation of Santigold's debut CD, last year's Santogold (Lizard King). (Photo by Rob Loud/Getty Images)

Groovin The Moo Music Festival

Cut Copy

When Cut Copy offered their hand on Where I'm Going, the first leak of their third album, it was an open invitation to an uncharted destination. The festive explosion of kaleidoscopic Californian acid hippie reborn as UK glam star explored new terrain, hinting a further evolution for a group that is yet to make the same record twice.

Zonoscope was dreamt in the comedown of In Ghost Colours, the album which cemented Cut Copy as a global sensation. Their perpetual touring cycle found the band headline a stage at Lollapalooza, become the first Australian act to play Colombia since INXS, have fire marshals shut down an LA performance mid-set as crowds began to buckle the seams of the Henry Fonda Theatre and be raced to the Pitchfork Festival via police escort following a cancelled flight. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

83rd Annual Academy Awards - Press Room

Randy Newman

If Randy Newman's self-titled 1968 debut on Reprise Records, co-produced by his childhood friend Lenny Waronker and the now equally legendary arranger Van Dyke Parks, seemed out of step with the times upon its release, that's perhaps because he had created something timeless. Newman combined sophisticated orchestrations and indelible melodies with story-song lyrics that veered between the unabashedly romantic and the sarcastically humorous. A song like "I Think It's Going To Rain Today," its simple words harboring heartbreaking emotion, is arguably an American standard, covered by an astonishingly wide range of artists, including Judy Collins, Bobby Darin, Rick Nelson, Nina Simone, and, most recently, Nonesuch label-mate Audra McDonald. The albums that followed---12 Songs (1970) and Sail Away (1972)---are also regarded as classics now. The Los Angeles-born Newman spent considerable time in New Orleans with his mother's family during his childhood; his 1974 Good Old Boys is a masterful and controversial exploration of Southern culture, its history and ingrained prejudices, as well as the views and misconceptions of outsiders. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2010 - Day 1

Pretty Lights

Pretty Lights is the musical vision of the ultra-versatile Colorado based producer Derek Vincent Smith.

At a time when music lovers from almost all subcultures and genres are finding common ground in the basic form of bangin' beats, Pretty Lights is giving the people what they want; electro organic cutting-edge party rocking beats that fill venues with energy and emotion and send dance floors into frenzies. And the people are responding. Pretty Lights' six albums have been downloaded over 1.4 million times.
(Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

San Diego Street Scene Day 1

TV On The Radio

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TV On The Radio had no trouble getting noticed. The band sprang from Brooklyn fully hatched --- a biracial band that made a dark variety of soulful, electronic indie rock that incorporated old forms of music such as doo-wop without ever sounding antique. That was the bracing sound offered on a four-song EP in 2003 featuring the standout track "Young Liars." The formula was more intriguing than lovable on albums Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes and Return to Cookie Mountain, both dense and dark. Dear Science, released last year, was a landmark album. It's as politically-charged as its predecessor, but David Andrew Sitek's production is more playful and even danceable, while drummer Jaleel Bunton swings and singer Tunde Adebimpe relishes the opportunity to sing about an impending apocalypse while lacing up his dancing shoes.(Photo by Karl Walter/Getty Images)

The 35th Annual Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards - Inside

Ryan Bingham

For some artists, winning an Oscar would represent reaching a pinnacle. For Ryan Bingham, who took home the Academy Award for "The Weary Kind," his hauntingly beautiful theme song for the acclaimed Crazy Heart, it instead represented a crossroads and a decision about which path to take.

"When there are a lot of people around saying 'look, you have to capitalize on this and do something really commercial,' you might think about it for a second," admits the LA-based singer-songwriter. "But at the end of the day, there's not a chance in hell I could do that. It made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it. I couldn't get up in front of people and play a bunch of stuff that didn't mean anything to me." (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for LAFCA)

2nd Annual Essence "Black Women In Music" Event - Arrivals

Big Boi

Antwan André Patton (born February 1, 1975), better known by his stage name Big Boi, is an American rapper, song-writer, record producer and actor, best known for being a member of American hip hop duo OutKast alongside André 3000.

His work in the duo has produced six studio albums. During the duo's hiatus, he and André 3000 each announced plans to release a solo album. Big Boi's solo debut Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty was released in July 2010 to respectable sales and critical acclaim. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 1

Skrillex

Skrillex is a multi talented, multi project one-man machine. He is versed in many different genres including Dub Step, Drum & Bass, Electro-House, etc. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 2

Broken Social Scene

So yeah, it's been five years since the last Broken Social Scene album, but it also hasn't. In the time that's elapsed since the release of 2005's self-titled opus, we were more than tided over by the 2007 release of founding member Kevin Drew's solo album, Spirit If..., followed a few months later by co-founder Brendan Canning's own solo set, Something for All of Us --- both of which were released under the "Broken Social Scene Presents" banner, both of which were supported by tours that featured careerspanning setlists, and both of which featured pretty much the same group of players you hear on this new BSS release, Forgiveness Rock Record. In hindsight, Broken Social Scene's period of supposed inactivity was arguably their most productive stretch yet --- yet another contradiction that makes up the byzantine BSS myth.
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

The 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards - Press Room

Ray LaMontagne

"There's something magical that happens when these musicians play together," says Ray LaMontagne. "I've been wanting to capture what we've been doing live for a while. The chemistry is really special."

The billing on LaMontagne's fourth album, God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise, reveals instantly that something new is happening with this project. The record is credited to "Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs"---the first time that the singer/songwriter has defined himself within a band setting, rather than as a solo artist. In addition, it marks the first time that LaMontagne has taken on the role of producer. And as soon as the music starts, with the Joe Cocker-style soul power of the opening "Repo Man," it's apparent that one of the world's most acclaimed artists has moved into some fresh territory. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

The Apple Store Live From Soho Presents: Iron And Wine

Iron & Wine

Over the course of his ten-year career, Iron & Wine's Sam Beam has become one of today's greatest story tellers, crafting meticulous tales full of forlorn love, religious imagery and wistful dreams. It's been more than three years since his last studio effort, The Shepherd's Dog, which was widely praised by fans and critics alike. While Beam's early albums were sparse, intimate solo affairs, Shepherd's introduced layered textures and poly-rhythmic sounds that allowed his lyrics to spring to life. It's only natural then, that Beam took this sonic collage and built upon it for his new album, Kiss Each Other Clean. The result is a brighter, more focused record that retains the idiosyncratic elements that make Iron & Wine such an engaging band. (Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images)

2010 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Presented By Shell - Day 6

Old Crow Medicine Show

Old Crow Medicine Show (OCMS) have come full circle playing their own brand of American roots music with a rock and roll attitude. They met in New York in 1998 and hit the road, traveling city to city in a van and busking in the streets. They eventually settled for a year in North Carolina, where they ran into a bit of good fortune while playing in front of a local pharmacy to an impressed Doc Watson; the folk icon promptly scheduled the band to play at his MerleFest. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 3

Chromeo

Imagine, if you will, a yacht. It's forged of gold and strong African teak, bobbing gently at anchor somewhere between the French Riviera and Detroit. A statue of the late Roger Troutman is affixed to the stern like a guardian angel. The ladies of Klymaxx wander the decks serving strawberries and cream on silver platters. Sylvester himself is the skipper, and Hall & Oates are down below, keeping the engines in shipshape. This is the S.S. Chromeo, and the two men who create the smoothest of music under the same moniker are at rest aboard, preparing for another global voyage of lovers' funk ambassadorship.

Here we have Dave 1, the suave professor, the voice and intellect, enjoying a rosé as he ponders French literature. And with him we have the one and only P-Thugg, the brawn and the body, sipping on the ghetto cocktail known as Thug Passion and proudly going through his mental rolodex of jeep beats and funky flourishes. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Jisan Valley Rock Festival Day 3

The Airborne Toxic Event

"When I write a song," says Mikel Jollett, co-founder and creative driver of the Californian five-piece The Airborne Toxic Event, "I'm trying to get down an emotion, a scene or a setting. Everything important that happens after that happens between the music and the listener; the rest of it is all mythology. The collective interpretation of it is way more important than what I think." (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 1

Cold War Kids

Since their modest beginnings as four guys who drove around southern California with their gear in their cars, practicing wherever they could steal a space, Cold War Kids have always exhibited two qualities in their music: intense passion and emotional truth.

Lithe and percussive, roaring and tuneful, the soul-punk on the Long Beach quartet's first two albums "Robbers & Cowards" (2006) and "Loyalty to Loyalty" (2008) emerged like miniature gothic novels. Singer Nathan Willett channeled taut dramas of men on the edge, families in peril, and crises of faith. The musical literature of these four tight-knit friends --- Willett, Jonnie Russell, Matt Maust and Matt Aveiro --- was a sound that augured something bigger, something more universal.
(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Coachella Music Festival - Day 1

Gillian Welch

Gillian Welch is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, Bluegrass, and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as "at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms".

Welch and Rawlings have released four critically acclaimed albums. Their 1996 debut, Revival, and the 2001 release Time (The Revelator), received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Their most recent album, Soul Journey (2003), introduces electric guitar, drums and a more upbeat sound to their body of work. (Photo by Karl Walter/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 2

Elbow

Elbow are a British alternative rock band. They have played together since 1990 and recorded five studio albums, the most recent of which is Build a Rocket Boys!, released in March 2011. In the UK all of their albums have made the top twenty and seven of their singles have been in the top forty. In 2008 they won the Mercury Music Prize for their album The Seldom Seen Kid.(Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 2

Delta Spirit

We played something like 290 shows in the last 2 years. We didn't plan on touring so long on Ode to Sunshine, but you can't say no to a good thing. More and more kids kept coming to see us and bands that we love took us around the country, even Natalie Portman's favorite. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

8th Annual Teen Vogue Young Hollywood Party - Arrivals

Fitz & the Tantrums

In just a year or so, soulsters Fitz & the Tantrums went from the living room to the main stage. The recipe for meteoric success? Six killer musicians, five dapper suits, irresistible songs, some serendipity and one vintage organ.

(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

MoMA Hosts Opening Night Benefit For The Armory Show 2010

The Walkmen

The Walkmen released a self-titled, four-song EP in 1999 through the small Brooklyn label Startime International (Brendan Benson) and completed a vinyl-only release to be made available at concerts. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 3

Foster The People

Foster The People came together in late 2009 when Mark Foster met band mates Cubbie Fink and Mark Ponitus through mutual friends in the Los Angeles music scene. Foster hailing from Cleveland, OH had been writing and recording music since his youth but it wasn't until the three members came together that Foster's music for the bands upcoming debut release, Torches, was ready for friends to hear. (Photo by Karl Walter/Getty Images)

The GRAMMY Museum Presents The Drop: Court Yard Hounds

Court Yard Hounds

Strictly speaking, it's only a few feet from stage left or stage right to the center spotlight. But it took Martie Maguire and Emily Robison a couple of decades to move those couple of yards. As the mainstays of the Dixie Chicks since they formed the group in 1989, the sisters have been familiar faces to many millions of fans, yet just a little mysterious in that familiarity, content as they were to cede the lead vocalist position and remain music's most recognizable "sidewomen." Chicks fans couldn't help but hear those ever-present harmonies and wonder if Emily and Martie might ever come out from hiding in plain sight. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

MTV's Inaugural "O Music Awards"

Chiddy Bang

Chiddy Bang is an alternative hip hop duo from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania consisting of Chidera "Chiddy" Anamege, and Noah "Xaphoon Jones" Beresin. The pair shot to international prominence in 2010 with the release of their major-label debut single Opposite Of Adults which peaked within the Top 20 on various singles charts worldwide including the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium. Their performance brings a vibrant and fun live set that anyone can, and will jam out too. Chiddy's trademark freestyle during their set is something that you have to see for yourself. Their EP titled The Preview was released in 2010 and their album The Swelly Life is slated for release during the Summer of 2011. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Smith Westerns In Concert

Smith Westerns

If, light years from now, people ever want a snapshot of youth and young manhood in 2011, they need look no further than Chicago trio Smith Westerns, for to listen to their music is to experience vicariously the reckless thrills and irrepressible energy of a new generation, distilled to its purest and most vital essence. Hell, even the title of their lustrous sophomore album "Dye it Blonde" manages to capture its touchstone signifiers in three easy words, almost as much a playfully potent and authoritative slogan as it is a glorious statement of intent. (Photo by Cory Schwartz/Getty Images)

Southbound Music Festival 2009 - Day 2

Gomez

When it came time to record their seventh studio album, the eclectic, beautiful Whatever's On Your Mind, the members of Gomez found themselves in a bit of a "long distance writing relationship." Spread out on opposite corners of the world, the band - who had once shared a house - were forced to think outside the box and revamp their writing strategy. Not the types to shy away from a challenge, they took up an unusual, near-futuristic tactic. (Photo by Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)

Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame's It's Only Rock And Roll Benefit Concert And Women Who Rock Exhibit Opening Concert

Mavis Staples

"All of these songs are me, but in a different way, with a different sound," says Mavis Staples. "The phrasing, the tempos, the arrangements are different, but the messages are the same things I've been saying down through the years. They're about the world today---poverty, jobs, welfare, all of that---and making it feel better through these songs." (Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum)

Stagecoach: California's Country Music Festival 2011 - Day 2

Jack Ingram

When Jack Ingram won the 2008 Academy of Country Music award for "Best New Male Vocalist," thousands of people in the audience had to be smiling to themselves about that whole "new" thing. They knew the thirty-something, steel-eyed veteran accepting that trophy on that stage in Vegas had been rocking roadhouses, theaters and stadiums relentlessly since 1997, that he'd been celebrated by critics and fans of hard-core country music for more than a decade, and that as a Texas-born songwriter and performer, he'd been on the short list of next generation artists who could fill the boots of Lone Star legends like Willie and Waylon and the boys. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Stagecoach California's Country Music Festival 2008 - Day 2

Hayes Carll

Hayes Carll is a throwback. He plays 250 shows a year. He writes wry, politically barbed story-songs like his hero Townes Van Zandt that reject the pop sheen and lockstep jingoism of his contemporaries. He's an experienced door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images)

Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2011 - Day 3

Twin Shadow

The name might as well be a movie title: Twin Shadow in ... Forget. Only it's not a movie; it's a panoramic LP that introduces us to the twilight zone tale of George Lewis Jr. (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images)

The Vaccines In Concert

The Vaccines

What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? is the debut album from The Vaccines. Eleven songs, eleven tones of excitement recorded "quickly and painlessly" in just under a month in London late last year at the hands of producer Dan Grech. (Photo by Cory Schwartz/Getty Images)

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