Electronic artist Baths crafts glitchy beats for introspection—and a bit of dancing
Every once in a while, Will Wiesenfeld gets mistaken for someone else, and it makes him uneasy. The 22-year-old southern California musician, who performs and records as Baths, recalls one such mix-up clearly:
"This guy comes up to me after the show and goes, 'Hey, bro! I've never heard dubstep with vocals before.' I felt really weird about that."

Some musicians are born performing, while others take time to develop—like a pop star in a pupa, bathing in nutrients and inspiration before hitting the glare of the stage lights. Rather than a late-bloomer, Obenski has been methodical, in the determined manner of a classically trained musician creating her magnum opus, and laying out her career step by step.

David Bazan puts church, then state under microscope

Holidays with the family can be stressful. But they’re even worse when your parents think you’re a heretic. Such is life for David Bazan, former frontman of Pedro the Lion, a fringe Christian indie band active from 1995 to 2005, who was on his way to the airport in Nashville before flying home to Seattle for Thanksgiving when GT caught up with him.

It's a safe bet that Ariel Thiermann will have butterflies in her stomach when she takes the stage at Kuumbwa Jazz this Friday, and not because it will be her first major concert in four years. Thiermann says she always feels a great sense of anticipation and excitement before performing—she likes it that way.

Guitar legend Leo Kottke tells it like it is
Leo Kottke ignited the passion of guitar players and music enthusiasts with his 1969 release, 6- and 12-String Guitar. Never before had such a rich, intricate, textured, slightly otherworldly sound emanated from the hands of one man.

The Cave Singers hit stride on third effort, ‘No Witch’
When they first began composing the sparse folk tunes that would ultimately become The Cave Singers' first record, Pete Quirk and Derek Fudesco were just two fellow musicians looking to pass the time.

"We started playing music for kicks," says singer and guitarist Quirk, recalling the genesis of his current band. Back in 2006, he was playing keys and singing in a Seattle-based disco-punk outfit called Hint Hint and living with Fudesco, bassist and vocalist for progressive alt-rockers Pretty Girls Make Graves—also headquartered in that perpetually rainy northwestern city. "We didn't even think we were going to play shows."

The power of blues is derived from the raw expression of heartbreak and pain—something Sista Monica Parker is no stranger to. “As a blues singer and songwriter, you know, I’m quite familiar with unrequited love affairs,” she admits, adding that her latest release, Living in the Danger Zone, “is classic original blues, and it comes from my own experience of being in a love affair that actually ran the full range of emotions, from really being happy and in bliss, to having it go wrong and feeling the heartache of a breakup.

Ethiopia-born singer Meklit Hadero puts multicultural spin on jazz

Even through the haze of jetlag and cross-continental cellular static, Meklit Hadero’s presence is remarkable. Whether mesmerizing audiences in America or in her home country of Ethiopia, the singer/songwriter traces her confidence and charisma to her migrant life.

“I think moving around did two things: one was that it taught me how to make friends with a big variety of people and connect with people who didn’t have much in common with me, and it also taught me how to be comfortable in a huge variety of situations,” explains Hadero. “It gave me a real flexibility of living that I use all the time, and I also think it was great preparation for life on the road as a touring musician in general.”

Santa Cruz’s own Otayo Dubb brings blue collar hip-hop to the Lagoon

he name Otayo Dubb—a moniker taken from the Swahili term for “ambush”—connotes the effect of the rapper’s blue collar hip-hop style. Straddling the underground hemispheres of street and conscious hip-hop, Dubb’s musical ambush is a bumping meditation on the struggles and joys of everyday working-class people.

Though born in Oakland, Calif., Dubb was raised by two working-class jazz musicians on the west side of Santa Cruz. His hunger for rhythm was established before birth, as his mother, an avid musician of Caribbean and West African influence, played congas while pregnant with him.

On a crisp November morning at The Bagelry in downtown Santa Cruz, Heather Houston swoops in like a hippified Uma Thurman, or perhaps an urban sherpa on a vision quest. Her quartet of a cappella singers, Sirenz, whose music sounds like a cross between Zap Mama and a goddess choir, has been seeking higher ground together for three and a half years. The project grew out of an earlier band called Dis Moi, which featured Samantha Keller, Houston and Tamara Fogel. When Fogel moved back to Canada, Houston brought in friends Molly Hartwell and Amber Mendez, and Sirenz was born. The group performs original compositions, as well as traditional songs from different cultures with original arrangements. Not your typical a cappella group, Sirenz is fresh, real, and eclectic. Mendez provides a "steady percussive beat which is different then you would hear in most a cappella groups—a little heavier on the bass,” explains Houston, and their voices lift and twist like a Celtic knot. She adds that their friendship "informs the way we sing and write with each other." The women will write independently and then come together and mid-wife each other’s songs in a creative birthing process that supports one another’s vision.

Pixies’ Joey Santiago on the making of an alt-rock classic

Doolittle, arguably the definitive album by the Boston-based alternative rock band the Pixies, hasn’t just stayed fresh over time—it’s actually gotten better. Or so it would seem from two different Rolling Stone reviews of the album: Somewhere between 1989 and 2002, Doolittle apparently went from merely being an above-average effort (three-and-a-half-stars) to being a proto-grunge Sergeant Pepper’s (five stars). The record has only improved since then. In 2003, NME magazine named it the second-greatest album in history, and in 2005, it landed smack-dab in the middle of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.

With a physique that suits a hardcore frontman and a security guard equally well, Spencer Biddiscombe has an intense presence. And when you consider that during At Risk’s farewell concert in 2006, he roared lyrics over exploding drums and crashing guitars as windmilling teenagers rushed the stage, he might seem a bit intimidating to meet for coffee. In reality, Biddiscombe is a well-spoken man who claims his passion for the hardcore scene comes from “the energy and the honesty of the music.” He explains: “Generally it traces back as a more aggressive offshoot of punk. It tends to be a bit heavier and more aggressive. A lot of it is the energy and the community, at most of the shows most of the people know each other. It’s a different vibe than a big show with anonymous faces. There’s a lot of energy, and not a lot of separation—we’ll be playing on the floor wherever possible. Kids respond to that because it’s a lot different.” At Risk—whose current lineup includes Biddiscombe (vocals), Jim Sandeen (guitar), Donald Scully (guitar), Tom Arnott (bass), and Dustin Roth (drums)—emerged from multiple hardcore groups in 2002. After playing for five years together, releasing a full-length album, and earning a huge following, the band broke up in 2006. But after endless requests from fans, the guys have reunited to play an all-ages show at The 418 Project this Saturday.