We've got Sasquatch Covered! From previews of every performer to general information like tickets and parking to a map and schedule for your holiday weekend.

Eric Grandy raves about Animal Collective:

In 2005, though, Animal Collective increasingly started pushing pop songs through their unique set of sonic filters with their sixth studio album, Feels (relatively trad-rocking), its 2007 sequel, Strawberry Jam (bracing psychedelic sing-along), and most notably on band member Panda Bear's (aka Noah Lennox) intervening solo album, Person Pitch (shades of Brian Wilson smeared against ambient jams).

These efforts, both in synthesizing pop into Animal Collective's more irregular audio routines and in growing their sound to pavilion proportions, reach their apotheosis on Merriweather. Avey Tare's (aka David Portner) sometimes-wild vocal barking has been tamed into Pet Sounds—echoing harmonies; acoustic and electric guitars have been fully replaced by glittering synth arpeggios; Geologist (aka Brian Weitz) deploys his slurred samples and found sounds more artfully than ever; everything sounds like it's hanging suspended in midair, like helium or heat, events unfolding in dreamtime; and it all happens over a bed of thumping rhythms that are equal parts tribal drum-circle frolic and dirty MPC trunk-rattle.

Dave Segal talks with Black Moth Super Rainbow about their brand of psych-electronica:

In BMSR's music, a tension between dissolution—almost everything sounds as if it's melting and dissolving out of focus—and an earthy funkiness exists. Apparently, this paradoxical structure in their songs is simply a happy accident. "It's just me trying to get it to sound good to my ears," Tobacco says.

Tobacco's prominent use of vocoder lends his tunes a strange, androgynous fragility. Unlike most singers, who try to sound less human/more robotic with vocoders, Tobacco conveys more emotion through its effects. "It's just my best way of being able to sing," he shrugs. "I can make any melody I want without having to feel uncomfortable in my own voice."

Michaelangelo Matos reviews new records from Erykah Badu and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs:

With Karen O, you see the honing of a style over time. With Erykah Badu, you see a style becoming ever more omnivorous. New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War), which Universal Motown issued in February 2008, was supposed to have been followed forthwith by two sequels, neither of which has even leaked—not that Part One needs any help making everything else right now seem puny by comparison. Its music is a kaleidoscopic refraction of R&B since the '70s: burbling, aquatic hiphop beats topped with sci-fi harmonizing ("My People"), head-knocking funk ("Soldier"), rippling synth-soul ("Honey"), and on the bracing "The Cell," a rhythm track, complete with silver-matte keyboards, straight out of prime Stevie Wonder. You'd expect those things from Badu, but there's a cyborgian touch on a lot of New Amerykah that gives it an urgent cast, as it does to her lyrics about the everyday struggles of, in no particular order, humanity, blacks, women, and Erykah Badu.

Jeff Kirby sits down with Fleet Foxes:

Are there questions about where the sound is going? There was definitely a big departure from your first self-released EP to the records you put out on Sub Pop. Do you find yourselves wanting to switch your sound up, or do you want to stay with the sound that put you in the spotlight?

I don't know. It's weird. I'm coming to the point now where I just want a really good collection of songs and to not really worry about the aesthetic direction. We could make the songs more complicated, but I don't want to be only intellectually stimulated by what we're working on. I don't want to be validating a song because it's more complex than the last song but it doesn't have any actual feeling in it. So I'm trying to let go of the impulse to make it more complex. I've been listening to a lot of Dylan and Joan Baez and how those songs can affect me more than some tech'd-out masterpiece.

Andrew Luck and Dosadi talk bass and genres with Data Breaker:

Together, Luck and Dosadi work in that exciting basscentric zone where genres mutate and blur. Stylistic boundaries are still being mapped here, with things in a rapid state of flux. Luck describes their music as a combination of "skweee, glitch-hop, whomp, or midtempo breaks." The BPMs may be low compared to those in drum 'n' bass and techno, but Luck and Dosadi's rhythms and bass frequencies slug and surge with a thrilling high impact.

Their music springs out of jungle, hiphop, and dub, but it's 21st century in its predominately digital processing. They use Ableton Live, square waves and filters, and a keyboard MIDI controller to generate their tracks, although "Little Man" benefits from the fiery guitar ejaculations by local musician Purrrmaculture (Mariah Reed).

Casey Catherwood previews the upcoming show with Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk:

Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk are a Lawrence, Kansas, band that make noisy, spacey rock 'n' roll that rides a fine line between shoegaze ambience and all-out chaos. For every one of their bleak, cave-echo noise sessions, they've got a sludgy, druggy pop number reminiscent of a less-goth Chameleons UK. Acoustic guitars are countered by thick and nasty electrics, horrific sounds clatter about the music's fringes, but the band always manage to mine beauty out of the messiness. The quartet's range is their finest asset and should make for an unpredictable show this Friday, May 22, at Healthy Times Fun Club.

Larry Mizell Jr suggests live perfomances in hiphop this week, including Specs Wizard:

Now I don't doubt that there are plenty of other pockets of brilliance in the U.S. (uh,pardon my nationalism right now) just seething under the radar (I'm looking at you, Jacksonville!), but if you can't recognize the gravity and—I'm gonna quote the Chef right here—mad styles and crazy dangerous, I mean, bust ya shit open beats native to our region... well, you're just another hapless victim of that classic Seattle Self-Esteem Syndrome. But it's not necessarily terminal—yet. I'm just saying, at this moment in time, the old guard has no clothes, and the blog-hop generation doesn't seem to have shit else; what we got cooking over here is smelling real good to me these days.

Having reupped on civic pride, flock down to the Rendezvous to pay your tithes at The Corner on May 22, and check what the hell the Physics have been working on, along with Mr. Reinvention, Specs Wizard (who's a part of the Building Project... more on that soon), brolic femcee (hate that word) Yze, Olympia's proud shitbags Junk Yard Gang, the controversial DJ Nphared, and your host Billy the Fridge.

Travis Ritter talks to Buzz Osborne of the Melvins:

You performed Houdini in its entirety for the first time in 2005 at All Tomorrow's Parties and then recorded it for Houdini Live: A Live History of Gluttony and Lust after that. How was it performing these songs again?

It was great. I think [the live recording] is better than the [original] record, personally. We had never played [album-closing 10-minute experimental noise track] "Spread Eagle Beagle" live. But when the ATP people wanted us to do that record for their Don't Look Back series, that meant we had to figure out all the songs on the record that we never intended to play live—and there were a number of them on that record. But there are songs on almost all of our records that we never intend to play live. I think playing live and recording are very separate animals. When you listen to recorded music, it's a much more intimate setting. You're probably in your car or at home, or listening on a set of headphones...

Stay up to date with the latest live shows and concerts in town with Up & Coming, like Ursula Rucker & King Britt:

Black Stax is Silas Black, Jace ECAj, and Felicia Loud. These local hiphop and soul veterans are a synthesis of the Roots, the Coup, the Fugees, and Janis Joplin. Black Stax are the realization of an idea that began with Silent Lambs Project (Silas and Jace). That idea is the production of hiphop completely within the context and logic of the art gallery, but without once losing sight of the street. It is hiphop's complete independence from market forces, hiphop as an object for collectors rather than buyers. At one moment in hiphop's history, Jean-Michel Basquiat produced a rap recorded for Rammelzee vs. K-Rob, Beat Bop. It is useful to think of Black Stax as a return to that meeting point: the gallery and the street.

Michaelangelo Matos reviews new music by Sonic Youth:

This opening track from new album The Eternal, leaked to blogs last month, is brisk—two minutes, 11 seconds—and basic. Not just because of the opening guitar clunks, but because once past them, the band settle into a speedy groove that's as instantly familiar as the skronked-up six-strings. The reason they still sound so good to me, especially in this mode, is that Steve Shelley's drumming still pushes and the guitars still sound ugly-beautiful.

Christopher DeLaurenti highlights local area jazz festivals for your enjoyment:

The Bellevue Jazz Festival (Fri—Sun May 22—24, various venues, see www.bellevuejazz.com for details, free—$199) continues its impressive revival with Kurt Elling, Dianne Reeves, Mose Allison, Patricia Barber, and the Mingus Big Band. Blessed with an oaken baritone, Elling (Fri May 22, 7 pm, $30—$40) ventures where few singers dare to tread, juicing up his repertoire with unusual medleys and audacious moves like adding lyrics to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. A master of vocalese, he wordlessly glides from earthy rumbles to eerie, half-hummed falsettos. I'm surprised and excited by the presence of the Mingus Big Band (Sat May 23, 9 pm, $20—$75). Although Charles Mingus (1922—1979) is long gone, this legacy outfit—organized by his widow—magnifies the essential quality of the great bassist/composer's music: crisscrossing polyphony etched from bluesy, sometimes dissonant licks, all propelled by grooves that shamble and strut.

Also check out Party Crasher and Poster of the Week! Remember to check our online music calendar for a complete listing of bands, DJs and live music.