Personally, the Dutchess & the Duke bore me to tears—if their music was playing at a campfire, I would fall asleep and be burned to death (and they would laugh!)—but Travis Ritter thinks they're swell (and commenters think they're really nice people!):

That sound really came to life during last December's heavy snows, when Seattle was paralyzed by frozen roads and slippery sidewalks, and the duo played a special acoustic set for a friend's birthday in the frigid bowels of a gutted former restaurant/­nightclub that lacked proper heat. Those who braved the weather and trekked down to a dimly lit room barely warmer than it was outside stuck it out by huddling close around the band, drinking, and singing along. After seeing the band play around town on numerous occasions in 2008, including their first sold-out show at the Tractor Tavern, it was exhilarating to catch them in such an intimate setting, with no need for amplifiers and microphones. There was no campfire to provide heat, but there was a warm communal spirit in the air, everyone singing together in harmony.

More to my liking is anticon. genre-blurrers Why?:

Wolf's singular, self-consciously morbid lyricism is the constant. He excels as always at juxtaposing the big, existential questions (hence the band name) with telling little lyrical details, and he handles his weightiest subjects with enough wit and grace to make them seem if not light then at least bearable. There are usually at least a couple layers in these songs: First, Wolf frets about death, then he worries about his fretting, and then he chastises himself for his compulsion to act it all out in front of people and on record. This self-devouring cycle would, you know, devour lesser lyricists or just play out as goth-poetry-notebook solipsism. But Wolf makes the navel-gazing captivating.

Dave Segal profiles Karl Blau and his latest, Zebra:

With Zebra (released October 6 by K Records), Blau has made his boldest and most interesting record to date, a melodically gorgeous, rhythmically scintillating celebration of his inspirations. That being said, Zebra possesses a gentle otherworldliness that's more characteristic of Arthur Russell's work than it is of any black artist who comes to mind. It sounds as if Blau's not simply trying to imitate myriad African-­diaspora artists, but rather that he's assimilating traits from musicians like Milton Nascimento, Gilberto Gil, the Meters, Toots Hibbert, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Sun Ra, and filtering them through his distinctive sensibilities. The project comes off as respectful and earnest rather than as crass cultural plundering.

Speaking of Anacortans, the latest album from local treasure Mount Eerie:

The album begins with a crescendo of drums and guitar, a blast of sound that within seconds, and without actually changing, becomes an almost ambient hum. Like many doom/drone metallers, Elverum uses distortion, distilled riffing, and blanketing percussion to generate texture more than dynamics—and to effectively evoke the howl of a harsh wind. But even when the instruments around him are roaring, Elverum's songs are deliberately paced and his singing hushed, creating an audio image that reiterates his oldest themes: Here's Nature/the Universe/the Wind, huge and overwhelming, and here's Phil, small and quiet and straining. Elverum employs this approach to great effect on "Wind's Dark Poem," "The Hidden Stone," and "The Mouth of Sky."

Michaelangelo Matos on recent hiphop craze jerkin':

Jerkin' is homemade hiphop produced almost entirely by L.A. teenagers who wear post—Kanye/Pharrell skinny jeans and ultracolorful gear, and who rap enthusiastically and often amateurishly over oft-skinny, homemade beats. Lots of it is dross, of course. But when it isn't, it's amateurism as inspired in its way as early lo-fi, post punk, or Chicago house, the latter of which it sometimes resembles sonically—the blunt vocals of "Nasty Girl," "Don't Need No," and "Better Than You" have the eerie feel of the ultra-low-budget early Trax catalog. Sometimes, as with "Pockets in My Pannies," the sound recalls the booming early productions of Marley Marl—though without anyone sweating the verbal skills too hard.

Data Breaker on SF techno weirdo Sutekh:

Sutekh (San Francisco producer Seth Horvitz) has been one of American electronic music's heaviest cats for over a decade. Schooled in avant-garde composition, he's also savvy to the ways of the most cutting-edge advances in digital music technology, which helps Sutekh to bridge highbrow dance music and experimental sound design with supreme elegance.

Larry Mizell Jr. on Phone Phreak Sonny Bonoho:

Synthesizing a singular eccentricity and nonstop grind, Sonny Bonoho is one of the scene's most stridently unique talents—well-known to anybody who's ever touched a mic in town, but perhaps unknown to a lot of fans. Something tells me that with his upcoming LP, Phone Phreak, and his bicoastal grizzly, all that's about to change. Striking a very different stance than his outrageous, Coogi-suited, cowboy-booted party-life debut, Life of a Backup Singer, Phreak makes his next move his best, taking a soulful approach familiar to those who know the deeply spiritual MC/producer/hustler.

Christopher Delaurenti on Music of Rememberance:

You are dead. Will you be remembered with music? Commemorating a single life is usually straightforward; everyone has at least a favorite song or two. I smiled at my friend Fred's funeral when REO Speedwagon's "Live Every Moment" began dribbling through the speakers. The music, though treacly, was a brave choice for a macho guy of my generation: In 1984, I muttered something nice about REO Speedwagon to my fellow burger-flippers only to be menaced with a raised fist and a battle cry, "You mean REO FAGwagon!"

Tending the collective dead with music is more complicated. As the bodies pile up, the cumulative anonymity of every lost soul blurs grief into an amorphous sense of loss. Despite its grim mission—to promulgate the music of those who perished in the Holocaust—Seattle's Music of Remembrance (MOR) resists the temptation to make one piece or one song stand for many by serving as an ongoing, perpetually renewing memorial.

Megan Seling on Brand New (to D&D's credit, there are things far worse than boredom):

Long Island rock band Brand New may still be best known for that radio hit from years ago, "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows," but they're more than that sparkling guitar riff and Morrissey-wannabe croon, goddamnit, and their catalog, now four full-lengths deep, is much more impressive than that one song.

They've always flirted with grisly imagery in their lyrics, even in their earlier pop-punk days ("Seventy Times 7," for instance, wishes for its subject's violent death via car crash). In 2006, the band started to express that darker side in their music as well, with the release of the turbulent (and tragically named) The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. Last month, they released the follow-up, Daisy, their most haunted record yet.

Plus: Up & Coming, Poster of the Week, Party Crasher, and our complete music calendar listings.