Always reliable purveyors of fine musical offerings, Sheffield's Warp Records recently signed their first Australian artist, Pivot. Specialising in off-kilter, driving rhythms peppered with just the right amount of electronics, these lads start their UK tour tonight in Camden at Proud Galleries. Having served in the support slot for the Australian tours of Four Tet and Battles, sonic comparisons to the latter cannot be avoided, but ring true in the best possible way: this......

Four weeks till Christmas! Argh. Funds are all focused on present buying and getting through the party season but we still want to go out and about because the heating isn't working properly at home. We can't afford to go and see Gandalf drop his trousers in King Lear but, thankfully, there's lots of cheap and interesting stuff about as usual. Monday: Start the week with an event truly in the spirit of London......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......

The bane of touring indie rock bands has become so pandemic that it now plagues sports teams. The Arsenal Women’s Premier League squad had several items burgled from their dressing room while playing at Watford yesterday. Passports, cash and credit cards were among the possessions nicked from the dressing room, which of course begs the question of what one does with someone else’s passport. The match between Arsenal and Watford was abandoned before the......

Sampled the delights of Oxjam yet? If not, why not? The festival's reached the halfway point, and Oxfam's million-pound fundraising goal won't get any nearer with you sitting around on your hands watching Emmerdale when you could be bopping in your Birkenstocks and raising money while you're at it! Highlights for this week: - HatJam - Unsigned acts including The Colours and aDore will be joined by DJs at Shoreditch's Bar Music Hall, for......

As bands jump across the Atlantic to play this weekend's V Festival and next weekend's Reading and Leeds festivals London is treated to a wealth of bands that rarely play these shores. Here's a selection of the best. Monday night sees the amazing Rilo Kiley play the Carling Academy Islington – tickets sold out pretty quickly, but there are a few floating around on eBay etc for what is sure to be one of their......

If you have a soft spot in your heart for psychedelic folk, you would do well to attend the fifth year of The Green Man Festival this coming weekend, 17 - 19 August, in Brecon Beacons, Wales. Featuring performances from Joanna Newsom, Vashti Bunyan, Battles and countless others, psychedelia and folk prove only to be starting points for this diverse selection of talent. For those who can't attend, however, all hope is not lost:......

Between fake terrorist alerts and scandals big and small, this just might be the Best Best of the -ists ever. We're exhausted just thinking about it. First up, SFist, who saw their little 'ole site be the center of what was a nice little scandal (even getting their editor on TV) only to find their scandal dwarfed by the even bigger scandal caused by their Mayor boffing one of his aides' wife. We're not......

The usual programming at weekly alternative gay night Popstarz @ Scala was interrupted for a raucous 30 minutes last Friday as Brooklyn natives We Are Scientists took the stage in the indie room and proved that New York still holds it own on the scene. Plus, as the band released their 2nd album Crap Attack, it showed off just how much impressive songs from In Love And Squalor are when played in concert. Watching......

Riding on the success of Air Traffic, London based Circuits played at Oxford Street's 100 Club last Tuesday and we were there to see what the band billed as "one to watch in 2006" by Nokia are all about. With influences such as The Police, Elvis Costello and Paul Simon, Circuits are described on their web site as being "frantic, twitching, spiky guitar pop", new and different and unlike the "indie-wannabees" which screams promise.......

Much as the incarcerated writers of the Londonist Music Dungeon enjoy relaying our recommendations on music, we can never shake off the mantra murmured to us by our inner voices: 'music writers are failed musicians'. So it's with great pleasure that we start a column written by someone who's a participant in our fair city's music and arts scene, rather than a mere spectator. Introducing Laura Kidd... Amidst the throes of adult chickenpox I......

One of the briefs for Londonist's music writers has always been to cover London's new, unsigned or unheard bands. And maybe a few from out of town who we think are particularly special. We run reviews and interviews but the proof of the pudding is in the listening so we're also collecting songs for you to listen to. Rather than browse our collection of interviews or music posts to track down these terrific tunes,......

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed recurring mention of The Broken Family Band in our mid week gig listings. So after taking a listen to Song Against Robots and deciding that they were really quite brilliant; DiS described them as country-flavoured rock 'n roll and sound not unlike Pavement being buttfucked by the Anthology Of American Folk Music which we couldn't really argue with. Then we heard a copy of this year's......

Someone was obviously having a laugh this week. Some record industry mogul says, "Hmmm, it's Londonist Pop's turn to do the reviews this week. Why don't we release albums by Foo Fighters, Funeral For A Friend and Nine Black Alps? That'll learn him for not wanting to do the Coldplay review!" His drinking partner, drunk on rider lager laughs heartily, raising a glass, saying : "I'll drink to that!" Thankfully, someone takes pity and makes......

While some would say that Camden never lost the indie rock vibe, it would be hard to deny that the goth kids and the nu-metal tweenies (yes, you there with the Staind shirt) have run rampant there for the last couple of years, and that the chances of spotting your favourite band member lurching past in the Good Mixer had been hitting rock bottom for ages. We at Londonist are therefore chuffed by the......

This is the second of our features on the bands Londonist thinks you need to know about. Last week we brought you the energetic indie pop of The Pipettes. This week we bring you melodic, atmospheric indie rock in the form of Hedon. "You've got to properly kick people in the bollocks in every single moment of every single song," says Archer James, lead singer of the google- and url-unfriendly Hed*n (hereafter referred to as......