I know, I know, I had a nice streak of consistent round-ups for the first three days of the 2009 Mission Creek Festival, and I dropped the ball. In fact, apparently we’re already talking about another Iowa music festival…damn these hyperactive news cycles. Anyway, I feel a certain debt to fans and musicians to recount [...]

The first night of the 4th annual Mission Creek Midwest Music Festival had a theme of sorts: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The night jumped off with two very uncharacteristic artist-venue pairings. The first official notes of this year’s festival came from Cartright blowing the roof off of the almost [...]

Somnabulant pop duo Beach House make their Picador debut this evening along with an all-star supporting cast of bands we’ve been geeked over for something like forever. Their self-titled debut can make you feel like you’re floating, all full of lush keyboards and doused in reverb. Victoria Legrand’s dreamy voice gives a detached quality to [...]

We’ve been lavishing a lot of attention on GZA as of late—understandably so—however, as these previews have indicated, we’re excited about a few other things. Perhaps a close second in our hearts to The Genius are these two scrappy kids from Los Angeles who go by the name No Age. The duo has built what [...]

We spend a lot of time talking about music here at missionfreak.com, but we love us some books and film too. You know what we love even more?: When you combine some of that stuff. That’s what University of Iowa Communications Professor Kebrew McLeod and cohort Benjamin Franzen have done in Copyright Criminals. Copyright Criminals [...]

89.7 KRUI has taken up—or maybe even created—the mantle of the official radio station of the Mission Creek Midwest Music Festival. Dudes are sponsoring free pizza for tonight’s Social Club/Festival Pre-Party, brought in the Cool Kids (for FREE), and the station has worked it’s 25-year-old butt off to land some totally sweet in-studio appearances from [...]

Oh damn, we’re getting pretty meta here—a preview for a preview? Oh well, that’s what this is. Tonight, on Corn-Fed Music I’ll be talking with my Mission Creek/Freak cohorts from 5-6pm. We’ll spin some more tunes from festival artists, talk a bit about how grueling it is to book a festival, maybe chat a bit [...]

In many ways writing about Scandinavian singer/songwriter Kristian Matsson a/k/a The Tallest Man on Earth is quickly becoming one of the more difficult tasks in music journalism. Tallest Man feels, at first blush, like part of that writer’s workshop rejected acoustic guitar-toting set of troubadours that litter indie-rock airwaves and (almost cloyingly) occupy your girlfriend’s [...]

Imagine: indie rockers bound to the road in an endless odyssey to ply their trade to any willing listeners in strange markets far across the land. Well, in 2009 that seems far from far-fetched, but These United States is like a truck with a destiny to see these united states in all their fair glory. [...]

This is the big one. We could not be more excited to be kicking off this year’s Mission Creek Festival with a special, once in a lifetime appearance at the Englert Theatre from the GZA. If ya ain’t in the know, now’s the time: GZA, of course, is a founding member of legendary New York [...]