Wednesday night at the Turf Club, Poliça opened a three-night series of shows celebrating the Friday release of their third album, United Crushers. Their set consisted almost exclusively of songs from the new album, making full use of the venue’s relatively new sound system. (Standing near the side of the stage, with his friend Har Mar Superstar,…

Singer-songwriter Gaelynn Lea, a Duluth artist who plays and teaches fiddle, has won National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk Contest with a moving rendition of her song “Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun.” Lea prevailed over 6,000-plus other entrants in the contest. “We’re excited to welcome Gaelynn to the Tiny Desk at NPR in Washington, D.C.,”…

In a stunning announcement, a group of Oklahoma institutions has shared news of the acquisition of an enormous private archive maintained by Bob Dylan. Spanning Dylan’s entire career, the archive includes everything from song drafts to personal correspondence to multimedia. The archive is set to be opened to scholars and made available to the public,…

Who was the white-haired woman who danced with Bruce Springsteen during “Dancing in the Dark” at his Monday night Xcel Energy Center show? It was 91-year-old St. Paul resident Jeanne Heintz, a longtime Springsteen fan who’s attended over 100 of the Boss’s shows and previously danced with Bruce onstage in Des Moine in 2008. This time, E Street…

Poliça: United Crushers Poliça are pulling no punches on their third album, which sees the Minneapolis group — whose international profile continues to rise — struggling with the social turbulence that Minnesotans, and all Americans, were experiencing as the collection came together in recent months. “I drive around and I see that big, ominous ‘United Crushers’…

Only for Bruce Springsteen does performing an entire double album front to back to front to back — with bonus tracks and spoken annotations — feel like just a warm-up. On Monday night at the Xcel Energy Center, Springsteen and his E Street Band played the entirety of their 1980 classic The River before launching into…

In a new video for the I Don’t Cares‘ “Whole Lotta Nothin’,” Paul Westerberg takes on the persona of songwriting teacher “Dale Westerberg.” (Pitchfork) Prince is Bay (Area) On Sunday night, Prince wowed Oakland in the first American show (except for two shows earlier this month at Paisley Park) on his “Piano & a Microphone” tour. “Prince presented…

Each week on the Local Show, we’ll meet a new person from the Minnesota music community who has some fresh discoveries to share in a feature called “Ask a Cool Person.” These people will come from all corners of the scene, including record store clerks, recording studio engineers and producers, artists, writers, bookers, photographers, and…

At Sunday night’s Academy Awards, Sam Smith — along with cowriter Jimmy Napes — won the Oscar for Best Original Song, for “Writing’s On the Wall” from Spectre. Smith dedicated his award “to the LGBT community all around the world. I stand here tonight as a proud gay man, and I hope we can all…

I’m not a DJ. I’ve never specifically wanted to work in radio, nor do I know anything about the standards and practices involved with doing so — which is why being asked to be Local Current’s DJ in Residence was a little scary for me. I sort of live under a rock. The only local…