The Witzard

It seems as though Belgian beer-maker Stella Artois has seen a recent surge in popularity due to a cross-promotion deal with HBO 's eight-episode mini-series, True Detective . I recently had their apple cidre (cider) beer at local watering hole Oar House and it was pretty damn great; the sheer genesis of this very post was actually a Stella Cidre TV commercial that I saw yesterday afternoon. After a little bit of rooting around through the vast pages of Google, I managed to stumble upon @StellaArtios' Twitter handle, which led me to an interesting March 4th Tweet: "Glad you think so! MT @Esquiremag @StellaArtois @ColdWarKids and an engineer made music out of beer [glasses] and it's awesome." The web-linked Esquire piece further notes that "last March, Stella Artois commissioned an M.I.T. sound engineer to spend a year building four instruments that draw their power from Stella chalices." Andy Cavatorta 's beautiful designs dually function ...

Hanni el Khatib is the first natural-born American from a family of Palestinian and Filipino immigrants, who bravely heads up his own one-man band on a mission to revive 1950-60's era Rock "N" Roll , classic cars, Greaser chic, and straight razors. Khatib is a talented multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter/producer who's equally influenced by the stylings of Johnny Cash , Sam Cooke, Iggy & The Stooges , Black Sabbath, Johnny Burnette , etc. as well as Blues , Garage Rock, Soul , Folk, and Doo-Wop . Hanni el Khatib linked up with similarly-minded Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach to record his second album, Head In The Dirt , which Innovative Leisure's putting out on April 30th. The pair recorded 11 tracks down in Nashville , soon after Khatib opted to "erase everything he'd become comfortable with and to make an album out of only raw instinct and inspiration." Head In The Dirt 's lead-off single, "Family" now has...

Vex Ruffin releases his second EP today entitled Eulogy , which we're currently making available as a free download. The new work is a follow-up to his debut effort, Crash Course EP . The 6-track Eulogy EP picks up with the minimalist Pop of "Secret Weapon," Post-Punk "Perfect Congestion," and Goth, Dark Wave title track. Like Crash Course , all of the tracks on Eulogy were written, performed, and recorded solely by Vex. Stones Throw plans on releasing a vinyl edition of Eulogy EP as well as a third, as-yet Untitled EP this Summer followed by Vex Ruffin 's full-length debut in the Fall... - Stones Throw (Staff) Vex's live band will be playing a series of shows in Austin @ SXSW music conference, including the official Stones Throw showcase on March 13th. With the addition of drummer Liv Marsico , the four-piece band brings to life songs that were previously only performed solo by Vex Ruffin in his [home] studio. The band will also be pl...