On Sunday, May 31, three of TRACER's staff members stopped by the Southgate House to catch sets by two of Brooklyn's finest exports: The Antlers and Au Revoir Simone. Amanda Carnes sums up the evening, which also included an exclusive video shoot with Au Revoir Simone (coming soon to a personal computing device near you)!

Today's the day! We are proud to present "The Cover Up," a new series of video featurettes brought to you by TRACER Magazine and Ragged. In this inaugural installment, Great Lake Swimmers' Tony Dekkar performs his favorite Carter Family song, "The Storms Are on the Ocean." It's a TRACER exclusive—dig it.

Special thanks to Great Lake Swimmers and the fine folks at Newport, Kentucky's Southgate House. 

Detroit’s Deastro have spent the first half of 2009 being named Pitchfork’s Band of the Week, Real Detroit Weekly’s Band of the Year for 2008, and lulling in the limelight of a Rolling Stone Breaking Band piece. TRACER’s Mylynda Nellermoe has a conversation with Deastro’s ultra intelligent, ridiculously likeable songsmith Randolph Chabot about what compels him to create music, the decision to expand his solo project into a full band, and a few of his favorite Midwestern acts.

Darla Farmer made their debut Boston performance on Tuesday, May 26th. I met Bryce Leonard (bass) of Darla Farmer out front of TT the Bear's before the show. The band arrived a little late from New York City, where they'd played the Mercury Lounge and a house party in Brooklyn the night before. Leonard said it was his first time playing in Boston and I wish we could have given them a warmer welcome. TT's on a Tuesday, particularly after a long Memorial Day weekend, is not a good time to have a show, especially when that show is your debut to Boston audiences.

In addition to catching their sets at this year's MidPoint Indie Summer Concert Series and and Whispering Beard Folk Festival, music fans can also hear Cincinnati's The Hiders at another venue this summer: the movies. The band's "Plastic Flowers," from last year's excellent Penny Harvest Field, can be heard in the new Max Mayer comedy-drama flick, Adam. More details after the jump.

Beardos rejoice! The Whispering Beard Folk Festival proudly presents three days of music at the Thorn Hill Farm in Morning View, Kentucky. The festival takes place on August 28-30 and includes headlining sets by The Hackensaw Boys (Friday, August 28) and Peter Rowan (Saturday, August 29) and performances by some of the finest musicians in the Midwest. More details, including the full lineup, after the jump!

Kath Bloom sings with a youthful voice strained somewhere between its shrill breaking point and an intimate whisper. She passes through registers of casual exertion and high-pitched warble, stressing the acquired taste of her off-kilter idiosyncracies. With sparse instrumentation and pleading folk melodies Bloom’s textured sound and phrasing recall Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez minus the jazzy bullshit, surpassing them both. Through the yelps and wandering, (almost) aimless notes, one can hear the seeds of Cat Power, Smog, and the Palace Brothers. "No More Rides" and "Come In" are, in fact, so Kath Bloom-esque as to almost warrant co-writing credits. Decades ago, she laid the ground for an amorphous post-folk shining beauty that sounds current and also echoes something dusty and eternal.

Entering stage with a quaff of madman meets T Rex meets young Einstein hair, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, Dan Bejar (otherwise known as Destroyer) boiled down his complex song mazes to rarefied folk gems. Possibly every review dealing with Bejar’s music succumbs to the obligatory reference to David Bowie and Pavement. We shall restrain ourselves from falling into that trap—other than to mention that it was a rare treat to hear such thickly layered songs like "European Oils" and "Bad Arts," both of which work so well as jangly post-glam freakouts, reborn in an unplugged setting.