We’ve been braised by the Chicago sun numerous times this summer while standing in multitudinous crowds, but what could one more weekend hurt? Especially when it’s Lollapalooza. The annual music fest is Chicago’s largest, taking place in Grant Park across 7 stages and from before noon on Friday until nearly midnight on Sunday. This weekend, enjoy some of our suggested awesome queer and not-so-queer, but still dear, musical acts.

On Friday, enjoy the oddly melodic Devo (4 PM) and Dirty Projectors (5 PM) if work lets you out to play. Follow up with former Mondayers Chromeo (7 PM), and wrap up the night with your choice of the sexy Strokes or Her Royal Strangeness Lady Gaga.

Saturday brings the sublime Rogue Wave (1 PM) or the spicy Dragonette (1:45 PM), or strategize a way to see Stars (2:15) in the daytime. Savor the afternoon delight of Grizzly Bear (4:15 PM), then dance the night away with Cut Copy (7:30 PM) and Empire of the Sun (9 PM). In the interim, try some of the francophilic pleasures brought by Phoenix (8:30 PM).

If you find yourself able to crawl out of bed and into the morning light on Sunday, might we suggest a toast to HEALTH (11:30 AM)? Take a chaser of Didi Gutman (from Brazilian Girls)’s DJ set (1:30 PM), and then head to Yeasayer at 4 PM. Time your heartbeat to the earthy tones of Erykah Badu at 5 PM and get a bit surreal with MGMT (6 PM). Go out with a blaze with The Arcade Fire (8:30 PM). Hopefully, these recommendations keep your weekend flowing from start to finish.

Summer is very often a time of ambivalence: too much gorgeous weather to stay inside, but too hot to disabuse yourself of the air conditioner. Let Cul de sac suggest you take some of the guesswork out of this summer weekend and attend the Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park (off the Ashland-Lake Green Line stop). Here are few highlights for your ears to chill to while your flesh melts:

Robyn (Friday, 6:25 PM) – She’s come a long way from “Show Me Love,” blasting away her old sweet-girl image with a “Konichiwa Bitches.” She is now working on a more fleshed out approach to albums with the multi-part Body Talk series, while still churning out dance floor fodder for your favorite gay bar.

Broken Social Scene (Friday, 7:20 PM) – They may still be your fags, but Broken Social Scene has gone through some changes since their sonic departures over the past few years with solo albums by members Feist, Kevin Drew, and Brendan Canning and separate band project releases for Metric with Emily Haines and Stars with Amy Millan. Their recent release Forgiveness Rock Record expands their atmospheric instrumentation and harmonies with more bombastic rock tones.

Panda Bear (Saturday, 7:25 PM) – Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox strikes off on his own as a lonely panda for this year’s tour. His new album, Tomboy, doesn’t hit the streets till September but enjoy the ambient beats in the shade this weekend.

Beach House (3:20 PM) – The perfect summer locale, the perfect concoction of dream pop, the perfect murder (if this were an R.L. Stine novel). While these may not all be perfect explanations of duo Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally, there is a certain amount of sinister that has to go into how well-crafted are the singles on their 2010 release Teen Dream.

Major Lazer (6:15 PM) – No beach house is complete without a good party, and a good party isn’t complete without rockin’ DJs (oh, the connections!) Diplo and Switch combine their auditory wizardry to break the news that partying is here to stay in the USA, in much more convincing way than Madamoiselle Cyrus.

Sleigh Bells (Sunday, 7:40 PM) – In true Pitchfork fashion, one of the closing evening bands is the much-buzzed–with good reason–Sleigh Bells. Their dissonant noise pop still allows room for lots of danceable beats and singable lyrics, like “keep thinking about every straight face yes/wonder what your boyfriend thinks about your braces” from current hit “Rill Rill.” We hope your straight boyfriend likes your braces, too.

Dressed often in cut-off tees, various lengths of facial hair and military garb, the Casady sisters are anything but conventional. The music Sierra and Bianca create as CocoRosie has followed through on this promise with genre-hopping tunes–mixing folk, opera, hip-hop, jazz and Eastern influences, plus a dash of whatever else happens to be lying around–over the course of their four album career. In support of their latest relase, Grey Oceans, CocoRosie is stopping at Chicago’s Metro on Friday, June 18 as part of their tour.

CocoRosie’s newest album focuses more on atmosphere than crafting standalone pop gems, though first single “Lemonade” does the trick. Layered vocals, down-played piano and violin forgo the previous sonic elements of reconsituted childhood toys and guitar, which make a more subsidiary presence here, especially in the diddy “Hopscotch.” Their poetic verse remains as fresh as ever, juxtaposing abstract and sometimes absurd rhymes with very visual imagery, best exemplified in “Smokey Taboo” and “Fairy Paradise.” Check out the gorgeous and creepily Victorian video for “Lemonade” below:

With the wave of U.K. female imports that came a few years ago–Lily Allen, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Duffy–Kate Nash may have gotten a little lost in the shuffle. With her new album My Best Friend is You, released April 20, Nash expands and reinvents her sound to stand out a little more from her contemporaries. A few tracks sound like they would fit with Nash’s debut Made of Bricks, like the opener “Paris” and “Later On” as well as the rambling “Pickpocket.” Best Friend introduces an aggressive ’60s girl-group aesthetic with songs like the single “Do Wah Doo” and “Kiss That Grrrl,” in which Nash describes her insecurities with her guy noticing other women. Nash rounds out her sound with an art-punk/new wave aesthetic on “I Just Love You More” and “Don’t You Want to Share the Guilt?” and sometimes finding a place somewhere in the middle of these two styles in a more avant-garde fashion with the spoken-word “Mansion Song” or time-signature change-up “I’ve Got a Secret.”

Kate Nash will be making an appearance in Chicago on May 3 at Lincoln Hall. Her storytelling style and fluid genre shifts are proving a compelling combination and revealing her to be a very strong performer. Nash’s side project, The Receders, picks up on her affinity for punk and will hopefully see her continuing to pave a path for future female artists.

The first quarter of 2010 has brought anticipated albums from a wide variety of artists. Though there are many more LPs to Cul de sac is excited to give an ear-gander to in the upcoming months, we thought we’d do a quick survey of what we’ve enjoyed grooving to so far this year:

Vampire Weekend‘s Contra: The follow-up to the break-out Vampire Weekend, Contra continues to deliver on their debut’s Peter Gabriel-influenced vox and synth but adds more sparse tracks, like “Cousins,” and takes a bit more time for contemplation , especially in songs such as “Diplomat’s Son,” which VW’s sole gay member Rostam Batmaglij claims is a “six-minute dancehall song about a gay relationship.” Not to mention the band is tres adorbs, as well.

Xiu Xiu‘s Dear God, I Hate Myself: The very prolific Jamie Stewart offers more personal trauma and queer-friendly histories with Dear God, I Hate Myself. Taking a note from Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 2009 It’s Blitz!, new bandmate Angela Seo centralizes the keyboard as a fundamental part of the sound of the album. Stewart’s familiar vocals and atypical song structure are still key to the album, but the blend of old and new is a refreshing change.

Yeasayer‘s Odd Blood: Yeasayer have fleshed out their weirdo aesthetic with more influences for their latest album, totally hitting the mark as a self-described “Enya with bounce.” Elements of synth-rock and vocal playfulness are still in full effect, but so are Afro-punk vibes, animal noises, vocal synth. The bouncy single “Ambling Alp” has a nice pop sheen to it, while the gorgeous “Madder Red” lends a great deal of sincerity to the proceedings.

Erykah Badu‘s video for “Window Seat”: This stunning video–for which Badu is currently facing charges for public indecency–matches the tone of her song perfectly; a black woman’s proclamation of her own independence that ultimately gets shot down. An interesting note that this was filmed on the same Dallas street where President Kennedy was assassinated.

While y’all were enjoying a spring awakening in Chicago, Cul de sac was in Austin, Texas, checking out the sounds of the South by Southwest Music Festival. This yearly fest is proceeded by a Film and Interactive Media  portion, but the real party starts with Wednesday’s coronation of the music showcases. Since this is a spotlight of upcoming or established artists promoting new material, our highlights below should help navigate some of 2010′s most compelling offerings.

Even though we were more than 1,000 miles away, our hearts were still firmly planted in Chicago, which is why we checked out the Friday night It’s Chicago showcase at The Lodge, featuring Chicago acts Moneypenny, Willy Joy and The Hood Internet mixing hip-hop, classic rock and Rick Astley.

We had a rocking good time checking out day shows from the Chicago-based booking agency Windish, outside Urban Outfitters and at Emo’s. Local Natives played a snappy set of delicately harmonized vocals over downtrodden percussion, strings and keys. Free Energy kept us dancing with their high-energy, carefree rock at multiple locations, including the Rolling Stone and Spin magazine parties. Nostalgic promo cassettes of their current LP, Stuck on Nothing, were a great addition to a set firmly planted in the past and present of rock.

Though we had a good time hanging with rocking dudes, witnessing strong female-led performances by previous Mondayer Marina and the Diamonds (U.S. album release May 25th), Spin starlet Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and the Elizabeth Harper-fronted Class Actress was the perfect way to close out our Lone Star-tinted week. Jumping from modern pop-rock sensibility to classic Motown sound to synth-soaked 80s throwback kept us on our toes–exactly where we wanted to be. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings new album, I Learned the Hard Way, will be released on April 6, and we can’t wait to relive the moment she taught us how to mashed potato and ride the pony. Class Actress recently released their first EP, Journal of Ardency, in February.

Though we’re glad to be back in Chicago–less so because of the re-freeze of weather–this year’s SXSW captivated and reminded us of all the things we love about Austin: music, good people, and a great time.

Female hip hop stars are akin to major metropolitan areas in the central United States: they can be few and far between. In a male-dominated industry that some perceive as generally misogynistic, it takes a strong voice both literally and lyrically to stand apart and prove that hip-hop is more than a boys’ club. Nicki Minaj has proven her skills at the age of 25 by being signed to Lil Wayne’s Young Money label and putting out four mixtapes in the last four years that combine samples from other artists with Minaj’s original work.

Although Minaj has had to work through the same issues that have plagued many female emcees, namely sex appeal being valued over substance and public scrutiny of her sexual orientation, her work is picking up thousands of fans and showing the viability of different forms of expression for young females everywhere.

It’s 2010, and Cul de sac is back in session. We decided to kick it old school by starting off with our nouveau classique series, Musician Mondays. Marina Diamandis is a 24-year-old Greek-Welsh singer based in London who plugs into sounds ranging from ’80s new wave to modern pop, dance and synth-rock. Her surname literally translates as “Diamonds” and is used as a stage moniker to denote her fans, not her backing band. Marina and the Diamonds‘ debut album, The Family Jewels, will be released on February 22 in the US.

Marina’s voice recalls strong female alt-musicians from Kate Nash and Lily Allen to Kate Bush and Imogen Heap, and her lyrics touch on identity-formation, commercialization and female sexuality. She is currently touring her native UK, heading across the pond for a few dates in New York this March. The first single from the album, “Hollywood” is set to be officially released on February 1 (our editor-in-chief’s date of birth!), but you can watch the video below:

by Jacob McPherson

British indie-powerhouses The XX and Friendly Fires are touring together.  They will be playing a sold-out show at Bottom Lounge in Chicago on Tuesday, December 1st.  Although the two produce music that differs greatly from each other, the pairing is unsurprising.  The XX debuted in August of this year and create music that shows influences of R&B and 80’s guitar.  Deep bass complemented by well-tuned vocals drives their sound.

Friendly Fires have been on the scene since September of 2008.  They create a sound that can be best described as Britpop dance-punk.  It seems appropriate that The XX are opening for them, as they will get the mood started out right for the high energy that Friendly Fires will bring.  Both artists are on the Beggars roster and are of equal caliber.

Although I will not be seeing this show, I have seen both of these acts separately.  The members of Friendly Fires are true rock stars and will have everyone dancing to tracks like “Jump in the Pool” and “Photobooth.”  The XX forces the audience to pay attention and become part of the music.  With tracks like “Crystalize” and “Islands,” a melodic journey is sure to take place.

by Jacob McPherson

Friday night, I ventured over to the Metro to experience the Peaches concert.  Amanda Blank opened, and I was a little underwhelmed with her performance, given all the hype around her.  However, she was still enjoyable and made an appropriate opener for Peaches.  Since this was my second time seeing Peaches, I knew what to expect from the performance.

I first saw Peaches at The Music Hall of Williamsburg. Drag personality Sherry Vine was in the VIP section; it is very hard to compete with that, but Peaches still delivered an incredible show.  What I enjoy most about her is that she truly is a performer.  She wears the most ridiculous outfits, walks across the crowd, and brings a third dimension to her music.

As expected, the majority of the crowd was queer.  With risqué songs like “Tent in Your Pants,” “I Feel Cream,” and of course, “Fuck the Pain Away,” it was pretty much like a Friday night at Berlin.  Although her latest album, I Feel Cream, put out by XL Recordings, has been out for a while, it is still a must for any party mix.