Features

Last year, White Denim were one of the festival's biggest hits, their success cemented by winning the Best New Band prize at the Austin Music Awards ? no small feat, given the proliferation of clubs and bands in the area.

White Denim - Power trio on the road from Austin

The hit of SXSW and Glastonbury, White Denim are building up an unstoppable momentum. Andy Gill meets the band who gave one of the most thrilling shows he's seen in years

Inside Features

Putting the fun into funky house

Friday, 10 July 2009

A new kind of house music has emerged from urban Britain – and it's taking over the dancefloors. By Rahul Verma

The Barometer: Vieux Farka Tour�; Here We Go Magic; Lightning Dust; The Duckworth Lewis Method; Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek; Your Twenties

Friday, 10 July 2009

What's hot on our playlist

Observations: A-listers cover a hot topic with another charity record

Friday, 10 July 2009

From the shrinking sheep populations of the Scottish archipelago of St Kilda to the diminishing ice sheets of Greenland, the effects of climate change are ever present. And now here's another charity record – Rhythms del Mundo: Classics, released on Monday. It hopes to raise awareness of the threat to our planet, and like a lot of charity records, has attracted a fine pedigree of A-list contributors: the Killers, the Kooks and Editors all step up, combining forces with Cuban collective Rhythms del Mundo to perform Dad-rock classics like "Imagine" (performed by Jack Johnson) and "Satisfaction" (Cat Power) with a twist.

Observations: You can't keep a good diva down

Friday, 10 July 2009

Poor Joyce DiDonato, leading an all-star line-up in Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Covent Garden, ended up with her leg in plaster on the show's opening night last Saturday. The American mezzo slipped and fell during the performance, fracturing her fibula. Despite the agony she pressed on, first with the gallant support of her tenor Juan Diego Flórez, later with a crutch. But on her blog she declared: "From here on out, I declare that no one (please!) ever ever wish me again to: 'BREAK A LEG'."

Bat for Lashes - Away with the fairies

Friday, 10 July 2009

Natasha Khan, aka Bat for Lashes, sings of a hippy-dippy universe of woodlands and wizards. Fiona Sturges enters her world

Observations: Fishing: the new rock'n'roll

Friday, 10 July 2009

It used to be that well-off rockers earned their dosh, then headed to rural retreats – the lifestyle Blur lampooned in "Country House". The epitome of the hellraiser-turned-backwoods-squire was the Who's Roger Daltrey with his trout farm. Now, though, messing about on rivers is being refashioned as a refuge from 21st-century life for disenchanted urbanites. Heavenly Records, the label that gave us the gritty Manic Street Preachers and London-worshipping St Etienne, have published a book of bankside reveries.

Observations: Hedonism or herbal tea? Choose your festival tribe

Friday, 10 July 2009

If you've ever been to a festival and had an inner battle between the hedonistic, 24-hour party animal in you and the calmer, sensible side that tells you when enough is enough, then this year's Secret Garden Party might be for you. Held on 23 to 26 July at Abbots Ripton Hall near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, the theme is the legends of Babylon and Eden, representing two sides of the human psyche.