WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOUL?: Wow, Seattlest really loved that song when Jewel first came out back in '96. When we went to Lilith Fair, Jewel's set was the one we thought we'd skip and go have dinner during. Then she started, and she was an absolutely captivating performer. We're not totally sure what she's been up to all these years since then, but we can vouch for the truth of the matter that Jewel......

Hailing from more subtle topography, we're quite familiar with contradictory claims of cosmology and vaguely defensible claims of capital-ity. In the folly of our youth, we may have thought that when one's town or region is naturally endowed with big things, there is no need to boast or to construct big kitschy things to compensate for a lack of overt interestingness. Well... perhaps that's not true at all. The other day in Seattlest HQ,......

Seattlest is on the road, delivering an automobile to The Other Washington. The previous night, we stayed in a charming little motel in Wallace, Idaho. We've been to Wallace before, very briefly, and made a note to return someday. The town is an architectural and historical gem; it is also the "Silver Capital of the World". That's the beauty of this great nation of ours: it's got more self-proclaimed capitals of this, that, and the......

TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT: Thursday night at R Place = Amateur Strip Show. Head out, show us what you've got, and maybe you'll walk away $200 richer. Second and third place prizes are $100 and $50, respectively. Then, once you've won, buy everyone in the room a round of drinks, and then stick around for a dance party courtesy of DJ Flo'w. After all, no work tomorrow, right? 9 p.m. // R Place // Free......

It's hard to believe, but the Dandy Warhols' sixth studio full-length (and the first on their own label) Earth To The Dandy Warhols will be out this August. The tongue-in-cheek Portland alt-rock band plays the Showbox SoDo tonight. Not sure if it would be a better or worse show if longtime frenemies Brian Jonestown Massacre crashed the gig. As far as we can tell, there's still tix available to tonight's Kultur Shock show at Chop......

We were very impressed by the great mobilization of Seaside, Oregon's Internet Defense Forces after our very first post about that town. Since then, we've had the pleasure to re-visit the place on several occasions, to eat at Herb's, and to exchange e-mails with residents. As a result, we have fallen deeper in love with both its charming small-town Americana as well as its gaudy tourism-pandering excesses. Seaside is the gold-standard and deliciously eponymous......

The Starlings—a band that started with Joy Mills and her husband Tomm but has since grown into a solid foursome—have spent the last couple of years forging their way through the local music scene, touring now and then. This Saturday, they'll celebrate the release of their second independent release, Marvelling the While—a wonderful collection of country-pop-and-blues-infused Americana that further solidifies their rootsy sound. The party's at the Tractor, where all rootsy CD releases tend......