Jamie Williams

Filthybird ready to take off

Drifting gently above warm instrumentation, Renee Mendoza's hazy voice is the ultimate weapon for Greensboro's Filthybird. Picture an ax, cutting straight through the otherwise darkly melodic sounds of her band. When she sings, it cuts deep and it hits immediately. That voice will be on display Saturday night at Cat's Cradle for the first time, a turn that Mendoza admits makes her a little nervous. "We're pretty nervous about playing there," she said. "But also so excited."

Get up and go!

Trekky grows without settling

It's 11:00 on a Saturday morning and Will Hackney, co-founder of Chapel Hill's Trekky Records is seated casually behind a card table as a few stragglers rummage through the remains of a yard sale that he has been overseeing for several hours. For the moment, I'm one of those latecomers, too attached to a summer morning of sleep to go out and search for the perfect bookshelf.

Play like a girl

From the Carrboro ArtsCenter's main stage, a drummer counts off, pounding her sticks together and calling out cues to her band mates, who respond in time with a heavy bass line and lyrics about an unrequited love. So what if there are also mentions of school lockers and the band is made up of girls between the ages of 10 and 12? Good songs know nothing of age or gender.

Join the club

As the sweat began to bead on his forehead, fresh from a hot and humid July morning spent pushing flyers on sleepy-eyed students and overwhelmed C-TOPers, Rusty Sutton walked into Cosmic Cantina and ordered a Dos Equis. For all the work he has done in the past few weeks, he deserved it. As any good business man would, Sutton saw a hole in the otherwise thriving Chapel Hill music community, and took it upon himself to fill it. "I just thought Chapel Hill has all these great bands, why are there no real festivals?

Silver Jews fail to grab attention

David Berman is known as the type of songwriter capable of crafting songs that stick around long after first listen. Not that they are melodically catchy or anything like that - quite the opposite, actually - Berman just writes songs that grab your attention. With his band Silver Jews, Berman has penned some of the most interesting declarations in indie rock. He famously opened 1998's American Water with the line, "I was hospitalized in 1984 for approaching perfection."

Bringing it back to the center

Jenks Miller is the type of musician who inspires anticipation. A pure artist with such versatile creativity and talent that each of his releases is met with curiosity, immediately followed by awe upon first listen. On his latest, and the first under his own name, Approaching the Invisible Mountain, Miller grabs his electric guitar, builds it up and tears it back down, stretching it further than most would consider, drawing tones from across the sonic map.

Advancing by staying the same

Craig Finn is nothing if not self-aware. On the first track of The Hold Steady's fourth LP, Stay Positive - released digitally Tuesday, with a physical release to follow in July - Finn exclaims in his raspy, fire-and-brimstone baritone, "All our songs are sing-along songs." That fact has made The Hold Steady the type of band that inspires boozy rants of fanfare with each of its epic tales of youth and despair.

Heathens recall punk greats

Rock 'n' roll as an art is built on the concept of musical mobilization, the idea that with one simple, three-minute call to arms, legions of kids can be transformed from apathetic slackers into a fist-pumping army capable of affecting change in their increasingly large world. Or, at the very least, capable of scaring the hell out of their parents.

TRKfest connects the dots

Not even a last minute line-up change could keep Durham's Megafaun from honoring its commitment to play TRKfest on Saturday afternoon in Pittsboro. Sans its regular drummer, who will be replaced by duo Midtown Dickens, the band will be taking the stage as a sort of Bull City super group this weekend. It's that sort of camaraderie that singer/guitarist Phil Cook said makes this area perfect for an all-day music festival. "Every time we are out on tour we talk about how cool the Triangle is, how nice all the people are."