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Listen Up!

Listen Up! brings you songs of bands and performers coming through town in the next week. Listen up, then go check them out live.

This playlist is no longer available. 

Tuesday, May 27
• With “Many Shades of Gray Black,” Jack White and Brendan Benson confirm our highly unscientific, yet (so far) fairly accurate theory that any song is made exponentially cooler by adding horns. (Know of a song with horns that sucks? We want to know!) White, Benson and the rest of the Raconteurs play the 9:30 Club tonight and tomorrow. Both shows sold out long ago, but you can try your luck on Craigslist.

Thursday, May 29
• New York City-based band Forro in the Dark blends forro, a type of music popular in northeastern Brazil, with contemporary sounds. The result is music that evokes Latin American rhythms and yet also sounds uniquely fresh. Forro in the Dark plays at Iota.  

Friday, May 30
• The band Virgins (aka the band Gossip Girl music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas overexposed by cramming five of its songs into a single episode of the show) continues to raise its profile by touring alongside She Wants Revenge as part of Nylon magazine’s Music Tour.
• British new wave glam band Switches, best known stateside for their song “Drama Queen,” is also part of the tour. Both bands play the 9:30 Club.

Sunday, June 1
• Like its sound, the story of the Submarines is almost too cute: John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard dated, then called it quits, and then reunited and formed the band (and eventually married) after running into each other at a recording studio and sharing songs both had written about their break-up.
• Illinois trio Headlights, whose most recent album Some Racing, Some Stopping has caught some slack from longtime fans for sounding too pop, opens the show for the Submarines at the Black Cat.

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