The Denver hip-hop trio BLKHRTS is seeing that some people are having a hard time trying to classify the type of music they make. The music is dark and aggressive and influenced by industrial and punk rock like Joy Division and The Misfits. The trio, which consists of Yonnas Abraham, King FOE and Karma tha Voice, dress in all black, give menacing looks from the stage, and when the music drops, go crazy. One writer called their style “goth rap.”

The band (which at this point consisted of Emmitt, Herman, Vann, accordion player Gerry Cavagnaro, drummer Michael Wooten and bassist Rob Galloway) plays the cover pretty faithfully for the first couple of verses. Then, suddenly, the drums cut out and Herman starts a spoken-word creed filled with local imagery, delivering a tale of.

Balancing high school, extracurriculars and college prep is hard enough — until you throw in band practice, late shows and planning a tour. But somehow, the members of Hatrick Penry can do it all.

Cynthia Katsarelis, director of Pro Music Colorado Chamber Orchestra, is a storyteller. “I kind of believe that music is always telling some kind of story, even if it’s an abstract story,” she says.

The band that rode to platinum-selling success on the song “How to Save a Life” could now write a song about how the Muppets may have saved a band.

Our rationale goes something like this: Hey, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and USA Today have already lauded Todd Snider’s Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, the songwriter’s none-too-subtle screed against the current trickledown angst consuming an American public being prepped for four years as Mitt Romney’s pool boy, so we took the opportunity to quiz the songwriter instead on his soon-to-be-released Jerry Jeff Walker tribute CD, Time As We Know It.

In the age of the Internet, buying an album is about as personal as checking the weather. Gone are the days of awaiting the next release of your favorite band before buying a copy at your local music store and popping a copy into your player at home.

The Boulder Philharmonic’s season finale concert has more unusual angles than a geometry textbook. And fortunately for Boulder’s classical music audiences, they are all positive.

You might call them “culture warriors,” though you won’t find them armed with Bibles and picket signs. They’re not even that angry. New York rap trio Das Racist are more hipster wise-alecks battling mediocrity in witty verses lined in hip slang and carpeted with pop culture sediment.

As Communikey approaches its fifth year as a festival and its eighth year as an organization, founder, creative and managing director Kate Lesta is in disbelief over how the electronic music scene has changed in the past decade.