The title of miwa’s first two releases, “Guitarissimo” and “Guitarium,” seemingly announced her musical niche. Those top-selling albums (her debut made her the first Japanese performer born in the 1990s to take the Oricon album chart’s top spot) revolved around guitar, in the form ...

Thousands of people have uploaded videos of themselves to YouTube playing acoustic covers of well-known songs. Armed with a guitar, a voice and dreams of viral stardom, the covers tackle everything from contemporary pop to hip-hop, and more often than not are done with ...

It’s 11 p.m. and Kanazawa venue Puddle is packed. The space is a two-room, wood-furnished cafe/bar in the city’s Katamachi neighborhood. There’s a mediocre jam band playing later that night, but the DJ set by Yasuhiro Tsukamoto is what catches my attention. With little ...

Chart-topping English indie-folk rock band Mumford and Sons anounced they had postponed three sell-out shows on their U.S. tour Tuesday while bassist Ted Dwane undergoes surgery for a blood clot. Writing on its website, the group — winners of this year’s Grammy award for ...

Summer means a lot of things in Japan: stifling heat and humidity, fireworks and the Bon holidays, nagashi-sōmen noodles and chilled barley tea. For music fans though, the season brings a different kind of to-do list: booking cheap train tickets in advance, stocking up ...

You can’t sell as many records as Travis have without dividing opinion. Like most bands that smash through the commercial ceiling — 1999′s breakthrough second album “The Man Who” sold 2.7 million copies in the U.K. alone — the Scottish four-piece count as many ...

When pop fans hear the words "death metal," they may cringe as they imagine songs about nails in the neck or impalements by bands with names like Cannibal Corpse and Dying Fetus. What may not spring to mind are songs about feudal Japan.

Sitting at her kitchen table, sipping green tea, Yoko Ono looks much the same as she did when I met her 20 years ago. Dressed in black and peering intently over tinted spectacles, her face bears little trace of the passing of time and ...