Genre-defining changes don’t happen very often. You don’t wake up every day to find something new that’s going to change the world in a hugely significant way. That’s why, when these things do happen, it’s a pretty big deal, and so are the people who bring them about.

 Free music in its many facets can be difficult to fully appreciate nowadays, but breaks norms for musical outreach. Michigan’s Chiodos will adhere to the free model for hometown fans after recently creating its own label imprint on Razor & Tie: drk/lgt.

It’s all about the groove for The Mainstays as their emergence as a modern day funk-soul band aims to revive a style of music from a bygone era, playing such classic sounds that legendary soul masters would have loved to recreate.

• The Mainstays
• Paul Bauer
• Dutch Conway
• Nate Heymoss
• Tom Eldred
• Andrew Schrock

The growing musical affection Stepdad has received through its steady growth as a rising band may be just enough to soon push them over the edge into the indie pop mainstream. Don’t think it’s as easy as it sounds, as reaching this level of popularity doesn’t just happen overnight.

• Stepdad
• Strange Tonight
• Ultramark
• Mark Tafel
• Quite Scientific Records

The local music scene has been struck with yet another subgenre of rock 'n' roll music, but this time it’s one whose musical quality doesn’t fall short of a pure commitment to the genre.

The last time Chicago-based Veil of Maya visited Grand Rapids was in late 2011, when its latest full-length album Eclipse (2012) was looming on the horizon. The band returns to town at the onset of spring, and it will find itself in more familiar territory than geography alone. 

For Jonathan Meiburg, lead singer and songwriter for Shearwater, choosing a career as a rock musician over a lifelong commitment to academia has paid off. While he may look the part of someone who holds a master's degree in geography and specializes in ornithology (the study of birds), Meiburg's truest passion is for music.

Each album in the Glowfriends' extensive catalog tends to hug a central theme, but, the Kalamazoo-based band's vocalist April Zimont insists that this is not intentional.

Future Islands is a band that's not shy about examining the human condition. Since 2006, this synthpop trio out of Baltimore has churned out three albums exploring the complexities of love, the truths found in memories and even the deep emotional scars left behind by breakups.

Call it an obvious fact, but outer space is complex and big; so is the dense, dynamic style of the progressively evolving technical metal group Between the Buried and Me. This past fall, the band toured and played the entirety of its latest album, The Parallax II: Future Sequence (2012). The shows were complemented by imagery contained within the album's booklet, which illustrates and lyrically guides listeners along the spiritual, intergalactic journey.