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​With little over a year under its belt as an official band, eclectic Williamsburg-based quartet Ambassadors found its music video for "Tropisms," the very first single off the group's self-titled debut EP, featured on MTVu's Freshman Five. More >>

​Hip-hop has been changing the world of music since the Last Poets dropped their debut album in 1970. By nature, the peripheral evolution is a signal sent from the depths of the underground, representing a heartbeat that drives the creative genius behind the genre.

The wavelengths, at their peaks, create music icons and, at their lows, are a catalyst for industry-infecting auditory fads. The digitally inclined sonic youth are bearing witness to a new generation of rap innovators.

This is a list of who stands out and who we think will make a name in the game. More >>

​Back in late December, our main music feature spotlighted the colossal producing exploits of Pompano-based hip-hop beat-smith Numonics. In that piece, we found the studio dynamo preparing to unveil five projects with five different emcees in 2012. Brother was certainly in demand.

Numonics sent us a taste of his studio wizardry with "Dead or Alive," the first single off renowned battle emcee Knowledge Medina's EP Never Enough (the first of Numonics' aforementioned five projects, this one set to be released on February 7 via djbooth.net,) featuring a guest appearance from cerebral rapper REKS.

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​Everyone loves a rap supergroup.  From newer crews like Slaughterhouse and EMC to older classics like the Firm and Crooklyn Dodgers; rarely is the whole greater than the sum of its parts but they're still pretty damn entertaining.  Now introducing, for the first time ever, Bonus, Dirty Dem, GAPS, Jabrjaw and Protoman as the Party Monsters.  5 MCs, two of which also produce, no DJ (I'm looking at you Dee Dubbs and/or Rob Riggs) and a whole lot of trouble.More >>

​Although it's located four counties north, we'd still have to give props to Brevard County hard-rocking three-piece Elephantgun for being the sole Florida entry in "Ampeg Straight Up Tone Competition." As of noon today this trio was sitting pretty in first place, up by 100 votes over indie Worcestershire UK troupe Zebedy Rays.

The bands are vying for a ton of equipment (two killer Ampeg rings, a Portaflex bass combo, and an all-new GVT guitar combo stack) and more important an all-expenses paid-trip to Nashville to perform an A&R-rep-laden gig at the Guitar Players Superstar event at music industry shebang the Summer NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) 2011.

The contest will continue until 6 p.m. today, so we thought a last-minute push for our brothers from the Space Coast wouldn't hurt. More >>

​This West Palm Beach act is named after one of French duo Justice's celebratory gritty dance tracks. So one gets the impression that D.V.N.O. would be some sort of club act decked to the nines in black leather, tweaking knobs and squelching out samples. However, that's not the case. Although this local quartet shares an equal affinity for danceable thrust with the French pair from which it cribbed its moniker, the similarities end there.
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​One of the driving forces behind Respectable Street's Thursday-night indie mainstay, "Flaunt," DJ J.J. Contramus, has branched out on his own with a new project titled Symbols. Chock-full of brooding synthesizers and distant, unintelligible lyrics, this is "witch-house" finally embedding itself in South Florida. In layman's terms and (as the name implies,)  Symbols (and Michigan's Salem before it) craft spooky, tripped-out dance music. Probably the kind of stuff a zonked-on-ecstasy Freddy Krueger might groove to. More >>

Still from Dirty Dem's "Office Music" clip, directed by Ian Witlen.

​Don't lie, you totally shed a tear last week during loveable fop Michael Scott's final episode of The Office. It was a sad day at our favorite fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin indeed.
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​Fans of Viva Le Vox's charismatic ex-bull fiddler, James "Scarecrow" Jenkins, will be happy to know that he has landed on his feet and is fronting a band of his very own called the Loxahatchee Sinners Union. Jenkins says he had been lying low after what he calls his "untimely departure" from the Lake Worth punkabilly act last year and had decided to take on a few solo shows at the start of the year.

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