Lindsey Byrnes

Left to right: Andrew Dost, Nate Ruess and Jack Antonoff of fun.

With Sasquatch! 2012 just days away, music lovers everywhere should be stocking up on deodorant, sunscreen and $2 sunglasses. What better way then to usher in the biggest music weekend in the Northwest than with a special Tell Me About That Song featuring "We Are Young," the song you probably have stuck in your head right now. Nate Ruess, lead-singer of indie-pop band fun., who will be performing Sasquatch! May 28 at Bigfoot, spoke with me recently about the band's appearance on Glee, writing music in his car and what it was like to work with a hip-hop producer.

Song: "We Are Young"
Album: Some Nights
Release Date: Feb. 21, 2012

Thanks again for taking some time out today to talk to me about "We Are Young." I'm sure your schedule has been pretty bogged down with interviews and appearances. Yeah, I used to be the laziest person in the world, and really kind of loved that. But now if I have an hour off I just find myself wandering towards the radio station.

So, the Chevy commercial during the Super Bowl seems to be where everything took a sudden turn for "We Are Young." It's the first time I heard the song outside my car, and suddenly it shot to No. 1 on iTunes. Were you expecting such a massive reaction? I didn't think the reaction would be that quickly. I thought that there would be a spike. There's a really cool thing about "We Are Young," which is I had wanted to do this kind of hip-hop inspired album and work with a hip-hop producer and "We Are Young" was the one where I got to get with the producer that I always wanted to work with and sang him the song and he freaked out. He and I went and recorded it and it was like, oh my God, this really works. This experiment that I'm working on, it's really, really going to work.

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Dylan Jakobsen will be performing May 24 at El Corazon.

A lot went into writing your favorite song, but how much do you really know about it? This week Seattle singer-songwriter Dylan Jakobsen delves into the woes of relationships, his ex-girlfriend, and cutting ties when you know it's over.

Song: "I Hate You"

Album: Tell Everything

Release Date: June 16th, 2012

When it was written: Early Spring 2010

Where it was written: I wrote this song one day when I was chillin at my house and reflecting on the past few months of my life.

Favorite line in the song: My favorite line in the song is definitely "Maybe we were destined from the start, to fall in love and fall apart."

Which part was the hardest to come up with: The second verse is usually the hardest for me to come up with. In "I Hate You," I was trying to portray my regret with letting the relationship go on for so long, after I knew it was over.

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To Speak Of Wolves
Find Your Worth, Come Home
Solid State
May 22

If garage-core were a legit genre, To Speak Of Wolves would be the godfathers. Much like the first 10 seconds of any song by Norma Jean during the Doolittle days, each song is a spastic, energy-to-the-max mayhem of testosterone and intensity that explodes over and over and over.

The problem, however, arises in depth. Hardcore should be a healthy mixture of madness and beauty. Sweeping guitars and full-throttle vocals are wonderful, but what about the slow, pretty parts?

Find Your Worth, Come Home is basically an 11 song breakdown. Each track begins, develops and ends with fast, monotone screaming, distorted guitar and poppy snare. How are you supposed to know when there's a climax? Or, in simpler terms, if every day of your life is the best day of your life, how do you know when you're having a good day?

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Post Adolescence will be performing May 17 at El Corazon

A lot went into writing your favorite song, but how much do you really know about it? This week Johnny Straube, singer and guitarist of Seattle garage pop band Political Adolescence, delves into Tea Party antics, ridiculously long song titles and Lord of the Flies.

Song: "What You Would Call Socialism (I Would Call Civilization)"

Album: Single release

Release Date: 02/10/2012

When was it written: I had been working on the song for months but I didn't finish the lyrics until the day before we went into the studio to record it in late January. With the Tea Party doing something crazy every day, I'd probably still be writing it if I hadn't had a deadline.

Where it was written: Like many of our songs, I composed most of the music and lyrics at home and then the rest of it really came together at practice with the band.

Favorite line in the song: "Someone went and gave the patients the key, a media empire, and made an old joke official: The most trusted news comes from Comedy Central." It's a sad state of affairs when comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are more reliable with the news than the major networks.

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The Dead Milkmen will be performing May 11 at El Corazon.

A lot went into writing your favorite song, but how much do you really know about it? This week Dean Sabatino, a.k.a. "Dean Clean," drummer of Philly satirical punk rock band The Dead Milkmen, delves into his grandmother's funeral and the stories of a cigarette-smoking grave digger.

Song: "Cold Hard Ground"
Album: The King In Yellow
Release Date: March 18, 2011

When it was written: I wrote this song in late 2009. It was a bit unusual in that I wrote both the words and music together. I usually write one or the other.

Where was it written: I wrote it at home. Everyone in the band has a little home studio setup that allows all of us to work on music and songs. We email out demos and ideas, sometimes fully fledged songs and other times just riffs and ideas. This one came pretty quickly to me and was pretty well fully formed.

Favorite line in the song: "A visit to the ol' workplace will show everyone he's back."

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Sarah Day Photography

Black Beast Revival will be performing May 3 at El Corazon.

A lot went into writing your favorite song, but how much do you really know about it? This week Erin James, vocalist and guitarist of gritty Bellingham rock n' roll band Black Beast Revival, delves into writing songs while living in a van, recording in a 65-year-old repair shop and getting underwear thrown at him by a 400 lb. man.

Song: "Scorpion"
Album: Self-Titled EP
Release Date: Not yet released

When it was written: Oct. 2010

Where it was written: Outside of an abandoned grocery store around three in the morning, down the street from a particularly seedy strip club. I was living in the van (The Whiskey Beast) in and around Portland, meeting a lot of strange characters and writing music for a band that didn't yet exist.

Favorite line in the song: "Try to get up but your body is weakened. In your veins, death is creeping. Your heart begins to beat a little faster. It slips in and becomes your master."

If you could go back and change anything, what would it be: I would have won the Mega Millions Jackpot and had Rick Rubin produce the song in Abbey Road Studios.

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Beware of Darkness will be performing April 29 at El Corazon.

When words like "scathing," "potent," and "frightening" become synonyms for your brand of exorcism-esque rock, it's only natural you might butt heads with your record label. Regardless, Kyle Nicolaides and his band have a pretty clear message: they're pissed and they're going to make you uncomfortable. The vocalist/guitarist took some time to answer a few questions about "Culture Bomb," which dropped last week, and it would seem the L.A. band got the last laugh.

Song: "Culture Bomb"
Album: Howl EP
Release Date: April 17, 2012

When it was written: A January morning in 2012.

Where it was written: At my piano in my house in Eagle Rock.

Favorite line in the song: "If you cross my lord / He'll kill you dead/ Annihilate a planet / Just cause you can / They relocated heaven / And I'm not telling you where."

Which part was the hardest to come up with: The arrangement. I arranged the structure of the song 5 minutes before we recorded it. I was dragging my feet a bit.

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Can La get much higher?

La is Seattle's answer to Wiz Khalifa. Not only does he burn more trees than a forest fire, he also typically has something thoughtful to say when he rhymes. In honor of today's high holiday, he released a special 4/20-inspired track named after everyone's favorite pot-infused dessert.

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Lindsey Byrnes

Left to right: Andrew Dost, Nate Ruess and Jack Antonoff of fun.

Right on the heels of releasing 2012's most addicting singalong song, "We Are Young," fun.'s lead-singer Nate Ruess took some time out of his busy schedule to talk to me about one of the acoustic songs on the band's exclusive Record Store Day release of The Ghost That You Are To Me . With a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart already under his belt, Ruess delved into the the mystery magic behind "Carry On." The secret? Like most good things in life: vodka, cereal and Lost. Check out the song below the jump!

Song: "Carry On" (acoustic)

Album: The Ghost That You Are To Me, 10" LP 
(Record Store Day exclusive release)
Release Date: April 21, 2012

I appreciate you taking some time out of your day to talk with me. I was fortunate enough to see you perform a few weeks ago in Atlanta, and it was quite the show. That was a fun show. That was right before everybody got sick.

Everybody got sick? Yeah, we need to have a meeting, amongst like everybody on the bus, about how we can be a little bit more preventative from sharing all these germs. We had doctors come today to check everybody out. It's hard. That's like the hardest thing about touring, like I've now had a cough for the last month.

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Besides having the best accent I've ever heard, Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir of Icelandic indie-folk band Of Monsters and Men had much to say about the group's special track, "Sinking Man." Previously unreleased to anyone outside of Iceland, the song (which was inspired by a fictitious mafia drowning) can be found on the special 10" Record Store Day release of Into The Woods EP.

Song: "Sinking Man"

Album: Into the Woods EP

When was it released? Because we released the album in Iceland before we released it in United States and Canada, that song was like the secret song on the album. If you waited a few minutes that song would come and it's not on the U.S. or world wide release, but it was a little treat for the Icelandic people.

When did you write it? Me and Raggi [Ragnar þórhallsso, co-singer/guitarist] were just sitting around, and we spent a lot of late nights in the studio recording like vocals and stuff like that, and sometimes you know, we would just manage it ourselves. Everyone would just go home and I would be recording Raggi, Raggi would be recording me, and this song we sort of just recorded in secrecy. The band didn't really know about it, and we were kind of like, "Hey ... hear it is ... do you like it?" And it ended up being a secret song.

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