After a seven-year hiatus, Broken Social Scene is back with new album Hug of Thunder. The Canadian collective is as famous for their sprawling, emotional, baroque-pop as their ability to swell from 10 to 19 members onstage, at any given show. These days, they continue to grow concomitantly off-stage as well. Broken…

Stars are back, folks. Well, at least the Canadian indie pop band is back to doing what it does best: writing deeply emotive, vividly detailed analyses of the issue of love (or lack of it). Theirs are the words most of us would write or sing if we had…

Torquil Campbell (center) and Stars, courtesy. Torquil Campbell the actor should know a thing or two about stage terminology. The son of two Shakespearean actors, a veteran of the theater and with appearances on television shows in Canada and the U.S. under his belt, Campbell knows the music his…

Torquil Campbell (center) and Stars, courtesy. Torquil Campbell of Stars says his band is both beautiful and deadly. “We cover things in flowers. We make them beautiful and pretty, and if you swallow them, you might get poisoned,” he said. “And that’s kind of what the point of the…

Torquil Campbell (center) and Stars, courtesy. SANTA CRUZ — There are so many possible uses for a rose at a rock show: Throw them into the crowd (less painful than drumsticks), use them as drumsticks (for the dramatic effect), or get them jammed in an adjustable microphone stand (which may…

Amy Millan of Stars and Broken Social Scene, courtesy. This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune. Montreal singer Amy Millan has two theories about why her hometown is now a den of great indie music artists. The sweet-voiced chanteuse’s first theory is based on two climates.  “I think…