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The Heartless Bastards' story starts in Dayton, Ohio, where Wennerstrom found the name on a multiple choice video trivia game at a bar. As a songwriting teenager during a time when Guided by Voices and Brainiac were packing local bars and three of The Breeders were still in town, Wennerstrom used to sneak into clubs to check out the scene. "I would just see those people—my music heroes—hanging out at the bar like everyone else," she remembers. "I could see myself in them. It gave me inspiration to do my own thing."

Desaparecidos was a short-lived American quintet formed in 2001 in Omaha, Nebraska, fronted by Conor Oberst (vocals, guitar) and featuring Denver Dalley, now of Statistics (guitar), Landon Hedges, now of Little Brazil (bass), Ian McElroy (keyboards), and Matt Baum (drums). This project however was restarted in 2010. Oberst may be better known for his confessional songwriting and storytelling as the lead singer of the popular indie folk band Bright Eyes, but Desaparecidos has a very different flavor.

Sydney band and artist duo Circle Pit (Angie Bermuda and Jack Mannix) inhabit and navigate a murky sea of rock and roll iconography: faded denim, leather, skulls, silver jewelry, bleached hair, fingerless gloves, bird bones, empty beer bottles, feathers, fur, aviator shades, scribbled out or scrawled on text… Hell, even their name is taken from a slam-dance style preferred by skinheads and hardcore enthusiasts of the 1980s.

Nels Cline (born in Los Angeles in 1956) is an American guitarist and composer. Currently he is the lead guitarist of the rock band Wilco. Nels began to play guitar at age 12 when his twin brother, Alex Cline took up the drums. Cline is not classically trained. This gives him a unique avant-garde style that many other jazz guitarists fail to match, due to their probable conventional training. He is noted for his apt use of effects pedals and looping devices, which enhances his style and gives his approach to guitar and music a distinct sound.

Read more about Nels Cline on Last.fm.