Hit the north: A tourist’s guide to the Fort Collins music scene

To most of the Front Range, Fort Collins is best known for producing microbrews and disappointing college athletics. Between the suds and defeats though, it has quietly and determinedly fostered a thriving music scene. With the Descendents’ Blasting Room Studios serving as the hub for a vibrant punk scene in the mid-’90s and a perpetually refreshing pool of college students from which to draw talent, the city of fewer than 140,000’s been a semi-isolated oasis of punk, indie, and singer-songwriter acts for well over a decade. Sorting through the backlog of acts from the Fort can be intimidating, so The A.V. Club offers this primer on the notable veterans and up-and-comers from the north.

Drag The River
Get to know them with: Hey Buddies (2004)
Why it’s worth the drive: Acoustic guitars and tight harmonies are everywhere in the underground these days, but Drag The River has made them the foundation of its laid-back alt-country sound since 1996. Revealing an obsession with hard living (and wading through the wreckage it brings on), singer-guitarists Jon Snodgrass and Chad Price’s voices and songwriting go together and play off each other better than Jameson and Marlboros—so much, in fact, that they could never really go through that breakup they announced in 2008.
Fort fun fact: When they’re not Dragging it, Snodgrass and Price both arm themselves with acoustic guitars and work the singer-songwriter angle as solo artists as well.

Sour Boy Bitter Girl
Get to know them with: Songs About The Landscape, Or Songs About The Wolf Army (2009)
Why it’s worth the drive: Singer-guitarist Benjamin Buttice boasts an aesthetic that puts him at the intersection of singer-songwriters and rockers. Rather than withering in that potential wasteland, he thrives, injecting Sour Boy Bitter Girl’s songs with a skewed literacy where love, nature, and wolf-man monsters exist in perfect equilibrium. Unlike other singer-songwriters, Buttice isn’t afraid to let his songwriting potentially get overshadowed by a crack backing band, as his crew delivers spirited arrangements that muddy the waters between indie rock, roots, and punk.
Fort fun fact: A deep wardrobe that includes capes, fake beards, and lots and lots of irony gives Sour Boy shows a touch of surrealism.

Danielle Ate The Sandwich
Get to know her with: Things People Do (2009)
Why she’s worth the drive: Her music videos aren’t quite as viral as “Chocolate Rain,” but there’s no denying Danielle Anderson’s YouTube jams found an online audience. Her videos of overbearingly twee folk tunes, mostly played on a ukulele and filmed in one quick, no-editing-needed take have notched more than 2.5 million views on the site. She’s more than just a hyper-cuddly folk songbird, though, as the solo act’s traded her YouTube cachet for coveted opening spots at last year’s Monolith Festival and this summer’s Mile High Music Festival—a jump to the flesh-and-blood world that often eludes YouTube sensations.
Fort fun fact: Before getting her Internet jams going, Anderson played in Backdraft, which didn’t have any sickly sweet videos online, and thus fizzled without getting much attention.

Allegaeon
Get to know them with: Allegaeon EP (2008)
Why it’s worth the drive: Although the five-piece only has a four-song EP to its name, Allegaeon is the reigning king of the Choice City metal scene. That's partially because its debut album, Fragments Of Form And Function, drops July 20 on Metal Blade Records, but it’s also because the act shreds. Like, totally shreds. With blast beats pounding every which way, the act’s post-apocalyptic metal thrives on confrontational energy and manic fretboard gymnastics from its guitar players, although it crams the faintest whiff of melody behind all the sturm und drang.
Fort fun fact: Guitarist Greg Burgess is a card-carrying guitar hero, with a degree from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music hanging on his wall to back it up.

Wire Faces
Get to know them with: Wire Faces (2010)
Why it’s worth the drive: When’s the last time you caught a singing drummer who could simultaneously excel at both job duties better than merely holding down the fort? Watching singer-drummer Shane Zweygardt assault his kit while barking out anthemic lead vocals is worth the price of admission alone. Add wiry guitars that check everything from classic early-’80s post-punk to D.C.-bound post-hardcore, and the trio should make you reconsider any ideas about the post-punk revival’s waning abilities in a whirl of slicing guitar licks and rubbery basslines.
Fort fun fact: Zweygardt and guitarist Ian Haygood built their chemistry—and hard-rockin’ reputation—playing in The Jimi Austin before that act splintered after a three-year run.

Candy Claws
Get to know them with: In The Dream Of The Sea Life (2009)
Why it’s worth the drive: Although they're still working the kinks out of the expanded eight-member lineup unveiled earlier this year, Candy Claws knows their way around home recording. Meticulously layering, looping, and laboring over brief samples of guitar, keys, and voice, the band (which is primarily Ryan Hover and Kay Bertholf during recording) manipulates its bits and pieces to form sweeping, otherworldly soundscapes that are one part mellow psychedelia and one part fragile dream pop.
Fort fun fact: The act’s debut and its forthcoming Hidden Lands (due out in August) are conceptual pieces written to be musical counterpoints to Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us and Richard Ketchum’s The Secret Life Of The Forest.

Magic Cyclops
Get to know him with: Best Of Synthesizer Hits (2005)
Why he is worth the drive: You can’t live your life exclusively to the tune of emotionally aware and artistically meaningful music. Sometimes you need a dose of unabashed stupidity to get you through the weekend, and that’s where Magic Cyclops comes in. Mincing clunky synths inspired by everyone from Devo to Daft Punk, Magic plants his tongue firmly in his cheek and adopts a faux British accent and international-superstar persona to launch into campy tales that cover timeless topics such as unicorns and teen pregnancy.
Fort fun fact: When he’s not rocking out to his own songs, Magic Cyclops plays a mean air guitar—so mean it’s landed him a spot in air guitar championships around the country for the past couple of years.