It's True, Depressed Buttons (The Faint), City Weekly, Blitzen Trapper

Local boys It's True say they put 15,000 miles on their van last year. I'm impressed because I've seen the van. I'm honestly not sure it can handle that kind of mileage.

Anyway, they're headed out on tour again, hitting up 13 concerts on a 16-day jaunt. The band starts in Colorado and heads westward through California and then back again.

It may not sound very impressive to some, but it's a pretty lengthy set of dates for a label-less Nebraska band. I think it's a great next step for the guys and it's one that I think more local groups would do well to replicate.

Playing Omaha every two weeks will give you a good audience in Omaha, but making that next step often results in building up an audience in those places. One satisfied customer in a town on your tour will become three or four the next time you come through because he's going to tell his friends.

Check out the dates on the band's MySpace.

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Depressed Buttons is now online. If you haven't heard the name before, you at least know the membership: brothers Todd Fink and Clark Baechle and their buddy Jacob Thiele, all of The Faint.

It's basically the name the trio has been using for the DJ sets and remixes that they've been doing for awhile. Soon, you can catch their remix of Boys Noize's "Kontact Me" on vinyl. That remix, as well as a few others, are on the group's MySpace page.

Big surprise, the remixes sound rather Faint-y. I like that.

Does this spell the end of The Faint? I doubt it, though they seemed all too happy to give away copies of "Fasciinatiion," their latest album, at their last Omaha shows. They've got that Maha show coming up, if you haven't heard (ha!), and I don't think they'd do these shows if they weren't interested in being a band any more.

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Seems like the City Weekly has gone the way of the buffalo. Again.

Marq Manner said on Facebook that his music column will continue on in Shout! Weekly, as the City Weekly will cease printing. It happened once before, earlier this year, so we'll see if it's resurrected again or not.

Good to hear Marq has a home. There's a lot of musical coverage and opinions in this town and I think that's great. I gotta say that I don't have much to say that Tim McMahan didn't address in his own blog the other day. I enjoy reading from Tim, Marq and everyone else and you can learn a lot by reading "the other guy," so to speak.

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I interviewed Eric Earley from Blitzen Trapper last week. Much like the first time I interviewed him (back when they played with Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks on election night in 2008), he is pretty terrible.

Nice guy, great music, great lyrics, but getting him to answer a question is like pulling teeth. Tough stuff. ("Your lyrics seem to reflect where you live, the Pacific Northwest." "[Pause] Yeah, they do." "Can you tell me about that?" "(Pause)It's where I live. [Longer pause]")

As it were, I managed to salvage a few quotes from my interview (as well as one borrowed from Spin) to tell you my five favorite things about Blitzen Trapper. Dig it.

The band plays Monday at Slowdown with The Moondoggies. Should be cool.