With guitar slung high up on his tall frame and his long red locks flowing, Dennen performs soul-drenched folk narratives with thoughtful lyrics and mellow grooves that captivate audiences wherever he goes. Those performances caught the eye of Rolling Stone magazine, which named him one of the “10 Artists to Watch in 2008.”

His new release, Hope for the Hopeless (Dualtone), includes the infectious first single “Make You Crazy,” featuring Afrobeat artist Femi Kuti. After just one listen, you’ll find yourself singing the ultra-catchy tune, one of 11 produced by multi-platinum hitmaker John Alagia (John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band) — but it’s so good that it won’t make you, well, crazy.

Says Brett of his Top 10 AAA track: “I made the song catchy but it’s about all the injustice in the world –—‘it’s enough to make you go crazy . . . and I’m amazed I haven’t yet’.”

Hopeless, which made an impressive debut at number 1 on the iTunes folk chart and 8 on its overall albums chart, is also enjoying success on the Billboard 200.

Raised in Northern California, the former camp counselor took his fireside performances and self-made disc to the west coast coffee-house circuit in 2004, where a devoted following began. His 2006 breakthrough album, So Much More, placed him firmly on the folk-rock map and helped him gain the attention of music critics, programmers and established artists like Michael Franti and Jason Mraz.

His passion for reaching out to young people led Dennen to be involved in the Mosaic Project, an organization that teaches kids of varied backgrounds about diversity. He also founded Love Speaks, a non-profit that provides community groups and activists a place to express their views at his live shows.

Dennen, who has shared the stage with John Mayer, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Ben Folds and the John Butler Trio, has just announced his own three-month headlining tour starting in January 2009.

Dana Rodriguez

As progenitors of Rock en Español, Café Tacvba (initially spelled “Café Tacuba”) was among the first Mexican rock bands to fuse influences of punk and electronic music with indigenous folk sounds. Since their 1994 release Re, a masterpiece of metal, punk, disco-pop and boleros that is often compared to The Beatles' White Album, the band has become increasingly inclusive, referencing everything from hip-hop to Banda Sinaloense; tango to speed metal. On Sino, they launch into a classic rock motif that sounds more like Rush than Radiohead, a band Café Tacvba is often compared to, given their encyclopedic span of influences.

The members of Café Tacvba are Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega on vocals and guitar, Emmanuel "Meme" del Real Díaz on keyboards, guitar, vocals and programming, José Alfredo "Joselo" Rangel Arroyo on guitar and vocals, and vocalist/bassist Enrique “Quique” Rangel Arroyo. (Alejandro Flores and Luis Ledezma, violin and drums, respectively, are considered honorary members.) Their legacy began when, in a tribute to the Martin Scorcese film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the band adopted the moniker of "Alicia Ya No Vive Aquí.” As students in Mexico City, they appropriated the name of an historic Mexico City restaurant.

Reflecting dizzying genre shifts, lead vocalist Albarrán changes his image and his name for each release, as he is known among other names as "Juan," "Pinche Juan," "Cosme," "Masiosare," "Anónimo," "Nrü," "Amparo Tonto Medardo In Lak'ech" (shortened to "At Medardo ILK"), "G3," "Gallo Gasss," "Élfego Buendía," "Rita Cantalagua," "Sizu Yantra," "Ixxi Xoo" and "Cone Cahuitl." MySpace currently credits him as "Ixaya Mazatzin Tleyótl." Even as he continues imagining his new character, this name expired upon the launch of the band’s latest CD. He now calls himself Cone Cahuitl.

Producer/composer/musician Gustavo Santaolalla is a key architect in the band’s ever-changing incarnations. “He's an incredible producer; he can see the big picture and then translate this to the heart of the band,” the band’s Emmanuel "Meme" del Real Díaz told the Detroit Free Press.

With an Aztec ancestry, colonial past and modern-day chaos, Mexico City is a complex and paradoxical metropolis. Like their adopted hometown, Café Tacvba — named “Best Alternative Artist” at the 2008 MTV Latin America Awards and nominated for a phenomenal six Latin Grammy Awards for Sino — continues to epitomize a vivid musical alchemy of absolute transformation.

“It’s all about the real Latin groove and the dancer,” explains the Latin Grammy winner. Paying homage to the stars of salsa, from Celia Cruz and Willie Colon to Ruben Blades and The Fania All Stars, Torres integrates a wealth of musical influences into a heady mélange of effortless melody and fiery rhythms that echo Cuban dance music, Puerto Rican bomba and plena, the Brazilian samba, merengue from the Dominican Republic, Colombia cumbia and the rhythms of Panama, all ingredients in the rich stew that heated up in New York to become modern-day salsa.

Joined by a group of talented young musicians, Torres tracked half of the project in Puerto Rico. “To record live, and to do so in Puerto Rico, is a real homecoming for me,” he enthuses. “It was like it used to be, when everybody recorded at the same time, before ProTools. But, we also kept the production state of the art, using the latest technology to create music that moves forward, pointing the way to a future where that which is universal transcends today’s tendency to taste the ‘flavor of the minute’.”

Salsa is the soul of Nouveau Latino, says Torres. “The blessing of having been part of the New York salsa scene at its best cannot be expressed in words. Finally, the time is right for me to celebrate and share with my fans — and the world — a part of the legacy I owe so much to.”

Dan Kimpel

Unbeknownst to many, the former child/teen actor — who starred in such ’80s classics as The Lost Boys, Gremlins and Stand By Me — is also a singer/songwriter.

He and his band Truth Movement are set to release their sophomore effort, Technology Analogy, on Feldman’s own newly launched label, Cifi Records. The 13-track smorgasbord of rock, house and techno is actually Feldman’s fourth album and features the environmentally friendly single “Green Is the Colour.”

Co-written by Jon Carin of Pink Floyd fame, the track urges listeners to go green and is already creating a buzz on the Internet, with environmental groups adopting it as their theme song. In fact, the go-green theme is a key element of the entire album, which boasts being made with 100 percent biodegradable materials.

Ranked number 8 on VH-1’s “100 Greatest Kid Stars” list, Feldman’s rise to fame began at the age of 3 after landing a McDonald’s commercial. His breakthrough role in 1985’s The Goonies opened Hollywood’s doors and eventually led to his fateful pairing with Lost Boys co-star Corey Haim.

The duo, whose on-screen chemistry sparked their friendship, reunited in 2006 to star in the A&E reality show aptly named The Two Coreys. The now-canceled series also featured his real-life wife Susie Feldman, whom he married on an episode of his other reality show stint, The Surreal Life.

With musical roots dating back to 1989’s Dream A Little Dream, Feldman also contributed songs to Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever and composed the score to 1995’s Dream A Little Dream 2. Other movies on the actor’s resume include License To Drive, The Burbs and Friday the 13th IV. His latest film, Terror Inside, debuted at the recent Ft. Lauderdale Film Festival, where he earned a Crystal Reel Award for best actor.

Over the years, Feldman’s career was often overshadowed by his struggle with drugs (he’s been sober since 1991), his friendship with Michael Jackson (remember that molestation trial?) and his short-lived relationship with Drew Barrymore (he later married and divorced General Hospital star Vanessa Marcil).

Feldman, who vows to keep his 4-year-old son, Zen, out of the entertainment business, is now devoting much of his time to his musical career as well as continuing his passion for acting.

Now you know.

Dana Rodriguez

Foster’s on-the-spot melody evolved into “After The Love Has Gone,” the Earth, Wind & Fire hit that would capture the 1979 Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues song. Today, some 30 years after his fateful meeting with Gordy, Foster is renowned worldwide as a go-to man for the regal likes of Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, Natalie Cole and more. A three-time Oscar nominee, Foster’s mantle veritably buckles under the weight of 15 Grammys and seven Juno awards. He has performed on — and/or composed songs for — some the world’s best-selling albums, including Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down and The Bodyguard original soundtrack. A key player in the discovery and development of Celine Dion and Josh Groban, Foster’s WEA-distributed 143 Records label is home to Groban, Michael Bublé and American Idol alumna Katherine McPhee, among distinguished others.

In short, music has been very good to David Foster. But while he remains an in-demand producer, arranger, keyboardist and songwriter, some critics have labeled Foster a purveyor of “elevator music,” an accusation the composer himself shrugs off. “I’m not apologetic for it at all,” Foster says of his balladeer reputation. “What better honor than to hear your music in an elevator? That’s the melodies that people are humming.”

While Foster is probably the world’s premier producer and writer of hit serenades, the record shows he is a master composer of many styles. His 1978 breakthrough hit, “Got To Be Real,” is a timeless funk jam that launched the career of r&b vocalist Cheryl Lynn. Foster also co-composed The Tubes’ 1983 Top 10 rock hit, “She’s A Beauty,” as well as Al Jarreau’s bouyant soul-pop hit, “Mornin’.” As these and other up-tempo tracks attest, Foster is no One-Note Johnny.

But in a contemporary music world increasingly dominated by the rough-and-tumble sounds of rock, hip-hop and country, Foster has stepped in to fill the void for unabashedly sentimental pop. His pianistic songs hearken back to the starlight balladry of George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, while Foster’s symphonic arrangements and epic productions reconcile pop with neo-romantic classical music. Indeed, his melodies reflect an admiration for European composers such as Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Puccini. “I grew up with classical music, and it’s just my take on things,” Foster says. “Just as when Bruce Springsteen picks up a guitar and pounds out this three chord jam, when I sit down at the piano, what comes out is what comes out.”

Foster’s method of operation is elegantly simple: Find the world’s finest vocalists, supply them with the most caressing, hummable melodies possible, then collaborate with acclaimed lyricists including Cynthia Weil, Carole Bayer Sager, Linda Thompson and Tom Keane. “For my soul, I need to work with great singers,” Foster says. “If you look at my history — Peter Cetera, Kenny Loggins, Chaka Khan, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Michael Bublé, Natalie Cole, Justin Timberlake — you’ll hardly find anybody in there that’s not a great singer. And that’s by design.”

Of the dozens of hit melodies he has composed, Foster is partial to the 1999 ballad “The Prayer,” which has been interpreted by Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli and Josh Groban (“It’s the closest to a real classical piece that I’ll ever write,” he says). He also confesses a soft spot for the 1980 Boz Scaggs hit, “Look What You’ve Done To Me” (“It’s my favorite melody that I’ve ever been a part of… I just love what Boz did with the lyric.”). Foster is so enamored of Chicago hits like “You’re The Inspiration,” “Hard To Say I’m Sorry” and “Love Me Tomorrow” that he’s hard-pressed to pick an absolute favorite.

Going forward, Foster’s star is set to rise even higher. He’s currently working with Seal, mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and newcomer Charice Pempengco. Foster is also the star of his very own PBS career retrospective, David Foster & Friends, featuring live performances by Peter Cetera, Boz Scaggs, Katherine McPhee, Josh Groban, Andrea Bocelli and more.

Says Foster with a laugh: “It’s basically my funeral while I’m still alive.”

“A full diet of any one of them would probably drive me crazy. But about 50/50 is perfect,” he notes. “On the one hand, you have writing songs, making records and playing shows. And coming out of a punk-rock background, it’s traditionally very much a ‘screw you I’m going to do what I want’ type thing. Which is the opposite of film scoring, which is, ‘Of course I can do that’.”

“You really have to have a certain temperament to be in it,” points out Larson, whose scoring credits include Boys Don’t Cry, Prozac Nation, Choke and Palindromes. “The rock & roll thing is like, ‘Look at me!’ And this couldn’t be further than that. Your role is to sort of to be invisible. It’s a very different job.”

Shudder To Think rose out of the Washington, D.C. hardcore punk scene of the mid-to-late 1980s, eventually recording for Dischord Records, the label headed by Ian MacKaye of Fugazi. “One among the many ways that we stood apart from the other Dischord bands was our ethic, or our goals and ambitions for our music, which were always very, very unabashedly and outwardly commercial,” explains Wedren. “We never, ever — any of us — had any qualms with the idea of our music going global, for lack of a better word.”

The band got that shot when they signed with Epic Records in the early 1990s, and Larson joined the group on guitar after a stint playing bass in the band Swiz. Shudder To Think’s 1994 major label debut, Pony Express Record, didn’t reach a mass audience even if it and its follow-up did earn the group esteem in musical and fan circles.

Both Wedren and Larson began scoring films through what Larson calls “a fluke,” being part of a tight-knit creative community in New York City in the 1990s. Wedren’s work with director David Wain came as a result of a lifelong friendship with him that included attending New York University together. Wedren and Larson also began delving into film work when Shudder To Think contributed songs to and appeared in Velvet Goldmine and scored High Art.

“We just happened to know folks who were filmmakers,” Larson notes. “We sort of stumbled into it.” Both now have long lists of credits to their names as composers for film and television.

Wedren finds that working within two very different musical realms has a positive effect on the creative processes of both. “Because the structure is obviously so different from a two-to-five-minute pop or rock song, it really develops very different skills and gets you out of your usual songwriting habits,” he observes of scoring. “The joy and challenge of a film score forces you out of your own ways. And it brings a whole new bag of tricks to songwriting that break you out of old habits. Then you have to go back to doing film soundtracks to get out of them.

“And the reverse is also true,” Wedren adds. “After working on soundtracks for a while you really do get your bag of tricks and your sound and the way you do things. And going back to a rock band has its effect on the next scores you may do.”

The break Wedren and Larson took from Shudder To Think for most of this decade ended when the band reunited with drummer Kevin March for a New York City club show in September 2007. From August through November of this year the band will have played 10 shows — some with March on drums, others (listed below, on the West Coast) with earlier drummer Adam Wade, while Jesse Krakow handles bass duties and Mark Watrous guitar throughout — from which they hope to come up with the recordings to issue a live album. The shows include dates at the Showbox in Seattle on Oct. 30, the El Rey Theater in L.A. on Nov. 1 and the Fillmore in San Francisco on Nov. 2. Larson will also be releasing an album in early 2009 by A Camp, the group he has with his wife, Swedish rock singer Nina Persson, formerly of The Cardigans.

For Wedren, who won a BMI Film Music Award for his work on The School of Rock, it’s all part of being creative and inspiring others to do the same. “Our feeling was always to make people want to make things, whatever it is: music, movies, light bulbs, anything. As long as people leave our shows feeling that creative spark and a sense of possibility — that was our goal. I don't know what our musical legacy is or was or will be, but I definitely know that some kids we turned on back in the day are now turning other kids on.”

Oh, and did we mention that she also created a prototype for the first social network in the early 1990s, roughly a dozen years before MySpace and Facebook?

In case you hadn’t guessed, not every songwriter is Allee Willis, whose Wikipedia entry identifies her as “an American songwriter, artist, set designer, multimedia artist, writer, and director.”

Not bad for someone who in a recent profile declared, “If you ask me to sit down and even play the intro to any of [my songs], I would have no idea where even the first note was.”

For a career that spans not only writing such enduring hits as Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” and “Boogie Wonderland,” the Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance,” the theme song to TV’s Friends, “I’ll Be There for You,” and the Pet Shop Boys/Dusty Springfield duet “What Have I Done to Deserve This,” and also co-authoring Broadway smash The Color Purple, it comes as something of a surprise that Willis never took formal training.

She did, however, grow up in Detroit, and spent a significant amount of time on a lawn near Motown Studios, absorbing the sounds that would sometimes leak out. Moving to New York in 1969, Willis landed a copywriting job at Columbia and Epic Records before beginning to write her own songs. Moving to L.A. in the late ’70s, she secured a publishing deal with A&M that ultimately led to collaborations with everyone from Bob Dylan and James Brown to Herbie Hancock and Patti Labelle.

“[EWF leader] Maurice White heard about me, and then one day I got a phone call: ‘This is Maurice White. I want you to come write the next Earth, Wind & Fire album.’” The resulting collaboration helped cross EWF over to pop audiences, and gave Willis the momentum that’s since shown no signs of slowing down.

By the early ’90s she’d developed willisville, a combination of story-driven virtual world and social network, which in turn led to her helping Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner launch lilytomlin.com.

Willis’s latest multi-media project revolves around Bubbles, an artist who sold over 1,000 paintings and ceramic works before it was revealed in 2007 that she was, in fact, Willis’s alter ego. Now performing as “Bubbles & Cheesecake,” the virtual duo had a YouTube hit with their first music video, “It’s a Woman Thang,” while the current “Editing Is Cool” deconstructs the song- and video-making process.

“I’m way more interested in what it takes to get there than I am in final destinations,” Willis declares.

Which is just as well, as predicting just where Willis will show up next is impossible to guess.

So it’s no wonder that stars like Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, U2, Aretha Franklin, Tom Petty, Celine Dion and many others have worked with Stewart as a musical go-to-guy with seemingly limitless imagination and creativity. His legacy is now spotlighted on his latest musical venture: The Dave Stewart Songbook, Vol. 1. The package is a 20-song, two CD collection of some of his best-known collaboratively written and solo songs newly recorded by his touring band with full orchestra, and comes with an accompanying hardcover book that tells the stories behind the creations and includes photographs by Stewart.

It spotlights Stewart’s musical alchemy and his affection for creative interaction with the likes of Jon Bon Jovi, Gwen Stefani, Bryan Ferry, Bob Geldof and Sinead O’Connor in addition to some of the aforementioned. “Writing songs with other people is like falling in love over and over again,” says Stewart. ”It’s a fast track into someone’s soul — you can feel their heart beating against yours.”

Stewart became a hot musical talent on the rise in his teens when his band Longdancer signed to Elton John’s Rocket Records. He united with Lennox in the late 1970s as the band The Tourists, and, by the early ’80s, the two became Eurythmics, rising to international stardom thanks to such hits as “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), “Here Comes the Rain Again,” “Would I Lie to You?” and “Missionary Man.”

As an artist in his own right, Stewart has issued albums under his own name as well as with the band Spiritual Cowboys (with Pretenders drummer Martin Chambers) and as Platinum Weird with singer Kara DioGuardi, for which Stewart created a fictitious early 1970s history that was spotlighted in a VH1 “mockumentary” about the band. He has also taken his song revisions a la Songbook on tour as Dave Stewart and His 30-Piece Rock Fabulous Orchestra.

As no less of an icon as Bob Dylan notes, “Captain Dave is a dreamer and a fearless innovator, a visionary of high order.”

Her passion for music is obvious. Recently, her publishing house, Westwood Publishing, reported on her latest achievements, which include the central song of the new soap Un Gancho al Corazón, performed by Playa Limbo; three cuts on Reik’s latest album, Un Día Más; two songs on Lola’s latest production; three with Janina; one with Paty Cantú,; and cuts with Jimena, La Emboscada, and the theme of the new Televisa series Momentos.

The duo’s new single, “Make Up My Mind,” is a bouncy club track with searing r&b vocals and a party feel. It was released to radio summer of 2008 and was the #2 added record on college radio its first week, second only to NAS.

They released their debut single, “Let It Roll,” in June 2007. The smooth, feel-good, summer cruising track is produced by hit-maker Fingazz of Streetlight Music (Lean Like a Cholo, Summer Nights) and the freshman single was dubbed “a sure-fire summer hit” by Wild 96.1 in Riverside, California.

Steelo has opened for Pitbull, Sean Kingston, Rich Boy, Lloyd Banks, Baby Bash, Mobb Deep, Digital Underground, and Lil Rob. They have also appeared on the Lowrider Car Show Tour and at a number of Washington State Universities.

In addition to music, Steelo also conducts a student empowerment program, an in-school workshop that encourages students to realize aspirations, strategize a path to success and measure the results. Steelo reflects on their experience in the music industry as an example of achieving both personal and professional goals. They have appeared at many Seattle-area high schools, at the CASHE Conference at Washington State University and at the MEChA Conference at Western Washington University.