1531 N. Damen 773-235-4039 bigstarchicago.com Runner-Up Sultan’s Market

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Alicia Walter of Oshwa is a classically trained pianist who studied composition with Marcos Balter at Columbia College, alongside her bandmate Jordan Tate; in interviews the group has cited the influence of avant-garde composers such as Scriabin and Bartók. As a vocalist, though, the 24-year-old Walter is entirely self-taught. Her playful, idiosyncratic singing on the band’s 2013 studio debut, Chamomile Crush, sounds a little like Gertrude Stein, but she’s happy to admit that her actual inspiration is Merrill Garbus, aka Tune-Yards—Walter’s been listening to her since finding the Tune-Yards MySpace page as a sophomore in college....

In 2001 mathy emo outfit Owls released their self-titled debut, a gnarly, complex record that until recently was their only full-length. In the years since, the band’s members have put out dozens of albums and EPs—with Noyes, Friend/Enemy, Make Believe, Owen, and Tim Kinsella’s main project, Joan of Arc, among others—but fanatics have continued to carry a torch for Owls, keeping the brief, spellbindingly strange Owls on repeat. (When I joined Tumblr five years ago, I got to be Internet friends with someone who repeatedly posted lyrics from “Everyone Is My Friend....

Haley Fohr started out playing sludgy noise rock with the duo Cro Magnon in 2007, and her solo project, Circuit des Yeux (“the nerve that connects the eye to sight,” as she explains on Facebook) began in 2008 with blasts of primordial skronk. She played dingy basement shows, often armed with only a Casio keyboard, a floor tom, and tapes, but a few leaked CD-R recordings piqued the interest of the DeStijl label, which in the late aughts released the primitive, experimental Symphone and Sirenum....

Bryan Cranston is already being touted as an Oscar contender for Trumbo, a biopic of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, yet the man he plays had to watch on his living room TV set as screenplays he’d written but sold through front men—Roman Holiday in 1953, The Brave One in 1956—were honored at the Academy Awards. Trumbo was one of the industry’s most successful screenwriters when he joined the Communist Party in 1943; called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, he refused to answer questions about his political associations and was charged with contempt of Congress, along with the rest of the “Hollywood Ten....

Leor Galil Gwar at Riot Fest in 2012 I first heard that Gwar front man and founder Dave Brockie had died late Sunday night via handfuls of comments from fans on Twitter shocked about the then-unconfirmed news that the man better known as Oderus Urungus had passed away. That sort of reaction is common when someone dies unexpectedly, but considering Brockie spent three decades touring as part of a monstrous intergalactic metal outfit that slaughtered countless earthlings and how easy it was to fall under the spell he cast during Gwar’s graphic, theatrical performances, it was therefore difficult to think that Brockie wasn’t the invincible, ferocious warrior he played so well....

My first issue—six weeks ago—hadn’t even hit the streets yet when I got an email from a thoughtful young man inquiring if I had any advice for revitalizing the recently shuttered alt-weekly in his town, and similar notes have been coming from all over the country at a steady pace ever since. There are emails and tweets and comments made in the coffee shop: Chicagoans excited about what’s going on, alternative-newspaper-wise, folks elsewhere curious, maybe a little jealous....

If the Boiler Room’s PBR Bingo is your idea of a hard-core game, then you’ve got a lot to learn, rookie. Copernicus Center Thursday Night Bingo isn’t some amateur-hour, rinky-dink distraction for you and your pals at your local watering hole—this is serious bingo for serious people. After consulting a friend whose job it is to call bingo numbers in the burbs, I was told that this is a “real game....

Howard Brown Various locations

In this week’s long review I mull over the story of fathers and sons weaving through the Marlon Brando documentary Listen to Me Marlon; it opens today at Landmark’s Century Centre. Also this week, Ben Sachs lays down the beat for We Are Your Friends, starring Zac Efron as an aspiring creator of electronic dance music.

Alliance Française de Chicago staff watched the Paris attacks unfold Friday with grave concern for colleagues and loved ones in France’s capital city. At least 60 people were reported dead and dozens others were wounded in a series of coordinated attacks on some of the city’s most visible cultural institutions Friday night. Geoffrey Ruiz, director of the learning center at Alliance, says executive director Jack McCord is in Paris but safe: My grandma is in Paris at this time and all my friends are close....

Arlen Parsa, a local documentary maker and Columbia College graduate, never realized there was another artist in his family until his maternal grandmother died in 2013 and his mother, inspired to research the family’s history, learned that her grandfather, Eustasio Rosales, had been a composer of some renown. “She did a random Google search and discovered that his music is actually on the Internet,” Parsa explains. “This song of his had survived a hundred years and is still apparently being performed in South America....

“Most museums actually have off-site collection storage,” says Dawn Roberts, director of collections for the Chicago Academy of Sciences and the Nature Museum, and one of the facility’s two full-time staff members. “They’re too large to fit within the constraints of the proper museum.” In the 1800s, she says, people made a hobby of understanding nature. “They were putting together collections of insects, plants, bird eggs. . . . They were getting outside and seeing different things and then having these little cabinets of curiosities, these treasure troves in their homes....

Despite what the Frenchy name suggests, Bastille (or BΔSTILLE if you’re willing to go along with their preferred styling) are an alt-rock band from London. According to Wikipedia the group started out as the solo project of front man Dan Smith, and from my limited exposure to them the whole endeavor has the typical singer-songwriter-with-a-band kind of feel. Nearly a year ago they released a single called “Pompeii.” It was a full-blown smash in the UK, but in the States it’s had more of a slow buildup....

Chicago underground hip-hop hero Mike “Mic One” Malinowski died this weekend at age 40. Malinowski cut his teeth with the Noise Pollution crew in the 90s; he dropped his first solo album, Who’s the Illest?, in 1998, around when he met longtime collaborator Chad Sorenson, aka DJ Risky Bizness. “Mike was a performance artist,” Sorenson says. “Our goal was to make these rock-star-style shows, but with hip-hop.” Malinowski drew on a love for rock he’d inherited from his family—at one Metro gig, part of the Molemen’s Chicago Rocks series, Malinowski and his band closed by inserting a cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum” into Radiohead’s “Creep” (and then Malinowski smashed his guitar)....

1425 W. 18th 312-850-2510 kneedeepvintage.com Runner-Up Kokorokoko

After the bows and applause on the night I attended this two-actor rendition of J.M. Barrie’s classic story, a little girl in the audience wailed to her mother, “I don’t want to leave!” It’s a completely understandable reaction to this enchanting 90-minute one-act from the troupe Bros do Prose, directed by Christian Libonati and starring Breon Arzell and Ella Raymont. While Arzell and Raymont primarily portray Peter Pan and Wendy, they also play a multitude of characters using accents, body language, props, and, most notably, infinite energy....