Fans of all things Carrie Brownstein have an extra reason to rejoice this holiday season: having just wound up her amazing Wild Flag tour, Brownstein and SNL's Fred Armisen have recently announced they are taking their comedy hit Portlandia on the road with a six-city tour! The duo don't just star in the series, they also co-created and wrote everything too, accounting for the ease with which the characters interact onscreen. Can't you just imagine the pair sitting in a cafe together, brainstorming and kidding around?  There are so many great moments in the series, from the "Flyer Wars" skit, to one couple's quest to find out just "how local" their locally sourced meal is... whether you're a self-proclaimed hipster, cyclist, or groupie, there's sure to be a moment in the series where you find that you and your friends are gently laughing at yourselves (I, like many of us, have been known to "put a bird on it" myself).

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Behold the years-worth of awesome-ness that is Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein sketching it up as ThunderAnt before Portlandia was even a twinkle in their eye! There are a couple story-themes that carry over to their present day media outlet (on the IFC), but I've loved every ThunderAnt video I've watched so far.  My faves being: PET HAVEN, CLOSED!, BOINK!.

Have a favorite? Let's quote aplenty and laugh ourselves silly. {"... she wants to live in a home with no children and no adults"}

{Hugs and hat-tip to KaleyD!}

{Long Winters photo by Trickshot Photography}

Because I'm some kind of masochist and a total nerd, I've been slaving over this list, keeping it brief (harder than you'd think!) at my favorite 20 albums of the decade without duplicating a band (even harder). Side note: I've probably forgotten something I really, really love, so let's just call this how I feel right this minute. These are the albums I know every note and breath of by heart and I love as complete albums with all of my soul. These are albums that in my humble opinion have no skipable track and are works of beauty in their entirety. I'd also like to point out that these are my favorite albums, as I tend to shy away from calling them "the best", as really, it's just my opinion, and who am I to tell you that you're wrong for not liking these records? (Though, if you catch me in a potentially altered state, I may completely negate that and call any number of these THE GREATEST of all time and call you wrong to your face if you disagree.) I digress. Here they are!

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After wowing crowds at SIFF 2007, the documentary Girls Rock! which profiles Portland's Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, is finally being released on DVD this Tuesday.

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Carrie Brownstein had uncovered our additional Spells songs that did not make it on to The Age of Backwards and she has posted them on her NPR blog.

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This will be Ms. Tucker's first live performance since Sleater-Kinney disbanded back in 2006, and rumors are flying that this is the first of future collaborations she'll be making with Blue Giant.

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It's been on Stereogum for almost a week now, but I just found out about ThunderAnt this morning (via P4k).

ThunderAnt is a comedy duo made up of Fred Armisen from "Saturday Night Live" and Carrie Brownstein, guitarist from Sleater-Kinney (my most favoritest band for ever and ever). They are making short videos and they'll release them via Stereogum.

The first episode is a pretty awkward first date between the two. It's, well, nice. It's not on YouTube (yet), so I can't embed it here but you can watch it here. What I can embed, though, is "Boink!" a video they made last year where she's a cable access reporter interviewing him, former Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein:

 

Every variation of underground pop is on display here, so many of them must-own, transcendent versions.

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See all the winners in the TIG Best Northwest Releases of 2005 Readers' Poll (see the top 10 winners, including Death Cab, Tullycraft, the Decemberists, and more).

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There are few bands that have guitarists as intense as Brownstein, or drummers that hit as hard as Weiss, and none that have singers with voices as strong as Tucker's; but the genius of SK has always been that they are more than the sum of their parts.

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