Brian Wilson “SMiLE” Warner Music Group Rating: Hype is relative. For instance, using it in reference to, say, Franz Ferdinand is one thing. But when discussing “SMiLE,” it can’t quite convey the mythic expectations heaped upon rock’s now-legendary great lost album, Brian Wilson’s abandoned follow-up to “Pet Sounds” and response to the Beatles’ “Revolver” ““ both usually seen standing side by side at the top of most greatest albums lists. Read more...

She’s capable of packing a stadium of 30,000 people back home in South America, but now vocalist Eva Ayllon is looking to fill a venue that holds fewer than 2,000 people in the United States. Read more...

Reading music reviews can get tiresome for me. All too often, reviews of the same album will use identical angles and language, and, over time, reviews by a specific publication start to look interchangeable (e.g. Read more...

The first time Michael Alden saw the music video for his group’s country Billboard chart single, he was in Dykstra Hall. Alden, a third-year music student, along with his sisters, identical twins Lauren Mills and Dana Burke, who graduated from UCLA in 2002, make up Malibu Storm ““ a country group whose success has snowballed in the past few months. Read more...

In a world obsessed with photography and its technology, UCLA’s Hammer Museum is now presenting an exhibition showing the revival of representational painting called “The Undiscovered Country.” While many have forgotten or ignored painting as an adequate means to depict reality since the popularization of photography, the Hammer Museum hopes to dispel such thoughts by displaying works representing modern reality in ways photography can’t. Read more...

UCLA’s Fowler Museum Director Marla Berns describes the dizzying array of candles, statues and other ritualistic items that make up a re-creation of an authentic Los Angeles botanica as “visually seductive.” “Botanica Los Angeles: Latino popular religious art in the city of angels,” was created by visiting professor and curator, Patrick Polk. Read more...

Hollywood has always been known as the home of film, with such landmarks as the Hollywood sign and the Chinese Theatre concretely in place to maintain it’s star-studded reputation. Read more...