Chris Morgan

Ukulele player Aldrine Guerrero. Listen to him play below.

This past Saturday, Hawaiian ukulele player Aldrine Guerrero was at the fifth annual Denver Ukefest at the L2 Arts and Culture Center. In between signing ukuleles and performing, he took time out to play us an original tune he wrote about seeing snowflakes in Denver. Chris Morgan took some pictures and captured some audio, which we've put together below in an audio slide show. Page down to check it out, then visit the full Denver Ukefest slide show to see photos from the rest of the fest.

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See Also:
• Nicki Minaj's "Beez in the Trap" video plays into stereotypes and fails to entertain
• Nicki Minaj's "Stupid Hoe" video takes aim at Gaga and other fellow pop stars
• Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, is a Minaj-à-trois of pop, dance and hip-hop

After months of waiting, Nicki Minaj finally beamed down from her spaceship and landed on Earth long enough to premiere the much-anticipated video to her international pop hit, "Starships." She released the video on Friday; it's already amassed more than 5.5 million views. And there's a reason for that. "Starships," the explosion of neon sexiness, is as interesting as it is meaningful. Look at it like this: "Starships," in all of its visual glory, is like symbolically watching Minaj's musical career unfold before our very eyes.

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Firefall's second appearance on American Bandstand in 1980 with a female singer they had literally just met! That's Jock on the left in the white fedora.

See Also: R.I.P. Dick Clark, 11/30/29 - 4/18/12

Firefall is one of a handful of Colorado acts (Richie Furay and Phillip Bailey were among the others) who performed on American Bandstand over the course of the show's four-decade run, a span that encompasses nearly 3,000 episodes. The band appeared on the show twice, but it's the first time in 1979 that Jock Bartley remembers the most fondly, when the dearly departed Dick Clark got the band's name wrong and he kept it moving without missing a beat.

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Yahoo!'s "We're Not Young"

The folks over at Yahoo! Studios have delivered an epically messy music video for "We Are Young." The parody isn't quite as funny if you can't relate to the plight of these almost-middle-aged men and women, but as far as "We Are Young" YouTube covers go, this one is easily the best we've heard.

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Okay, can we all just agree here that everything sounds better with an orchestra? And we mean everything. Pretty sure you'd get no argument from those who caught Trey Anastasio at Boettcher recently, or those who saw Death Cab for Cutie at Ellie Caulkins last week. Air Dubai, who already sounded pretty in the first place, sounds even better on this new version of "Love In Retrograde," which features a full string quartet, a trio of percussionists and two additional vocalists.

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Have some time to kill today in the old cube farm? Here's something to keep you busy all afternoon. Sounds on 29th, the local-centric CPT-12 music series, which premiered last fall and is brought to us by the folks behind the Brass Tree Sessions and Out of Order, has posted four new episodes with a whole new batch of locals: Shel, Sauna, Snake Rattle Rattle Snake and this one, featuring The Pirate Signal. Page down to see Yonnas Abraham and company come storming out of the gate and then proceed to just completely go off for the entire clip.

See Also: Sounds on 29th premieres on CPT12 with a trio of episodes featuring Nathaniel Rateliff, Danielle Ate the Sandwich and Safe Boating Is No Accident.

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We must learn to take Nicki Minaj with a grain of salt. Haters have argued that she can't rap; her "Barbz" have argued that she redefined the genre. For barely a week now, Minaj managed to prove the latter: When Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded dropped last week, Minaj no longer had anything to prove; she released a strong collection of songs under a new genre hybrid, dance hip-pop.

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Hayley Young Photography

The Lumineers' self-titled debut is available now on Dualtone Records.

The Lumineers, another promising Denver-based act, made its televised debut earlier this week on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Years from now, when the members looks back on this watershed moment in their career, they'll probably get a chuckle of their first introduction to America, how Ferguson fumbled on the name of their debut (it's self-titled) and held the sleeve of the album open to reveal that there indeed was no record inside, and then forgot to mention where they were from.

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"Run for Your Life" is the Fray's the follow-up to "Heartbeat," the debut single from the act's third record, Scars & Stories. The video is directed by Declan Whitebloom, who's worked on videos with Taylor Swift and Sugarland, among others. Although the imagery strikes the right emotional chords, there's no real discernible narrative to speak of, which makes the whole thing seem a little flat.

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Update 4/5/12: "Swear I'm Innocent" video posted below.

Earlier today, the Photo Atlas premiered its brand-new video for "Swear I'm Innocent" on Spinner.com. According to Alan Andrews, the band's frontman, the high-energy, performance-based video was shot at the Inca house by the folks at Love Drunk, whom the band met through their friends from Omaha, Brazil and Cursive. The Love Drunk crew drove out to Denver on one day's notice and shot the clip. The song is from the Photo Atlas's new record, due out later this year.

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