Monday night at the Bowery Ballroom saw two of the more publicized up and coming youngsters in music split a bill in Johnathan Rice and Matt Costa. Both Costa and Rice are associated with the indie music scene, but neither really fit the categorization in either a musical sense or a commercial sense. Both of these artists, while drastically different musically are capable of some serious mass appeal and are touring in front of a wave of major label support, Costa with Universal and Rice with Warner Brothers. The night was an easy sellout and then some and both Rice and Costa clearly had a solid number of fans in attendance.

I remember the first time I saw Matt Costa perform, thinking to myself, “If I had a record label, this might be the first musician I would try to sign.” Perhaps more apropos today would be, “If I were one of these private equity, Wall Street guys interested in running a record label, I would start loading up on high yield debt to prepare for a Matt Costa hostile takeover.”

Regardless, the Matt Costa story is pretty straightforward. It’s pretty much come time for Costa to decide how big he wants to become. Costa and his band are airtight and it is clear that his fan base of Costasheads is growing quickly. For good reason, Costa doesn’t have a bad song in the repertoire and can weave in and out of more solemn ballads and rocking crowd pleasers with ease. Read on for more…

We’re taking a page out of Tabitha Soren’s book for the theme of today’s Pullin’ Tubes. We figure she’s been out of work for some time now, so she can help us highlight some Buzz Bin worthy clips making the rounds. Plus, we always thought she was much cuter than Serena Altschul and Adam Curry. These are a few of the coolest tunes and their respective videos making the rounds off some recent album releases. Sadly, you won’t see them on MTV these days.

Our fearless leader Ace may have stepped down from the podium, but rest assured we haven’t forgotten where we came from. Check out this sick promo video for Marco Benevento’s Invisible Baby, set to the music of Bus Ride. If Reed Mathis’ head banging doesn’t get you pumped up, we simply can’t help you. Read on for videos by Marco Benevento, moe. and Matt Costa…