The first season of Portlandia, the IFC sketch-comedy show from Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, had a ton of cameos from indie-ish celebs; consider, if you will, last year’s segment “The Deuce,” which starred Corin Tucker, James Mercer, and Colin Meloy. From the look of things, season two of the show will featur...

Here’s an early listen to the new “Muppet Show Theme,” which we learned last month features vocals from Joanna Newsom. It’s not much of a cameo, but keep in mind the song’s less than a minute and they’ve gotta fit Miss Piggy’s ego in there. The Muppets And Joanna Newsom &#...

Joanna Newsom and Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold don’t exactly seem like the physical type, but you need some sort of arm-strength to keep playing harp for hours on end, just like you need some forearm power to chop wood, which is what I assume Pecknold is doing whenever he’s not harmonizing with somebody. At [...]

Jason Segel’s rebooted Muppets movie is coming out soon, and a few indie-universe types have cameos on the soundtrack album. Bret McKenzie, one half of Flight Of The Concords, wrote four new songs for the movie. One of them is called “Life’s A Happy Song,” and it features vocals from Feist and Mickey Roone...

Last night Joanna Newsom and Josh T. Pearson closed out Ferrara Sotto Le Stelle 2011, the Italian festival we covered earlier this month when PJ Harvey performed. The show was moved from the “cortile del castello” (castle’s courtyard) to the teatro comunale because of bad weather. Joanna remarked that the venue remi...