The Soul Rebels are the needle that has successfully risen to the top of New Orleans’ massive brass band haystack with a simple formula: New York hip-hop collaboration. Over the past few years, they’ve performed with the likes of Nas, Prodigy, GZA and DMX. These legends came up spitting over boom-bap 808s and chopped samples, and they've found a home on the band’s snare-based grooves and horn harmonies.

New Breed Brass Band is not so new anymore. Formed in 2013 from the remnants of The Baby Boyz Brass Band, it has been quietly climbing in the New Orleans brass ranks for some time now. On Saturday, the band will be at Jazz Fest, taking the Jazz & Heritage Stage at 2:45.

A lot has changed for Nas since his last full-length release, Life is Good, in 2012. In a recent interview, he claimed a new album would be out before the end of 2017, but he’s been teasing the project for quite some time with nothing to show for it—no singles, no promo, no real hint of a release. Still, his fans remain loyal, and likely always will.

For years, much of the New Orleans music community treated hip-hop as the bad cop to the brass bands’ good cop—one suspect; one real music. One sold a ton of records, while the other was treated as true New Orleans music. But the dirty little not-so-secret is that both were street musics, and they influenced each other. Brass band members were listening to hip-hop as much as rappers, particularly bounce artists, were listening to brass bands.

Just in time for the Krewe of Muses parade tonight, My Spilt Milk is pleased to present the premiere of "Muses" by The Stooges Brass Band. The song is the closing track from Selector, a compilation album of contemporary world music put out by New York City's globalFEST.

Last weekend, I talked with Lumar LeBlanc about The Soul Rebels' then-upcoming mixtape, Power = Power for the New Orleans Advocate.

This year, The Hot 8 Brass Band were scheduled to play South by Southwest and The Oxford American's Louisiana party (which I helped organize). Unfortunately for us - good for them - the British tour they were on was extended so they were held over an ocean away and unable to make their Austin gigs.

For years, the implied promise of electronic music was that it was the sound of the future, from Walter/Wendy Carlos to Bruce Haack to Kraftwerk and beyond. The irony is how quickly visions and sounds of the future slide into a sort of retro futurism, and how easily a song's time period can be identified based on its electronic elements. Today, the sleek, icy, robotic textures of French EDM pioneers Daft Punk sound quaint next to the arena rock-scaled squiggles and groans of contemporary dubstep, and Earl Scioneaux III - The Madd Wikkid - heard a way to give them new life.

Sunday night after Bacchus, The Hot 8 Brass Band will be at WOW Hall in Eugene, Oregon and at The Howlin' Wolf's Den for its weekly gig (free this week). The band left for the tour earlier this week, but tuba player Bennie Pete stayed behind, and he'll hold down the show this month.

This month, My Spilt Milk is pleased to present The Hot 8 Brass Band on Sunday nights in The Howlin' Wolf's Den. They have one of the most dramatic stories in brass band lore, as Matt Sakakeeny documented in his story in The Oxford American's 2012 music issue (story's only in the magazine - sorry).