During his first class two years ago, music industry professor Ken Kragen had the UCLA Bruin Marching Band blast through a lecture hall full of students, demonstrating one of the life lessons he teaches in his course “Stardom Strategies for Musicians.” “You need something unique and special to engage people,” Kragen said. Read more...

Photo: “Stardom Strategies for Musicians,” a music industry class taught by professor Ken Kragen, featured Grammy Award-winning jazz musicians Herb Alpert and Lani Hall Tuesday in the Jan Popper Theater. (Jessica Zhou/Daily Bruin)

India Carney filled the margins of her high school math notebook with lyrics rather than numbers. Last year, she sang these lyrics, a product of daydreaming in class, into a Melnitz Hall microphone while recording “Like a Star,” the first track on her debut EP to be released next month. Read more...

Photo: Third-year vocal performance student India Carney will be performing Thursday in the Fowler Out Loud concert series. Carney plans to release her debut EP “Heartbroken” by the end of March. (Felicia Ramirez/Daily Bruin staff)

Heartbreak has given us Beck back. It’s been six years since 2008’s “Modern Guilt,” the singer-songwriter’s last proper studio album (at least in the eyes of those reluctant to consider 2012’s “Song Reader” sheet music release a valid form of an album), but the hiatus hasn’t changed him much. Read more...

Photo: (Courtesy of Capitol Records)