Ex-Boyfriends
"With audible influences like the Cars, Weezer, the Cure, and Alkaline Trio, the tempo of Ex-Boyfriends is far from broken-hearted. This threesome is clearly on the prowl with infectious hooks and off-the-charts danceability factor." - Spin

Looker
NYC pop rock mavens Looker:

"To the left of Josie & the Pussycats bubblegum and to the right of the Breeders' artiness." - Chuck Eddy, Village Voice

Lou Lou & the Guitarfish
Flaunting the love-child DNA of 60’s British invasion & 70’s SF punk, these young teens rock with swagger and style. Songwriting siblings George & Lou Lou provide quirky lyrics, addictive melodies and classic trash guitar riffs. (bio)

The Ebb & Flow
"The Ebb & Flow makes epic, experimental pop that builds up and up, then explodes like a confetti-filled balloon, bright bits of color showering down on your mind and soul. Sam Tsitrin's voice has the Neil Young quaver, and the vocals of his female counterpart, Roshy Kheshti, haunt like Kate Bush. Combined with synthesizers, organs and various other instruments, they create a controlled chaos of endorphin-releasing riffs and beautiful melodies." - Willamette Weekly

The Dont's

Marissa Nadler
"The photograph on the cover of Marissa Nadler's 2004 debut, Ballads of Living and Dying (Eclipse), shows the Providence, RI, singer-songwriter standing in the distance, enshrouded by a leafless tunnel of winter trees, an obscure form draped in black. The minor-key lullabies on the album consecrate the mythos: Nadler sounds like some faraway folk apparition and summons the beguiling, murky aura critic Greil Marcus has referred to as "the old, weird America." An undervalued light of the latter-day folk revival (see: space folk, psych folk, etc.), Nadler's haunting songs connect the dots between Leonard Cohen and Mazzy Star. She's in town supporting her forthcoming Peacefrog album, Songs III: Bird on the Water." - Max Goldberg, SF Bay Guardian

Holly Caust
Trippy, psych-country duo called HOLLY CAUST. Think the "Dead Man" soundtrack put through some serious head trauma. Check out 'Shapeshifter Fahey' from their Myspace player for a sample of their first performance. (bio)

Punk Rock Sideshow w/DJ Tragic & the Duchess of Hazard, every Monday

Alela Diane
Hailing from the deep woods and winding rivers of Northern California Gold Rush town Nevada City, Alela grew up singing songs with her parents (both musicians), and performing in the school choir. During a stay in San Francisco in 2003, she began teaching herself guitar and writing her first songs, blending tense, trance-like arpeggios, with warm, thick vocals and meditative lyrics about family and nature. (bio)

Mariee Sioux
"Spiritual poems attuned to animals and ancestors, songs like 'Wizard Flurry Home' and 'Buried in Teeth' burrow deep inside you, with reams of words propelled by intuitive, circular guitar patterns. Pointedly unhurried, more akin to the folk sprawl penned by Michael Hurley and Joni Mitchell than your typical verse-chorus-verse songwriting. Her guitar melodies are often a step behind her alliterative narrations." - SF Bay Guardian

Aaron Ross
Aaron Ross has most recently been known as the powerful voice of the experimental rock outfit Hella.

Lee Bob Watson
Lee Bob Watson’s musical landscape ranges from legendary jazzmen and country singers to the tunesmiths of his hometown of Sacramento. After three years playing in the popular group Jackpot and later recording with Santa Cruz Gospel Choir, Watson strikes out on his own with Aficionado, an album hearkening back to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s where the lines between popular song, country, soul and folk were completely blurred. (bio)

Weasel Walter Quartet

Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!
Portland improv quartet of two saxophones, keyboard & drums. More towards the cleansing, cathartic, healing side of noise.

Wendy Atkinson
"Her spare, atmospheric and often chilling movements owe more to the ominous ambience of godspeed you! black emperor or the droning dread of Labradford." - Eye Weekly

"Her tools of choice are electric, acoustic, and upright basses, instruments more generally featured in an accompanying role than up-front. Plucking some notes while letting others swell up from silence, concocting thick, bowed drones and slow-moving fuzz-toned atmospheres, deploying radio static and seasick glissandos, she takes us places no chops monster could ever access - and although dark, the ride is fascinating." - The Georgia Straight, Vancouver

Deer Tick
"Deer Tick, is from Rhode Island, runs in the same folk scene as Nat Baldwin and Viking Moses. His music bleeds '60s rock influences, his voice teetering between a Highway 61 (1965)-era Dylan and a country-tinged Jagger." - Coke Machine Glow

Diego Perez

Colossal Yes
Accept not false soft rock shenanigans!

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Essie Jain
Essie Jain (NYC, Ba Da Bing Records): "The point at which tolerance reaches its limit and her frustrations boil over, the lyric itself sounds the opposite of angry. Not as much from indolence as much as attempted decorum, Jain thoroughly suffuses her album with the same sort of stately, delicate, and often somber understatement...Jain's thoroughgoing anti-dynamism emphasizes her distanced lyrical appraisals of situations that seem to be irrevocably broken...her plaintive voice suggests a chilly resignation, however, her words offer hope for reconciliation and repair. The accompanying music is as minimal as the songs' single-word titles; typically, Jain accompanies herself only with piano or acoustic guitar. Other instrumentation comes and goes as necessary-- stand-up bass, accordion, bowed strings, hushed drumming strategically implemented for utmost effect." - Pitchfork

Giant Skyflower Band
During a sabbatical from regular duties in The Skygreen Leopards, Glenn Donaldson (never one to rest) dreamt of Giant Skyflower Band, an exotic, flowery and crumbling new recording project with nods to fruity new age, psych, prog, folk, and pop songwriting. Donaldson quickly invited multi-instrumentalist Shayde Sartin to “smoke marijuana & make up strange pop songs, ” and thus the band was born. With Gong's seminal Magick Brother as a starting point and a sitar close at hand, the duo created a dark, peregrine pop transmission from their shoddy analog recording studio in San Francisco. Blood of the Sunworm is the duo’s debut offering.

Giant Skyflower’s purpose is to examine in detail the idiom of Bummer Psych; the strain of damaged Anglo-pop music pioneered by Syd Barrett that arguably reached its apex with The Television Personalities’ Painted Word LP in the mid-80’s, but found new life in Japan via the genius of Tori Kudo and like-minded acts such as Nagisa Ni te and Tenniscoats. Indeed, Blood of the Sunworm consists of depressing pop songs and damaged instrumentals - teeth bared and falling apart as they are cobbled together – on a hazy, cryptic journey through a busted kaleidoscope, behind a dusty mirror & up through the rafters. (biography)