The latest session over at Daytrotter features the local duo White Mystery. The will be also be featured on Sound Opinions this weekend.

You can catch White Mystery at The Empty Bottle on Sept 18th with Super Wild Horses, Wet Hair, and Outer Minds.

Urge Overkill is back together, and currently recording a new full-length album here in Chicago. This will be the band’s first album in fifteen years. The reformed band is made up of original singer/guitarists Nash Kato and Eddie “King” Roeser, along with drummer Brian “Bon” Quast (also in Polvo) and bassist Mike “Hadji” Hogkiss. They will be performing at the Samuel L. Jackson-hosted Friar’s Club Roast of Quentin Tarantino on October 1st, and at Mercury Lounge in New York on Oct. 4th. Below is the first song they have released from these new sessions.

Houses have released a second track from the forthcoming debut album, All Night (Lefse, Oct. 19th). The song is called "Soak It Up", and it is just as stunning as "Endless Spring". The duo will make their stage debut at CMJ Festival in New York on October 20th.

Megan Frestedt and Sam McAllister are friends, record label owners, record producers, and the duo known as Project Film. Megan and Sam will be releasing their debut, Chicago, on November 9th. Here is a sneak peak at of the album, and the track "Motionless".

If you are looking to a break from your steady diet of indie rock head over to Quencher’s Saloon tomorrow night, Sept. 14th, and check out seven-piece jazz band Alysheba. The band released their debut ep, Rattlesnake Studio Sessions, back in April. The ep was recorded and mixed by engineer Caleb Willitz at Rattlesnake Studios, and it captures the full and complex sound of the band. Alysheba mixes traditional jazz, improvisational, and rock undertones. The live session lasted 6 hours, and was mixed down perfectly. This album is a refreshing change of pace.

Alysheba is performing tonight (Sept 14th) at Quencher’s Saloon at 9pm.

This Friday past Friday, Matt Ryd celebrated the release of his much anticipated debut album Looking for Home with a show at Schubas. The album features the song "Healed" which appeared on the TV show Scrubs. Matt has that songwriter’s, the ability to create catchy hooks and melodies out of nowhere.

Today’s Daytrotter session features one of Chicago’s rising star’s Young Man. Since releasing his debut ep Boy Colin Caulfield has been all over the web. You can check out his Daytrotter session here. 

This week the band Fishermans released a free digital ep called Collective Vertigo. This is the follow-up to last year’s self-titled debut ep. This seven-piece collective have a great sound that combines small electronics with a group rock atmosphere.

The Maybenauts have released a video for their track "Not Aware" which appears on their Big Bang EP. The band will be playing a free show at Double Door on Sept. 14th.

A band the jumped out at me while scrolling and playing through the Middlewest line-up was Shy Technology. This four piece band has been together for awhile, and released their debut ep The Waltz back 2009. However, it was their debut full-length, We The Instruments that has really solidified this band for me. The bands plays an energetic form of indie rock that is slightly dark at times. On my favorite track from their album, "Just Us" they actually remind of a basement version of Interpol.

Shy Technology is a band to watch, and a band to check out at Middlewest when they play on Friday at Otto’s Nightclub at 8:10pm.

The Giving Tree Band recently unveiled their music video for "Circles," the single of their forthcoming album The Joke, The Threat & The Obvious.

To celebrate the release of their new album The Giving Tree Band will headline a hometown show at the House of Blues in Chicago this Friday September 10th.

I am confident that my appreciation and understanding of music would be no where near what it is today if it was not for the website Epitonic. The site launched in 1999 and I wish I could remember how I stumbled upon it, but it was my musical bible from ’99 to 2002. The site predated many of today’s popular music sites, and was also structured differently. The key to epitonic was related artist discovery somewhat like Pandora today, but with much more underground atheistic. The best utilization of the site, and the way I spent hours and hours, was through searching through the similar artists of your favorite bands or genres. Everyday I found myself downloading (through dial-up) a cd’s worth of new music to listen to.

One of the co-founders of Epitonic was Justin Sinkovich who currently is in the band The Poison Arrows and runs File 13 Records. The site disappeared in 2004, but now Justin is looking to relaunch this influential service. Since Justin lives in Chicago the relaunch party will be here this Fall. However, he first needs to raise some funds to finance the relaunch. You can visit his kickstarter page for more info and to get involved.

In the meantime he has put the site back back online for everyone to browse the archives.