Soft Speaker has a new ep coming out this month. The ep, Stranger in the Alps features five new songs and you can now stream two of the tracks,”Marble Mask” and “Tennyson Tea” here.

Soft Speaker will be celebrating the release of ep on February 26th at Darkroom with Yukon Blonde and Moxie Motive.

Like a tortured replica of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Syllable Section present a warped and damaged brand of pop. Their debut album, Linear Views, sounds like a demonic, drug induced, ‘60’s pop binge played in reverse, or perhaps a traditional pop tune cut-up, taped back together, and then looped. What ever it is, this psychedelic mess, the listener is taken on a journey that changes them and they are never really the same.

Vocalist Mathew Marquardt makes Kevin Barnes look sane as he places his falsetto whine on tracks about “Normalcy”, loneliness, mood changes, and other craziness. You will feel like you have heard pieces of this before, but never be able to zero in on melody or rhythm. There is beauty in these tracks, but it is being repeatedly strangled to death. The Syllable Section is both traumatic and enjoyable.

Nothing says “I Love You” like a mixtape, and yesterday Flosstradamus offered their love up to the world. Check out the crew’s Valentine’s Day Mix. Flosstradamus will be spinning tonight (Feb. 12th) at Lincoln Hall for their annual FlosstrPROMus. The event starts at 10:30pm.

Taken from their debut record Ooh La La, coming out Feb. 16th, Ornery Little Darling are not shy about their songs or their intentions and "Run From The Gun" is a perfect example of that attitude. They have entered this video in the Rock the Roxy SXSW video contest. The video was made by Endless Eye Films, ishootrockstars.com, Rubbish Films, and EP Theater.

The new video from Kidz In The Hall for the track “Jukebox” premiered yesterday on MTV. The video was directed by BBGun. The track appears on their forthcoming album Land of Make Believe which will be released on March 9th via Duck Down Records.

Mike Schpitz drops some knowledge over a borrowed 9th Wonder beat. “The Rain” appears on his mixtape Love Potion Number 9th: The Hangover.

This month Verbal Kent will be unleashing his latest album “Save Your Friends”, and to hold us over, give us a peak, and mark Verbal Kent’s upcoming tour of Europe, Beat Trotterz has released a mixtape. This mixtape combines over 24 tracks spanning Kent’s career and contains “Example” featuring Lance Ambu and William Kurk from “Save Your Friends”. Kent has appeared on 20 release indie hip hop releases since 1999, and is one of the most prolific and respected emcees in town.

I know you are probably buried in snow and don’t want to dig your way out, but if you can make it down to Empty Bottle tonight you will be rewarded. They are featuring three bands that play various forms of indie rock. The Vindits learn more towards the punk aspects of things, Baron Von Something play something more traditional, and Deadlands (from what I can tell) play alt-country tinged rock. It is three facets coming together for one night. Let’s see if they can melt some of this snow!

Head on out to the Tonic Room on 2/10 to hear some ambient folk rock tunes from Brendan Losch, Nathan Xander and Buffalo Heart. This 21+ show gets started at 9pm and is $5. He will be performing tunes from his forthcoming release, Low.

Last week Indiana’s Joyful Noise label announced that they had officially signed the noise-punk basement rockers Prizzy Prizzy Please. I say officially because the label did release a split ep with PPP and Push-Pull last year, but now the band is legitimately with the label. Joyful Noise plans to release the bands sophomore and label debut, Chroma Cannon, this April. PPP got there start in Bloomington, Indiana, but now resides here in Chicago. The label is calling their sound melodic noise punk (reminiscent of Parts and Labor, Lightning Bolt), but when you listen to the first track from their new album, “Large Hadron Collider”, you find that this is more closely related to sign-along anthems of say Van Halen or AC/DC. It is a sound that is a combination of influences and hard to pin down, but once you find yourself singing along and thrashing about you won’t care what it sounds like anymore.

Prizzy Prizzy Please will be performing at Empty Bottle with Dr. Manhattan on March 4th.

With Shapers it seems to be the merging of sonic experimentation and music freedom that fascinates them. Their debut 12” Little, Big will be released on March 9th, and it finds the bands using texture and atmosphere to create a complex web of sound that is unpredictable and extremely enjoyable. A fairly new band, compromised of Zaid Maxwell, Steve Reidell, Amelia Styer, and Todd Waters, Shapers began performing live together just this past fall. However, they have spent the last twelve months locked away in a basement creating this richly creative sound. The result of all the time and effort is a sound that is primarily instrument and combines elements of ambient, psychedelic, dark electronica, and free jazz. With vocals are applied from time to time as in the track “Jar” they are quiet and almost blend into the instruments without putting up too much of a fight. Little, Big is challenging, beauty, intelligent, and filled with sonic surprises.

The first 250 available copies of Little, Big will be screen-printed by the band. You can preoder a copy at the band’s website today. They will be playing a release show at The Hideout with Old Fake and Driftless Pony Club on March 11th at 9:00pm.

Lead by the sullen Stephen Howard, Quieting Syrup brought the brand of mope rock to the recording studio of Daytrotter recently and the four song set was released on Saturday. The bands latest album, Songs About A Sick Boy, was released latest year by Lovitt Records. The band played three tracks from the album including my favorite “Password to a Fort Full of Pills”, and an unreleased track called “Mary, My Wife”.