Oakland based post indie sad pop band, Magic Fight has released a new single called FANGS. FANGS Is a song from their upcoming debut LP, Wooden Swords and Stolen Echoes, which the band plans to self release on April 1st, 2013. You can catch Magic Fight live in San Francisco at Brick and Mortar Music Hall with local San Francisco bands, The Lawlands and The Disposition on March 14th. This young Bay Area band has a lot of potential. Take a listen to their new single and make sure you grab their new album when it is released.

San Francisco based singer/songwriter, Jeff Campbell has been named one of the top 10 finalists in the 2013 Guitart Center Singer/Songwriter Competition. Campbell was chosen along with the other finalists by Grammy Award winning producer, John Shanks, who has produced 67 #1 albums, and will produce a four track EP for the winner of the competition. As a finalist, Jeff has already won a Martin acoustic/electric guitar and a standard Telecaster, amoung other great tools and resources. Shanks will name the winner of the competition after watching Jeff and the other finalists perform live at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles on March 2nd. Check out the video that got Campbell the top honors in the competition.

Kacey Johansing, an accomplished singer/songwriter based in San Francisco, has released her sophomore LP, Grand Estates. Her feminine and melodious new album is the follow up to her 2010 debut album, Many Seasons, and deals with the subject matter of loss. Grand Estates is dedicated to Kacey’s loved ones that she lost during the recording of the album. Kacey is also playing a string of shows in March between San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival and Austin’s SXSW Fest.

NOISE POP FESTIVAL – MARCH 2nd 2013 @ The Great American Music Hall – All Ages – Doors open at 7 pm

Advanced Tickets Here

SXSW – MARCH 12th @ Red 7 (Terrorbird Media Day Party)

MARCH 14th @ J. Blacks (The Deli Mag)

MARCH 16th @ J. Blacks (The Deli Mag)

San Francisco based experimental garage rock band, Petejota has released their debut EP, Hunting for Pleasure. This band’s music is unqiuely interesting and almost embodies math rock components due to their experimental and strangly syncopated music. This fuzzed out Bay Area music project can also fall in sync with SF’s psych rock scene as the music is touched with reverb and a bit of passion. Give Hunting for Pleasure a listen if you’re looking to hear music that’s abstract and creative.

San Francisco based instrumental post rock band Form and Fate have emerged from a long live performance hybernation to play the DNA Lounge on March 6th. After a two year hiatus, Form and Fate will be sharing a bill with Boston based art rock, nugaze metal band, Junius, Death Valley High and Silver Snakes. Do your best not to miss this show. For ticket information, click here:

http://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2013/03-06d.html

Like contemporaries The Black Keys, The Steepwater Band, and The Black Angels, SF’s The Stone Foxes summon the days of hard-driven blues-rock.

Their full-length album Small Fires, set to release February 12th, is suffused with fuzzy guitar riffs, heavy, seductive vocals and dark, simple choruses. Their single “Everybody Knows” alludes to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” weaving a sinister theme into a hard-hitting, disconsolate song. Small Fires delivers as pure a dose of rock as can be found today—gritty, spacious, and to-the-point.

Check them out at Amoeba Records on the 12th or in Oakland at the New Parish Music Hall on the 13th. – Tina Aita

On February 26, Noise Pop returns for its 21^st year to bring us independent music, film, and art. There’ll be some incredible emerging—and not so emerging—musicians playing this year, but there’s only room for one preview per blog entry. Here’s the first:

With Mac Demarco slithering onto the scene as some kind of hipster anti-sweetheart, I think it’s safe to say slime is in. Slime is SF three-piece Black Cobra Vipers’ main jam.

Of course, there’s the name. I’ve taken a vow to start a band called Black Cobra Viper Anacondas someday.

They’ve got their self-proclaimed sound, "secret art sex," which, for lack of any better pigeonhole, works as well as any other; maybe something to do with yacht rock, or jazz, or lo-fi with a keyboard or something, I don’t know. Sure, why not. Secret art sex it is.

Then, there’s the lead singer’s propensity for treating each note like a rubber band to be stretched and snapped and messed with—more pitch bends than pitches, and just about as emotive as it gets. It’s really something to be reckoned with.

They put on a feverish show, and they’re currently in the process of recording something, so keep your ears and schedules open. Also, they gave me some of my favorite interview responses to date.

We’ve tallied the results for the Open Submissions stage of our SF Bay Area Year End Poll. All of the submissions were ranked by Deli Editors from other scenes, and the list of acts that have advanced to our Readers’/Fans’ Poll phase are below. We will also be releasing the list of nominees chosen by our local "scene expert" jurors very soon. 

Ash Reiter’s sweet dream pop couldn’t come from anywhere other than coastal California. The band recently rolled out its sophomore album, Hola—a feast of baroque, honey-crooned hits. Just in time for their album tour homecoming, our Deli jury voted them number one in our SF Year End Poll’s Open Submissions with an impressive average rating of 8.5.

Materializing in a bedroom somewhere in San Jose in 2005, Seabright is the electro-organic brainchild of Justin Morales. Two full-length albums in one year, and you’d probably expect something bland, but Seabright creates carefully constructed collages of drum loops, instrumentation, vocals, and a huge array of samples. Seabright tied for second in our SF Year End Poll’s Open Submissions with average rating of 7.66 (the other 2nd place went to Lauren O’Connell – see entry below).

Lauren O’Connell began writing songs at fifteen in her home in Rochester, New York. Today, at twenty-four, the alt-country artist has completed three full-length albums, one collaborative EP, and a 3000-mile move across the country to San Francisco. Her passionate songwriting and gentle twang have earned her comparisons to Neil Young, Wilco, and Neko Case.