If you’re wondering what to play at your holiday shindig that isn’t as stale as the proverbial fruitcake, look no further. #Christmas is not your great aunt’s Christmas compilation album. Your great aunt does not even know how to pronounce #Christmas. But @you do #youtechsavvything.

The Ivy Hill Entertainment release features local indie artists like Finish Ticket, Mr. Kind, and Marqiss, singing new Christmas songs and breathing life into old ones. The album is available on Bandcamp for whatever you want to pay (including goose egg, but you wouldn’t do that). All proceeds go to Swords to Plowshares, a non-profit veteran service organization.

In light of the album release, Marqiss, The Plastic Arts, and Maria Quiles & Rory Cloud will be putting on a holiday show called Marqissmas at the Subterranean Arthouse in Berkeley tomorrow, December 20. Entry is $10. Here is the best promotional video I’ve seen all year.

Oakland-based Oceanography‘s EP Parachutes of Plenty, was released today on iTunes and Bandcamp. The project of Brian Kelly (Disclosure: Kelly is the East Bay Express’ art director and my colleague), Oceanography combines the depressive folk of Low, the gloom pop of Echo and the Bunnymen, and indie rock — circa early 2000s Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Kelly used to live. 

Catch Oceanography live at its record release show at Hemlock Tavern on Thursday, Dec. 13 at 9 p.m., with openers Swells and Wilding.

–Whitney Phaneuf

Santa Rosa schizophrenic garage rockers Girls in Suede demand your attention. Just when you think you can juggle the music in their debut self-titled album, they’ll toss you another sound. 

Aligning closest with alt rockers like early Chili Peppers and Modest Mouse, the band also nods to jazz, call-and-response, funk, prog, and old-fashioned garage punk. That’s a lot of nodding. Listen for angst-ridden screaming choruses, soulful saxophones, and guttural, fuzzed out guitars and basses that make up the album’s teenage anthemic colors. 

Girls in Suede will be making their way down to Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco for their album release on Thursday, December 20th. Joining them will be locals Wes Leslie, Of Shape and Sound, and "post-schizoid" rockers Coast Jumper. Get your tickets here. 

-Daveth

I was just chatting with a friend about how, once in a while, we’ll come across those people whose futures we’d want to invest in. I think it’s just a matter of time before the teens in Oakland’s Fever Charm wind up on the charts, and it’d really rev my hipster sensibilities to say, “I knew them when.” 

There’s a new venue in town. Neck of the Woods, formerly known as Rockit Room, will be throwing an opening party on December 1st, featuring six top notch bands, two DJs, two stages, and an after party. Here’s the lineup and all the info you need to have a great Saturday night. No, I won’t pay for your cab fare.

Debbie Neigher
www.facebook.com/debbieneighermusic

DJ Aaron Axelson (Live 105, Popscene)

Doe Eye
www.facebook.com/ilovedoeeye

The Hundred Days
www.facebook.com/pages/The-Hundred-Days

Mister Loveless
www.facebook.com/MisterLoveless

New Diplomat
www.facebook.com/newdiplomat

Nova Albion
www.facebook.com/NovaAlbionMusic

Seeking Empire
www.facebook.com/seekingempire

After Party (1am) @ Downstairs Stage with DJ Huffy (Death Valley High, Minushead Records)

You can buy tickets at the door for $12, or you can buy some here for $10, and put those two smackaroos toward one fearsome bar tab.

Let’s start by saying Mahgeetah’s first full-length album Heavy Baby doesn’t qualify as your typical SF indie scene staple. 

Beginning with a single interval on a B3 organ—or a B3 imposter—and ending with a classic blues-rock jam, the album is truck stop music’s sensitive cousin who went off to college, but still gets nostalgic for his blues and folk rock roots. It would gladly trade your Bay Area reverb for a little distortion any day.

Heavy Baby uses influences like Dr. Dog and Wilco as a compass, but ventures into territory of its own. It is constructed of propulsive rhythms with easy riding guitars, and furnished with Cat Stevens-like electric piano riffs with soulful, staccato vocals that call to mind Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug.

Listen to the album all the way through; this is much more than a catchy road trip playlist.  

Here’s the only track from the album I could find for free download, but you can stream it on major streaming platforms like Rdio, and buy it on major buying platforms like iTunes. 

Get convinced you want to buy or stream Mahgeetah’s album by watching their show at The Night Light, December 7, with T.V. Mike and Scarecrows. 

Evil Eyes’ musical adventure begins with a bro jam in a shabby motel room in a mysterious, suntanned land called Florida. Four years, three new members, two singles, and one EP later, the band is preparing to release their first full-length album here in Palesville (okay, San Francisco), CA.

Their gauzy, glazed pop lives in a similar zip code as Real Estate, Beach House, and Youth Lagoon. Heavy on janglitude, guitar pedals, and pentatonicism, they should have no issue packing out a space in the prolific West Coast shoegaze scene. 

Listen to their stuff here, and look forward to their album release early next year.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. 

Do yourself a favor and dig up your old home movies—before the illness, accident, or divorce—turn down the lights, and play Jessica Pratt’s self-titled album.

Her music is neither rooted in the past nor the present, but somewhere visceral and in-between, like the memories you bothered to keep. Don’t expect hooks and fanfare. This quiet, unadorned album is fingerstyle guitar, timeless vocals, and meandering melodies. It could just as easily live on a cassette tape as it could a lossless file.

Stream it here (courtesy of The FADER). 

I’ve got some free tickets coming your way for a show at Elbo Room on Nov. 28 featuring French Cassettes, Black Cobra Vipers, and the SF debut of Brolly.

The lineup has something for everyone—Brolly cools you down with introspective melody-centric pop (think Coldplay and Death Cab); French Cassettes warms you up with impossibly infectious, sunny grooves; and Black Cobra Vipers shakes you around with swooning vocals, and art funk flavors.

The two pairs of tickets are courtesy of Bourgeois Productions and event sponsors Faultline Studios. If you want them, send me an email at thedelisf@gmail.com, and I’ll draw the winners at random. Hint: dates are expensive, and this is some prime, date-worthy real estate. 

To call Kacey Johansing‘s music “orchestral pop“ snubs the jazz, the old rock ‘n’ roll, the folk, and the little hints of R&B that took up residence in these songs. It’s piano and string heavy, with listless, meandering melodies, and (once in a while) Fleet Foxian harmonies. Her languid, grenadine voice has a way of conjuring strolls on rain-drenched lanes lit by too few street lamps, and hazy evenings in Blue Velvet nightclubs.

You can download a cut or two for free on Johansing’s SoundCloud, and look forward to listening to the whole shebang on February 26, 2013. 

For just a few days, Ash Reiter is offering their song “Little Sandy” for free download.

The song grooves like a Vampire Weekend hit with a kaleidoscope of synth sounds, and it’s definitely more tropical than it is tempestuous; apropos to a hurricane nonetheless?

Download it here—“hurry as fast as you can.”

After a month long national tour, The New Trust returns to San Francisco for a special set alongside Child Bite, Hard Girls & Starskate.

With a stop in Chicago just last week to record their forthcoming LP "Keep Dreaming" with the legendary Steve Albini, The New Trust will be showcasing a set with plenty of new tracks and old favorites. A logical progression from the dark tones of the band’s latest official release, this new material is poised to deliver the angular guitar, intricate drumming and abrasive bass that’s become a trademark foundation to Staples’ eerie-sweet vocals.

Catch them this Saturday at Thee Parkside 9pm $8.00. Get tickets here.

-Annie