​The San Francisco based metal, math rock band​, Aberrant Phase​ ​is gearing up to release a new album entitled, Below. This dark, merky metal record will appropriately be released next month on Halloween. You can get a taste of Below‘s vibe and tone by checking out their new single, Anodyne​. Enjoy the new music and support independent musicians!​

Another classic neo psych show is headed your way on September 25th at The Elbo Room. Neo psych aficionados, The Asteroid #4, Dirty Denim, The Spiral Electric and Federale will perform in celebration of the release of Federale’s new album, All The Colours Of The Dark. Don’t miss the event. DJ Joel Gion of Joel Gion & the Primary Colours and The Brian Jonestown Massacre will be spinning records all night!

Tonight, The Independent in San Francisco will host a completely local line up, consisting of M. Lockwood Porter, Vandella and Travis Hayes. It’s pretty rare to see a full on San Francisco based line up at The Independent, so make sure you go out and support these hardworking artists who earned this awesome gig.

Travis Hayes isn’t the type to wear emotions on his sleeve. He saves that for his songs- brutally honest most of the time, and endearingly heartfelt all the time. Hayes continues the timeless tradition of soul-bearing songwriting to interpret our shared human experience into music. Love, heartbreak, fading friendships, fraught relationships – they’re all expressed achingly through his impassioned voice and melodic guitar lines.

We’re excited to announce that San Francisco’s Heron Oblivion will be performing live in San Francisco in support of Dinosaur Jr. at The Independent for three nights: September 26th, 27th and 28th!

Three shades of light run through Heron Oblivion: Meg Baird’s rich, beautiful vocal approach, the locked-horns bass and drums of her and Ethan Miller’s streamlined-but-motorik rhythm section, and a twin guitar tapestry that both aligns with the dreaminess of the songs and crackles out of containment to froth over the rim. It’s a seamless but pronounced thing: “Oriar” sports dramatic spires of solos that fly high out of the gate, slowly settling in to lilting verses then exploding again, “Rama” drifts like an Opal/Fairport wedding with more tumbling, syrupy electric lines all around.

Pastoral pummel. Listening to Heron Oblivion’s album feels like sitting in a lovely meadow in the shadow of a dam that’s gonna heave-ho’ any minute. Members of this new San Francisco combo have put in time in both raging and relatively tranquil psychedelic sound units—this is the premise and the synergy behind this very unique and special new (self-titled) album.

The Oakland based rock duo, Steel Cranes has released a new music video entitled, Ebb from their new album, Tango which was released last month.

Tango is a more dynamic take on the “grit” and “raw, relentless power”. The debut Steel Cranes album. With a vision for the sound of Tango that was more expansive, Shapiro and Schukle were initially stalled when considering the logistics of accomplishing these time-consuming sonic refinements in a studio environment. It soon became clear that the best option was to record and mix the record themselves.

This education ultimately yielded the more passionate and layered version of the Steel Cranes sound that is heard on Tango. Once freed from the confines of creative deadlines and traditional studio environments, Shapiro and Schukle took full advantage of their new work paradigm.

Chasms is the San Francisco based project of Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden. The duo crafts percussive dirges that are at once beautiful and menacing. Labrador’s haunting vocals and hypnotizing guitar work wade between rhythmic bass lines and bursts of Madden’s stinging feedback, laid on a bed of pummeling drum programming. The band’s affinity for industrial rhythms, swelling textures, precise minimalism, and chaotic eruptions of noise sounds as equally informed by shoegaze as drone and doom metal—to choose just one would be a disservice.

On The Legs Of Love Purified is the band’s proper debut full-length album. Written over the course of several years, the album explores the healing force of love and the exorcism of pain that inescapably accompanies it. Light cannot exist without dark, bliss without suffering. …Love Purified conjures this atmosphere of duality as it drifts through an expanse of emotion.

LOTUS THIEF is a San Francisco band that merges post-black metal, space rock and ambient music, seamlessly blending the genres into a unique and greater musical whole. Originated by two members of celebrated “green metal” group BOTANIST – drummer Otrebor and multi-instrumentalist / composer Bezaelith — LOTUS THIEF is its own entity; a project with a stated purpose of “lauding knowledge and illuminating ancient words and art through song”. The group will release its new album, Gramarye, on September 16 via Prophecy Productions.

“The Book of the Dead is a beautiful text of its time, a sort of instruction manual for the afterlife compiled over about a thousand years and often inscribed on sarcophagi or tomb walls, hence the title “coffin spells,” comments Bezaelith. "For us, the song needed to be as vast and colorful as possible to approach the text, jumping from wild passages of harsh vocals to building solos, to calm ideological eyes of the storm from one moment to the next.”

Bay Area based band Great Apes are gearing up to release a new album, California Heart.The record was recorded over four days this past spring by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden. Asian Man Records is releasing the material on 12” LP and in digital format in October.

California Heart is the second full length and sixth release from San Francisco’s Great Apes. The record, akin to much of the band’s earlier material, is thematic. With California Heart, the concept is a fictional one, revolving around an alienated adolescent residing in Fresno, CA. Each song is written in first person and tackles a myriad of subjects including mental illness, suburban doldrums, creativity, nature as a sanctuary, social isolation, perceptions of adulthood, cliques, bullying, drugs, suicide, and an ever-crystallizing and often cynical view of the world. In its entirety, the record is intended to be a portrait of navigating coming of age as an outcast, in a stagnant and less-than-nurturing environment. Although the writing is founded in fiction, it’s undoubtedly inspired by personal experiences, and anyone who grew up feeling weird, anxious, down, and/or angst-ridden in a place they wanted out of should have no problem finding points of relation.

Live Show:
Saturday, September 17th This is my Fest – Oakland, CA @ Oakland Metro House

San Francisco based musician, Abbot Kinney will be playing Great American Music Hall with Panic is Perfect, Dangermaker, and Vacances on August 20th!

Abbot Kinney is a rock band that thrives on big vocal hooks, a heavy, intricate rhythm section and an ambitiously grand scope, and while lead singer-songwriter Jared Swanson was certainly influenced by the “alternative” label of yesterday, his music wholly belongs to the 21st century. The group’s new EP The Night not only challenges the listener’s conception of what an indie rock song can sound like in a scaled-down, irony-charged modern music scene; it also represents a sonic evolutionary step forward.

The San Francisco based psych revivalist band, The Gentle Cycle has released a new single entitled, Follow Light.

With a painstaking attention to detail, these songs were filtered through a cool grip of vintage guitars and components, like an antique Echoplex tape delay and a funky old spring reverb unit. They even recorded on a 1970s Tascam 388 analog reel-to-reel, replete with a deadstock spool of old quarter-inch tape. But Derek’s melodic musings come from an abstract foundation that’s more modern and forward thinking than most musicians beholden to period-correct tones. Listen to The Gentle Cycle and you’ll hear a band that somehow balances universal emotions with astral, atmospheric sonic architecture.

San Francisco‐based Americana singer‐songwriter, Katie Garibaldi, announces the release of her live performance video, “In My Wildest Dreams.” The track is from her new EP, Rooted Clarity, that dropped in June. Women’s Radio says, “San Francisco’s Katie Garibaldi offers something original and distinctive, as well as possesses a strong business savvy that has gotten her far ahead on the road of an indie artist.” Garibaldi has spent the majority of her life singing and performing. ‘

We’re always proud to premiere new releases, so without further ado check out K. Garibaldi’s new video for "In My Wildest Dreams." Make sure you support Katie and Bay Area independent music!

San Francisco based artist, Minna Choi plays/composes/conducts music under the name Magik*Magik.

After 8 years of leading her very own orchestra (how many people do you know that have started their own orchestras?), she has finally written and recorded her own songs, the first of which is a slow-burning ballad called "Laugh a Lot" which features a duet with How To Dress Well’s Tom Krell, with whom Magik*Magik have collaborated on and off since 2012.

"Laugh a Lot" is Magik*Magik’s first release as a solo artist, and is highly anticipated amongst people in the know. Don’t miss this one, and stay tuned for more.