Fol Chen | "The Longer U Wait"
Dir. by Chris Wilcha

Synth-pop rockers Fol Chen announce tour with Liars, with a stop at the El Rey on April 10. Download their covers of Pink Floyd’s "In The Flesh" and Prince’s "The Beautiful Ones" to break the waiting anxiety.

If you forgot our elation from the announcement of the Magical Properties Tour eaturing Daedelus, Nosaj Thing, and Jogger, perhaps this will ring in a memory. The tour makes a stop this Friday at The Echoplex.

This Thursday at 3 Clubs, Future Sounds, Buzzbands.la, and RM 64 are bringing another case of the rumbles back, featuring locals The Rhone Occupation. For those with the sonic liking of Death Cab For Cutie and Nada Surf, this is right up your alley. As usual, The Rumble never fails to deliver and is, more importantly, free. Details on the bill below.

The all-ages "Help Haiti" benefit starts at 6 p.m. on Saturday at Cinespace — the $10 cover goes to Operation USA in Haiti relief. Live music all in the name of aid? Do your part if you haven’t already.

Princeton | "Calypso Gold"
Dir. by Alexander Klein

Don’t let the name fool you. Princeton come from West LA, and carry with them a repertoire of symphonic-pop gems that really embrace California melodies. Every Monday in February, they take the stage at Spaceland — acquaint yourself with their debut LP Coccon of Love for a preview of tunes that will make any Vampire Weekend fan an even happier one.

Deli-cious Readers,

After weeks of voting and calculating we finally have the winner of our LA Best of 2009 Poll for emerging artists. Local Natives topped our final chart thanks to a very strong consensus amongst our Jurors – mostly composed of local venue promoters, independent radio DJs, record store staff etc. (list coming soon). Because of this the band will be rewarded with the cover of the Spring Issue of The Deli Magazine! Hurrah!

This is their new video of the single Airplanes – coincidentally released today!

Also congrats to Fitz and the Tantrums and Crash Kings, who placed 2nd and third in the Overall charts, and Light FM, My Imaginary Friend and Lemon Sun, who rocked on the Fans’ Poll side of things (see the readers’ Top 10 chart in the next blog entry).

Here’s the Final Overall Chart of our Best of LA Poll 2009 for emerging artists:

Artist Jury Writers Readers Total   1 Local Natives 9 1 0.026 10.026 2 Fitz & The Tantrums 4 1 0.044 5.044 3 Crash Kings 4 1 0.024 5.024 4 Warpaint 3 1.5 0.021 4.521 5 Mississippi Man 2 2 0.102 4.102 6 Emily Wells 3 1 0.011 4.011 7 Nosaj Thing 3 1 0.008 4.008 8 Robert Francis 3 1 0.004 4.004 9 Globes on Remote 3 1 0.002 4.002 10 Light FM   1 3 4 11 Evan Voytas 3   0.047 3.047 12 Audra Mae 3   0.003 3.003 13 Jump Clubb 3   0.001 3.001 14 My Imaginary Friends   0.75 2 2.75 15 Chasing Kings 2   0.347 2.347 16 Professor Calculus 2   0.07 2.07 17 Edward Sharpe & The… 2   0.021 2.021 18 The Growlers 2   0.01 2.01 19 Happy Hollows 2   0.009 2.009 20 Foreign Born 1 1 0.005 2.005 21 Slo-mo Erotic 2   0.002 2.002 22 Gaslamp Killer 2   0.001 2.001 23 Lemon Sun 1   1 2 24 Spindrift   1.5 0.003 1.503 25 KillKillKill 1   0.093 1.093 26 Active Child 1   0.062 1.062 27 Dirt Dress 1   0.047 1.047 28 Dawes 1   0.011 1.011 29 Best Coast 1   0.008 1.008 30 Afternoons 1   0.007 1.007

As we are sure you’ll be wondering how the point system works, each juror was asked to vote for 3 LA based emerging artists (best band gets 3 points, 2nd best gets 2 and 3rd best gets 1 point); Deli writers also had 3 choices, but they only counted 1 point each. Reader’s vote counted 3 points for the winner, 2 for second place, 1 for 3rd place, 0.001 per vote for all the other artists. Open Contest points (here added to the writers’ column) counted 1 point for the winner, 0.75 for 2nd place and 3rd for 3rd place. If you want to get even more confused check out the poll’s rules here. It’s just a little complicated, but extremely transparent!

This chart of course doesn’t represent the "truth" about the emerging LA scene, but we did our best to create a system that has some kind of validity. For us this poll is really just a fun way to give exposure to (and also get to know some new) emerging local artists, keep in touch with what’s going on in the scene and waste a lot of time organizing 9 (nine) of these polls in each city we cover.

An exhausted Deli’s Staff.

Imaad Wasif | "Redeemer"

Acoustic psych-rock songwriter Imaad Wasif isn’t a stranger to success. After pairing up with Karen O, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, and Little Jack Lawrence on the score for the Spike Jonze adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, momentum for the Wasif clan picked up fast enough for a spot a showcased artist spot at SXSW. Before Wasif makes a bigger name for himself at the infamous Texas music bender, he’ll be playing Thursdays at Spaceland in February, followed by a tour with Dead Meadow.

Imaad Wasif plays Spaceland February 4, 11 and 18.

Singer/songwriter Beth Thornley has been a licensing monster — from television to films, you’ve probably already heard her brand of super sweet power pop tunes in some shape or form. To celebrate the release of her latest LP Wash U Clean, Thornley will play a set with "an x-tra large band" at the Hotel Cafe on February 6. For fans of Aimee Mann and Ben Folds, this will be a treat.

Red Sparowes | The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer (LP Teaser)

Red Sparowes have been gone for three years and are coming back with an apparent bang.

Eels | "End Times"

Indie legends Eels released their latest LP End Times just last week, and if you haven’t gotten around to listening to it, it’s streaming in its entirety on their MySpace page.

Have you added us on Facebook yet?  We just joined and we’re already a hit with all those crazy kids and their banal status updates about mafias and farming. Once you’re on, tell your friends to join us. We promise not to tag you in mega incriminating photos.

And if you aren’t following us yet on Twitter, what are you waiting for? We’ll tweet your face off, all in the name of giveaways and exclusive Deli LA twitter information including (but not limited to) passwords into events, presales and all that other stuff that’ll make you glad you followed us long, long ago.

If those reasons aren’t enough, then simply do it to support LA’s music community. Tons of bands have hopped on and have found really great uses through our outlets and anything that excites the music community is, frankly, good for all of us.

Kumbaya,
-The Deli Staff