The Oakland based folk band, Ghost Town Jenny will be supporting a couple of great out-of-town acts at the Swedish American Music Hall in San Francisco on June 17th. Ghost Town Jenny (led by singer/songwriter, Kym Kylland) is one of the rare local acts you can confidently and definitively call, "folk". Kylland’s music is super pretty, simplistic and a joy to listen to.

Smoke Screen is a soulful electro pop duo that’s going to create a nice crescendo as they’ll follow GTJ on the bill. They’ve got a flashy Hollywood pop style, but their sound embodies more of Los Angeles’ local music scene than a homogenized Hollywood version of a style they originally crafted. They’re talented, polished and will be cool to experience live as well.

Brooklyn’s Tor Miller sounds kind of like the Billy Joel of 2025….or Elton John if he grew up in Williamsburg in 1997. That’s pretty cool. Miller’s piano based ballads are haunting but still pop oriented. It’s possible that he’s going to put on a thorough and emotive show that’s going to make you remember his performance for a long time. Don’t miss this line up at Swedish American Music Hall on June 17th!

The San Francisco based indie-pop soul band, Le VICE will be performing live at Bottom of the Hill in support of the Atlanta based grungy soul musical outfit, Algiers. We certainly recommend you attend this show because you’re going to get to experience a night of a super cool pastiche of new American music.

Both band’s musical styles are dipped in soul like a thick layer of chocolate on a Klondike (do they still make Klondike Bars?), but the soft center of Le VICE’s style is more pop-R&B oriented in comparison to Algiers’ who has a very rigid, rough ’round the edges rock style going on within its compostional core. These bands should be experienced live because listening to their recordings is just going to make you sit and ponder what exactly your ear drums are dancing to.

It’s summer time! Make your way out into the fresh night air and check out Algiers and Le VICE’s interpretations of thrilling soul music at Bottom of the Hill on June 23rd!

The Bay Area based post-electro artist, Matrixxman is gearing up to release his debut album entitled Homesick on July 10th. Matrixxman’s style of EDM doesn’t really play by the rules. Its choppily smooth computerized music embodies creative sonic inconsistencies (not the beats but in regards to a fixed genre specific style) that makes his music’s style intriguing and attractive. 

Before digging into the steely, handcrafted technoisms of Homesick, you need to know a few things about Charles Duff, the Bay Area artist behind Matrixxman… He’s also a voracious information junkie, soaking up government conspiracies and contemporary science-fiction like a proper X-Files fanatic. These cultural reference points are as integral to the background of Homesick as Detroit, Chicago, and Berlin’s musical legacies. Across the record’s versatile track list, Matrixxman uses the language of machines and dance floors like a hungry pulp novelist, weaving together his divergent narratives and characters under one sprawling dystopian sky.

Check out the lead single from his upcoming album due out on Ghostly.

The San Francisco based alternative surf rock band, Lemme Adams released a new EP last week. The five track album is entitled Black Flamingo and is a strong follow up to their debut album Gorilla Back.

Lemme Adams, as a band is able to incorporate horns into their dark surf rock sound in a super tasteful manner. The horns never bleed over into playing cheesy ska riffs or come off sounding overly "Mariachi", even when performing music for the Latin themed third track, Venezuela. Jordan Miller’s bassy tribal drum beats and Adams’ signature vocals make the album familiar and warm in regards to the musical style relating to their previous release. Nonetheless, Adams as a songwriter wrote more about what was going on around him while maintaining a bit of subjectiveness in this collection of songs. You can still pinpoint Adams’ perception and opinion about what he’s lyrically describing, but he’s less emotionally direct than his writing was in the last album.

Adams has the ability to write incredibly cynical songs that don’t put you off or seem unnecessarily confrontational. The title track of the album (which houses some nice faux improvised jam outs) along with the second song, Hella seem to be about general disillusionment with social popularity. Both songs talk a lot about friends, and Hella seems to point out "friends" inconsistencies and trivialness. Hella is a Californian slang term that means "a large amount of" and can be easily overused in conversation. The irony of the word is not lost on Adams in regards his parody of how many times the word can be said and heard if one is in a group of young people in Cali.

The third song, Venezuela captures the sunny feel of the South American country as Adams sings about not being able to escape the sharp sunlight. Christmas Spirit goes along with the band’s weird theme of writing and performing Christmas music all year around, and of course, Toys, the song of the band’s award winning music video has finally made its debut on a recording.

Great record. Good job! Take a listen to Black Flamingo!

If you want to catch a unique show, check out Etana at Mezzanine! Her music is gorgeous and it will give you a chance to check out some music that may not be "the usual" in regards to local shows. We love local bands forever, but everyone’s got to stretch their wings a bit. You won’t have to stretch far. Make your way down to Mezzanine in San Francisco on June 6th!

The soulful Jamaican vocalist who has been described as "reggae’s Jill Scott" (NPR) or"reminiscent of India.Arie" (Essence) – dropped her fourth album I Rise on Oct 28, 2014. The album was helmed primarily by the legendary Jamaican multi-instrumentalist and producer Clive Hunt (Stevie Wonder, Peter Tosh, Rolling Stones, The Wailers, Grace Jones, Jimmy Cliff). It hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard Reggae Album chart, making Etana one of the three Jamaican female artists ever and the first in nearly two decades (since Diana King and Patra in the mid-90s) to land this highly-coveted chart position. I Rise follows Etana’s critically-acclaimed albums Better Tomorrow (2013), Free Expressions (2011) and The Strong One (2008). With poised assurance, she continues to evolve spiritually, mentally, emotionally and musically and carry the torch as reggae’s leading lady.

You can check out the awesome indepdenent film that shares how hip hop and break dancing has crossed International borders and touched the lives of young people all over the world. Shake the Dust gives a very intimate look at hip hop youth culture in Uganda, Columbia, Cambodia and Yemen. This film is very compelling and we totally recommend you check it out!

From executive producer and Grammy-nominated rapper Nasir “Nas” Jones and journalist-turned-filmmaker Adam Sjöberg comes the buoyant, globe-trotting film SHAKE THE DUST.

With a propulsive soundtrack of international hip-hop samples, music from both emerging emcees and established superstars like Nas, Common and Talib Kweli, as well as some of the most jaw-dropping breakdancing moves ever committed to film, SHAKE THE DUST is an inspiring tribute to the uplifting power of music and movement. By highlighting the stories and moves of some of the most talented breakdance crews in the poorest urban neighborhoods of Colombia, Yemen, Uganda, and Cambodia, Sjöberg weaves together the stories of rappers, DJs, and b-boys across three continents, revealing how breakdancing today acts as a positive force for social change.

June 3-6 — Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, Berkeley

Lately, Collin Ludlow-Mattson & the Folks have been stretching out their songs—exploring their material from many angles through improvisation. They’ve evolved into something of a post-punk jam band. This new improvisatory approach results in interpretations of songs that are highly situation-specific. What is played is not just a reflection of the song as written; the playing also very much reflects the atmosphere in which the song is currently being played and the evolving relationship of the musicians (Collin, Indianna Hale, Sean Olmstead, and Sterling Schlegel), who are housemates and friends. The kind of music Collin Ludlow-Mattson & the Folks are making now grows best when it is exposed frequently to an audience—people who respond to the music and cause the musicians to respond to their responses. It is perfect then that in June CLM & the Folks have a Tuesday-night residency at San Francisco’s Amnesia—placing them in contact with an audience weekly. Amnesia, which is the hub of a blossoming Bay Area music scene, will be hosting a number of very exciting lineups during the CLM & the Folks residency. The lineups for all five shows are full of local bands who have very compelling catalogs of songs and unique sonic approaches for realizing their songs in a live setting. This is a not-to-be-missed June event, one that will perfectly compliment other notable musical events taking place in Northern California in June—like Hickey Fest and the Grateful Dead reunion concerts.

6/9: Soft Shells
Pat Hull (beautiful tunes from Chico)

6/16: Mark E. Deutsch (super album release!!!!)
Dead Recipe

6/23: TV Mike and the Scarecrowes (playing songs of the Grateful Dead)
Sea Dramas

6/30: Jeff Grimes
1 more band TBD!

The San Francisco based psych shoegaze band, The Spiral Electric and Fine Points, the new formation of a band featuring members of the successful local psych-soul band, Sleepy Sun are going to be performing live at Brick and Mortar Music Hall on June 3rd.

Fine Points are so new that they have yet to release any recorded material, so this show should be some incentive to massage your curious nature (if you possess it) and see what the band can actually do. Obviously, The Spiral Electric is a great live band, and the legendary neo psych band, The Warlocks will be in town to put on an always stellar performance. The Warlocks are an indispensable band to the Los Angeles and Bay Area neo psychedelic music scene. They’ve opened doors for countless current local bands and helped set the sonic standard for the washed out, reverb latent garage rock style that we’ve all become accustomed to knowing as a huge chuck of the local music community’s signature sound. If you want to know where current San Francisco neo psych-garage rock got born, check out this show.

Counter Culture and POW Magazine present the Nevada City, CA (we have no idea where that is) based electro-lullaby music group, Dazeys, who are set to support a couple of great San Francisco based bands next week at Rickshaw Stop on Wednesday, June 3rd. Band buddies (bands that know each other well and tend to share bills together when they can) The She’s and Union Pacific will be filling out the rest of the bill to play a comfortingly familiar local show. With all the changes going on in the Bay Area music and art scene, it’s nice to see bands being consistent and supporting local venues.

We need local bands to continue to play local venues just as much as we appreciate touring bands coming into town to join our local shows and line ups. Do your best to show up, dance around and support this show!

The San Francisco based all female neo garage rock band, Dirty Denim will be performing at Brick and Mortar Music Hall tomorrow night in support of the Los Angeles based psych western rock band, Spindrift. The Bay Area based band, Mount Vision will be premiering their live tunes for the first time in San Francisco as the band consists of members of the neo psych rock band, Asteroid #4.

Spindrift is bringing a brand new line up into town as Kirpatrick Thomas works with a plethora of California based musicians to perform his "music-to film" style of imaginitive and energetic modern western rock songs. Spindrift puts on a good show!

Head down to Brick and Mortar and support Kymberli’s Music Box shows, the great local bands who are performing along with the headliner.

The San Francisco based soul-gaze band, Future Twin has produced a music video for their upbeat rock-pop track, We’re Here. The video is great. It’s always good to see the conceptual expression of helping ordinary people escape what is boring and mundane, and discover what colorful fun life has to offer. We’re Here tells a story of three people who are seemingly lost in the monotony and routine of their realities until a strange human lady with a colorful mask appears to break them free of their pain and disenfranchisement.

“"We’re Here” is a song about standing together. About not being broken up. It’s about cohesion. The script and concept that we attempted to portray in this music video center on the daily lives of archetypes of urban life: the office worker, the service worker and the retired elder. In hyper-productivist America, we often ask people when first meeting them, in order to get to know them better, “What do you do?” Playing on this way of defining people, as if our day job equates the very fiber of our being, as if that’s the most interesting facet of someone’s life (what they do to commodify their labor)– we attempted to show the triviality of such things." – Jean Jeanie, Future Twin

We like Future Twin and we like the song, We’re Here, so it’s a happy experience for us to share a music video that they’ve been super passionate about sharing with the world. Here it is, check them out and make sure you attend their upcoming Bay Area shows:

Jun 06 SubZERO Festival San Jose, CA
Jul 18 Dissilience Oakland (A benefit for Oakland Fund for the Arts) w/ Jean Jeanie

The Oakland based progressive, avant art rock band Makeunder has released a new single entitled, Great Headless Blank. This song is the title track of their brand new EP and is exciting, interesting and encompasses splashes of electronic (computer parody) sound installations that take you on a wild musical ride. Great Headless Blank is reminiscent of new wave music like DEVO and Talking Heads and could be a soundtrack to a David Lynch short film. The music is like an artsy ice bucket to the face, which can be refreshing and utterly intense. There is a bit of swagger to the music though. You can hear a soulful confidence in the songs that seperates it from being avant nerd rock or classical alt rock, which can be coy and standoffish.

"Makeunder is the solo project of bandleader Hamilton Ulmer, who crafted his first release using a violin, saxophone, fatigued vocals and a small hand drum. Since then, Ulmer has rounded out the band’s lineup with Van Jackson-Weaver (vocals, guitars), Samantha York (vocals), Mario Godoy (synths, saxophone), Carolyn Walter (saxophones, winds) and John Doing (percussion). In Great Headless Blank, Ulmer confronts personal tragedies sorting through the ashes with a juxtaposed, exuberant sound comparable to Passion Pit’s Gossamer."

Makeunder is a bold music project and we’re into to this new track. Take a minute to check it out!