Deli Readers,
Our Best of SF Bay Area Poll for Emerging Artists has been – as usual – a lengthy and painstaking journey which took us through prairies of numbers, horizons filled with band names, and a dense, (mostly) joyous rain of music. We have finally reached our destination and we can announce the final results!
The Bay Area has spoken and the local indie pop band, Heartwatch has not only won this year’s overall poll, but they dominated the Deli SF’s Reader Poll as well making them our undisputed Artist of the Year! We can tell why with their dancible brand of pop music and admirable work ethic. It all paid off this year!
Emily Afton’s sultry, soulful style of indie pop melds elements of pop, soul and electronica to create original and penetrating modern ballads. She didn’t come in too far after Heartwatch. She deserves a huge congratulations and we look forward to seeing more from her.
Well, Annie is nothing but pure rock and roll! We’re thrilled to see her come in third place as she’s been a relentless force in the local underground rock scene. A great songwriter, composer and live musician is something that is sorely needed in the Bay Area right now. Congrats to Annie Girl and the Flight!
Check out our poll’s top 15 below, and don’t forget to get even deeper, exploring all the finalists organized by genre:
AVANT INDIE – ELECTRONIC – INDIE POP – PSYCH– REVIVAL POP/ROCK – ROOTS MUSIC
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If you wonder how this chart came into existence, here is how it all went down: first, we let the local bands submit their music (for free), and got our Deli editors to pick the nominees. Then we polled a list of 15+ SF Bay Area scene expert (our jury) and asked them to nominate 3 more bands of their choice each (3 points for the top choice, then 2 and 1). Then we polled our readers. We tried to keep things open for each single genre, from Indie Rock to Roots Music to Hip Hop.
If you are a geek interested in all the subtelties related to how this poll works, you can read its rules here (happy reading!). But if all you care about is the awesome new music SF Bay Area produced in the year 2015, this list is all you need. Enjoy!
Many Thanks to our Jurors: David A Sikorski (Writer at SF Weekly), Doug Kinsey (The Night Light), Dace James Hines (Writer for SF Critic), Anisa (Sofar Sounds), Barry Smyth (Brick and Mortar Music Hall), Dennis Gonzales (POW Magazine), Jason Black (Writer for Beatport), Aisah Gemora (Sofar Sounds), Derek See (Indie Record Collector/Retailer), Sam Lefebvre (East Bay Express), Audra (Thee Parkside), Ash Reiter (Founder of Hickey Fest), Bob Patterson (SF Critic Managing Editor), Jordannah Elizabeth (The Deli SF).
Hope you’ll find some awesome new artists you weren’t aware of!
The Deli’s Staff