Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. Each week a band/music-maker with a show, album release, or general good news is highlighted and spotlit. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

They seem a plucky bunch: Nate Salman, Alex Siegel, Clayton Ernst, Sean Suess, Brijean Murphy, and Walker Johnson – a.k.a Berkeley's Waterstrider. The group, which somewhat formed in 2010 (but really got together this year), blends Afro-pop and synthesizers – and yet manages to sound authentic. Perhaps the intimacy of the Berkeley co-ops helped shape the sound; this is a six-person collective that is in-tune with itself, though the current lineup has only been together about a month. What they've accomplished in such a short amount of time is the main reason they're here in Localized Appreesh.

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By the end of last night at the Fillmore, CSS's dynamic lead vocalist-party rioter Lovefoxxx was stripped down to a black tank top and ripped up jean shorts over fishnets, her raccoon eye makeup smeared across her face, fluffed pink hair electrified out of its sockets. Read more »

Just as she did with Le Tigre, JD Samson blurs the lines between feminist theory and modern pop music with her most recent musical endeavor, MEN. The experimental art-pop band, which began in 2007, is a collective with fellow Le Tigren Johanna Fateman – among others – that's as subversive as it is danceable. Read more »

The new Dum Dum Girls album, Only in Dreams, has left such an indelible impression on me, that I was surprised when the four-piece surf-garage band jumped into “Bhang Bhang, I'm a Burnout” for its second song last night at the Great American Music Hall. I'd all but forgotten about the song, a tune that I'd fallen in love with – hard – not more than a year prior when it appeared on the band's debut, I Will Be. It was a welcome reminder, as was the rest of the set, of both its strong lo-fi past, and hard-earned rock future – those descriptors mostly applying to electrifying frontperson Dee Dee. Read more »

Localized Appreesh is our weekly thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. Each week a band/music-maker with a show, album release, or general good news is highlighted and spotlit. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

You know that feeling when you're aware you're hearing a song for the first time, yet it feels as though it's always been there? It's new-to-you but there's something familiar, reassuring – it just works right, pinging back and forth through your ear drums and pulsating brain muscle. That's how I felt when I first listened to the cool swagger of San Francisco's the Soft White Sixties. The hard rocking quintet, formed by Mexican-American singer-songwriter Octavio Genera, has a real tight grip (full disclosure, “real tight  grip” is a lyric from SWS's song “Too Late”) on classic Seventies rock'n'roll – with all the shoulder-shaking percussion, the bluesy rock riffs, and Genera's soul-tinged Southern rock bravado. Read more »

We teased you with the show mention in the Hangover column,  now here's the goods:

With flickering string lights strung from the center of the grand ballroom and splayed out brass instruments across the stage, Beirut's performance at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Saturday warmed liked a fancy indoor county fair. The sound, which can be bass-problematic at the Fox, was good this evening, near perfect for the otherworldly folk-marching band from Santa Fe. Ringleader Zach Condon switched back and forth from ukulele to his beloved trumpet, singing in deep baritone throughout, once stepping to his newly rediscovered favorite, the keys. Read more »