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 remember using spirographs as a child -- drawing endless, satisfying colorful curves with your extensive color pencil collection? You could probably bust that out again and give the Spyral's Sunflower Microphone seven-inch single (released today, a precursor to the upcoming 2012 album) a spin. The wave-like reverb of garage guitar meets a lower 13th Floor Elevators-y howl here, a surfy psychedelic dream. Check out Side A on the Spyrals' Bandcamp page. 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.

There's a sizable difference between a cover band and a tribute band. TurbonegrA is a thrashing, slashing, spit-in-your-eye tribute to legendary Norwegian punk band Turbonegro. 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.

The Sandwitches are all about high highs and low lows. The vocals of Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper (both former back-up singers for Fresh & Onlys) defy the bounds of San Francisco garage, piping up from low and fuzzed out to high-pitched and near theatrical. The music strays similiarly from convention, with an underlying garage-pop root that sometimes hits close to country-folk, other times lends itself more toward dewy trophy love song/doo-wap. It's a sound that takes a minute to digest – and that's a good thing. 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.

This week’s Localized Appreesh is the lush-vocal’d Debbie Neigher. She's a stunning jazz-tinged singer-songwriter, who recorded her recently released self-titled LP with John Vanderslice at his Tiny Telephone Studios, along with the backing orchestral help of Minna Choi of the Magik*Magik Orchestra. 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.

An album release is always cause for celebration. The Bay Area act Violet Hour's Cowardly Loins EP release extravaganza goes down tomorrow night at Bottom of the Hill. The somewhat illusive indie rock act, supposedly led by Le Duc Violet (along with other equally ostentatiously named creatures) and said to be influenced by Bowie and French surrealist painter Yves Tanguy, brings to mind playful,  glam 90s post-punk. Check out the band's description of its own sound below, it's pretty magical. 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.

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.

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 »

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.

The voice of Billie Holiday blended with a drop of folk and an electro-infused ka-pow of Afro-pop. It's the stuff of dreams, isn't it? Sort of. Dreams, besides being the mind's subconscious porthole, is a new East Bay indie supergroup. Lead by Emily Ritz (of Honeycomb and Yesway) and keyboardist Rob Shelton (of the Moanin Dove) and backed by steel guitar, vibraphone, and a hand-held rhythm section (along with drums), the group skips through genres, time, and traditional percussion expectations. 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 during those seven days is highlighted and spotlit. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

Last fall, eclectic new folk act the 21st Century was given the opportunity of a lifetime: a chance to record with legendary producer Stephen Short  (the former owner of Trident Studios who has worked with David Bowie, the Clash, Paul McCartney, Queen, Echo and the Bunnymen et. al.). The Bay Area eight-to-nine piece was thrilled but too broke to cover all the costs of making the album, plus, there were travel commitments (Short is based in Texas). Read more »

Some weeks feel so long (thanks a lot Week After Labor Day), you just need another spirited kick in the proverbial ass. So I give you, a second Localized Appreesh this week: Rank/Xerox. The San Francisco punk trio – known for its connections with bands such as Grass Widow (friends/split cassette tape output), and for its other creative endeavors (DIY labels, Web-based videozine Mondo Vision, eye-catching graphic illustrations) – comes from a long tradition of reputable underground punk and arty post-punk, much of which was hatched in San Francisco (Flipper) and London (Wire). Read more »