The long-predictable MTV Music Video Awards aired last week, and I'd venture a guess that many of you didn't tune in, and perhaps an even greater number didn't know it was on. For those who missed it, you didn't miss much, just a lot of vanilla pop stars and one awesome Frank Ocean.

For every big name, shiny-toothed act, there are hundreds better – and weirder – under the radar. Imagine if the award show was packed with acts like Chelsea Wolfe (this week at the Rickshaw Stop), legendary punk band the Zeros (at Brick and Mortar Hall), or Oakland's Metal Mother (at the Rock Make Festival), instead of Taylor Swift, One Direction, Demi Lovato and their ilk. Speaking of the latter, how is “Best Video With a Message” an actual category these days? Read more »

You could say Fiona Apple belongs to an endangered species. One of the heavyweights in a lineage of 1990s major-label iconoclasts, dedicated to the conceptual potential of the album format, (Bjork, Spiritualized, PJ Harvey, Nine Inch Nails) Apple has built a 15-year career on making approachable, yet arty, pop music with indie-label integrity, and an undercurrent of fringe appeal.

After making a big splash with the sultry music-video to her first hit single, “Criminal” (1996), she shrewdly abandoned any MTV-vixen ambitions, in favor of foregrounding her musical and lyrical ability, and her remarkably versatile, jazz-inflected vocal range; as a result, she’s one of the few artists of her generation to transition from stardom to cult status, and not the other way around. Read more »

San Francisco resident Ian Bavitz, better known as Aesop Rock, is a hip-hop maverick with a quick tongue and sharp wit. His je ne sais quois coolness seems to increase exponentially with every move he makes, from collaborating with Atmosphere’s Slug to peppering his rhymes with obscure science fiction references to touring with alternative folk royalty Kimya Dawson to giving haircuts on stage, to writing a song about Grubstake, Polk Street’s notorious greasy spoon and late-night vomitorium. Read more »

Localized Appreesh is our thank-you column to the musicians that make the Bay. To be considered, contact emilysavage@sfbg.com.

The Mallard seems to be everywhere right now; opening up shows for Shonen Knife or Hot Snakes, topping MTV Hive's list of “overlooked garage rock albums of 2012.”

Which, yeah. We somehow overlooked the band's record, Yes on Blood (Castle Face Records), at first too. It's a Nuggets-worthy, hair-shaking gem ran through a modern fuzz machine. And live, it's even better. The so-called “inside-out-echo-laser-garage-psych-rock” four-piece takes elements of the past and tweaks them like they're unspooling a tape, letting elements of retro sound slowly drop away and bunch up on the floor. So here we are, jumping on the bandwagon with our tail between our legs, not to mix idioms or whatever. Read more »

MIDNITE SNAXXX
S/T
(RED LOUNGE RECORDS)

Midnite Snaxxx are like the quintessential cool girls of high school, in an alternate garage-punk universe. Clad in tough leather jackets, singing with a Nikki and the Corvettes-cherry-topped snarl (they even played with Nikki Corvette this summer), creating rock'n'roll Ramone-esque pop hooks, and hitting the shit out of those drums — they positively explode on their debut self-titled LP in tracks like "Spend the Night," and slow things down sweet on noisy rock ballads such as "In Your Eyes." Read more »

The luminous, blinking cocoons that have been rumored to grace the stages of Purity Ring’s live shows — as boasted by the lucky ones who have been able to get tickets to these consistently sold out performances — glowed with aqua-blue precision at Bottom of the Hill on Labor Day.

It was one of those elusive evenings the music gods hand craft. Every member of the crowd seemed to be in on this magical energy, knowing that sonic-satisfaction was promised to each and all by the end of the night. The Potrero Hill venue bustled with unanimous glee as the audience waited anxiously, gratefully, for the Halifax-Montreal-based duo to bring elegant live justice to its prodigious debut album, Shrines.

Read more »

Your prime concert options this week – Lightning Bolt, Les Sins, Roach Gigz, Doe Eye – are about as varied as the shows I attended this past government-sanctioned holiday weekend.

If that sounds like the start of a bad joke, it's not. The shows really were incredibly diverse. My Friday night stop at Oakland Metro was so damn hardcore, a crust punk made fun of me in the bathroom for worrying about the TP attached to her shoe. Sheesh. Read more »

Hailing from Scotland in the late 1980s, The Vaselines released just a couple of EPs and one full album before originally calling it quits after two short years together. However, thanks to fans like Kurt Cobain, who covered three of their tunes with Nirvana, and exposed the band to larger audiences around the world, new generations have fallen in love with them in the ensuing years. Read more »

After talking to Arish “King” Khan over the phone last Friday, I got a sense of a more spiritual and sympathetic side as opposed to the notorious showman he’s become over the years. Along with his band — the Shrines, he'll bring his traveling stage show to the Great American Music Hall on Tuesday. He spoke to me from Berlin, his residence for more than a decade, where he raises his family (yes, the man we’ve seen prance around on stage in sequined undies and flashy, feathery costume is also a father) in what continues to become a rapidly “hipster-fied” artists’ mecca. Read more »