Buxter Hoot'n
September 2nd | 11:00pm | $5

Most Bay Area publications will tell you that Buxter Hoot’n are the folk-rock band of the future, or that they’re the group leading the way for eclectic independent upstarts, but these words are all just pleasant praise until you’ve actually heard the band live. With every album they’ve released since 2007, they’ve gradually added more and more elements of different genres—Southern rock, blues, and world folk music—to create a unique, high-energy style that matches the husky, well-traveled troubadour’s voice in frontman Vince Dewald.

LISTEN:  “Martial Law” :: In Another Life

Con Brio
September 2nd | 10:00pm | $5

Con Brio is a funk-influenced jazz group that shines brightly, due largely to the shimmering crystalline voice of singer Xandra Corpora, who doubles on bass like her jazz contemporary Esperanza Spalding. But it’s Corpora’s band—the sultry hum of Nate Fowle’s tenor saxophone, or the powerful wail of Jonathan Kirchner’s trumpet—that takes her gift that extra mile. An Italian term meaning “with vigor,” this ensemble from San Francisco could not have chosen a more fitting name.

Fox & Woman
September 2nd | 9:30pm | $5

There’s a certain intrigue about a female vocalist singing a song written by a male member of the same band. Like fellow folksters The Swell Season, San Francisco’s Fox & Woman offer sweet and familiar melodies over an array of peculiar and barebones acoustic instrumentals. Vocalist Jess Silva plays the Markéta Irglová to Andrew Paul Nelson’s Glen Hansard, singing his lovelorn lyrics, manifesting his struggles and pyrrhic victories onstage as though it was, and had always been, theirs.

Jake Mann & The Upper Hand
September 9th | 11:00pm | $5

Jake Mann’s latest EP, Parallel South, is a folk-rock greeting from the Midwest that has too much insight and intimacy to just be considered postcard scribbles, but isn’t long enough to really be a letter either. In other words, Mann has a way of speaking volumes with few words, and he’s passed this aesthetic along to his band The Upper Hand: this group from San Francisco knows how to create full-sounding arrangements with just three musicians, proof that a little really does go a long way.

LISTEN:  “Days Are Long” :: Parallel South

The Spires
September 9th | 10:00pm | $5

With a new album on the horizon, fans of indie rock outfit The Spires can only hope that it continues along the same road as their most recent EP titled Curved Space, a collection of impulsive road trip music featuring songs that are as capricious as they are catchy. The reverb-drenched, lo-fi rock of this quartet from Ventura is best suited for a daytime drive up or down that beloved curved space otherwise known as California Highway One.

The Dazzling Strangers
September 9th | 9:30pm | $5

The Dazzling Strangers are the latest draftees in the ongoing battle between composition and ambiance. This musical project founded by frontman Chris Streng straddles the fine line that separates music and noise every time they take a finely crafted rock song and bombard it with anything and everything imaginable—from synthesizers to hip-hop loops, heavy reverb, or even field recordings of frogs. Strange? Of course. But dazzling? Incredibly so.

Nick Jaina
September 10th | 11:00pm | $5

Nick Jaina just might be the hardest-working man in the indie biz today. He has already released two full-length albums since the start of 2011: the first, aptly named Sleeping on the Covers, is a compilation of hushed, acoustic-driven cover songs, including Sting’s famous hit “Fields of Gold.” The second, titled The Beanstalks That Have Brought Us Here Are Gone, showcases ten new Jaina-penned tunes that are each sung by a different female vocalist (such as Bright Archer’s Johanna Kunin or Y La Bamba’s Luzelena Mendoza) instead of himself, an ambitious curation two years in the making.

LISTEN:  “Sleep Child” :: A Bird In The Opera House

Black Whales
September 10th | 10:00pm | $5

This five-piece outfit from Seattle is an easy act to get behind, thanks to the head-bobbing likability of their latest release, Shangri-La Indeed. Addictive hooks, booming percussion, overdriven rock guitars on a jangly folk foundation: the essentials are all present and accounted for. But there’s one other element that makes Black Whales so alluring, one that’s so easy to feel but so hard to pinpoint: a dissonant, ominous aura constantly at war with the band’s catchy side, the kind of musical tension that makes listeners return for seconds.

Robin Bacior
September 10th | 9:30pm | $5

Though born and raised in Chico, songwriter Robin Bacior has since left our Golden State for Brooklyn, NY, wanting a bigger, badder musical playground to truly test the strength of her minimal compositions. While much of Bacior’s recordings feature little more than her voice and acoustic guitar, the real muscle of her songs lies in the honesty of her lyrics, a pining poet doing her best to lift the curse with sweet-sounding waltz-time folk.

Birds & Batteries
September 16th | 11:00pm | $5

The tracks off of this San Francisco quartet’s latest album Panorama prove that the right balance of earthy Americana with electronic synth-pop can take a songwriter’s modest opus to great heights. Songs like “Raincheck” and “Strange Kind of Mirror” showcase the ambitious yet easy-to-love treatments the band gives to the tunes of frontman Mike Sempert—who, fittingly, is a strange kind of mirror himself, carrying a bit of the same vocal inflections and a lot of the same sincere, heartfelt songwriting style as Elvis Costello.

LISTEN:  “The Villain” :: Up To No Good EP

Radiation City
September 16th | 10:00pm | $5

What if oldies singer Connie Francis fronted an indie pop band these days? Perhaps it would sound something like Portland quartet Radiation City, who are self-proclaimed aficionados and creators of old-sounding music, paying tribute to the sound of mom and dad’s generation while giving it their own present-day twist. They combine Lizzy Ellison’s filtered, lo-fi vocals with their own version of the Wall of Sound, replacing Phil Spector’s field of strings with booming drums, swelling horns and bold synthesizers.

Loch Lomond
September 17th | 10:30pm | $5

It starts with a careful melody from Ritchie Young, a meticulous Portland-based songwriter whose delicate voice maneuvers between lofty falsetto and echoing alto with ease. But Young isn’t one to ever traverse alone, as he frequently touts a symphonic ensemble of nine or ten, many of whom are songwriters themselves. Loch Lomond is one of those acts that redefines the term “supergroup”—not just because it’s a “who’s who” of Portland’s finest, but because the sheer quantity of musicians here could build a sound vast enough to fill the valleys that surround the shores of their Scottish namesake.

LISTEN:  “Blue Lead Fences” :: Little Me Will Start Me A Storm

The Range Of Light Wilderness
September 17th | 9:30pm | $5

Though they split residencies between Oakland and Big Sur, the songs of this lo-fi psychedelic folk group are far better suited for exploring the verdant redwood knolls along the Central Coast. Drifting guitars, makeshift drum kits and lush, reverberating vocal harmonies underscore the imagery of their lyrics—luminous collages made of knick-knacks picked up while combing the beach for lost valuables.

Pocketknife
September 17th | 11:40pm | $5

Portland newcomers Pocketknife put their tough skin on display with their recently released debut EP, Tough As Snails. Amidst all the fervent synths and rapid-firing dance punk drumbeats stands frontman Marlin Gonda, who sings with a similar weighty baritone as The National's Matt Berninger. It's a fascinating blend indeed: Gonda's somber lyrics and delicate vocal melodies enclosed by high-energy synth pop—not since Geographer have we heard this juxtaposition work so well.

The Lumineers
September 23rd | 11:30pm | $5

Give a listen to Denver folk trio the Lumineers' video for "Hey Ho," and there's no way that the visions of the Devil Makes Three aren't going to pop up – in particular Wesley Keith's similarity to a more chilled out version of front man Pete Bernhard. But that's not to say that the Lumineers' ramshackle country folk follows in the footsteps; there's hardly a punk riff to be found. They have a deliberate mellowness to them, where the melodies just seem to pour forth from their instruments in an uncontrollable stream, leaving the three to assemble them into a sunny day soundtrack of saccharine.

LISTEN:  “Flowers In Your Hair” :: The Lumineers EP

Sean Flinn & The Royal We
September 23rd | 10:30pm | $5

This folk group from Portland is steady on the rise, touring the West Coast and the United Kingdom while receiving some hefty hometown love from outlets like the Portland Mercury, Willamette Week and Oregon Music News. Fans of The Decemberists’ latest efforts will appreciate the bright-eyed electric guitar and tambourine jangle of songs like “Fossil Radio” or the auspiciously titled waltz ballad “Sophia.” Our beloved bar just might have a new anthem.

Dovekins
September 23rd | 9:30pm | $5

Judging by the array of compositions on their full-length release Assemble the Aviary, this six-piece outfit from Denver certainly know their way around multiple folk styles. Whether they’re belting sinister cautionary tales like “The Dalles,” or recreating scenic aural panoramas like “Honduras,” they tackle each song with refined knowledge of the genre, yet they aren’t afraid to step into experimental territory when the occasion rises.

Diego’s Umbrella
September 24th | 10:00pm | $5

This playful Bay Area six-piece outfit produces high-energy “gypsy pirate polka”, which is code for a downpour of nimble guitar-playing, voracious drumming, and sporadic yelps and shrieks boiled into a colorful and exhuberant concoction. Recently, three of their songs were featured in the 2009 Lionsgate comedy Still Waiting. With vocals and a rocking sound oddly reminiscent of Gwen Stefani on No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom album, the band is always a crowd pleaser. Be sure to stick around for their rousing rendition of Europe’s “The Final Countdown”.

For fans of: Golgol Bordello, Devotchka

LISTEN:  “Kings Of Vibration” :: Double Panther

Mad Cow String Band
September 29th | 9:00pm | $5

While the men who’ve made up this veteran Davis bluegrass troupe have moved on to support other musical projects (such as recent Sophia’s visitors West Nile Ramblers or Lady A & The Heel Draggers), who says they can’t get together once in a while to commemorate the past? After all, that’s why the Mad Cow String Band was born in the first place: to preserve the aesthetic of vintage rural music and let the fiery twang of old-time music prosper in a new age. Eight years later, these guys definitely haven’t forgotten their roots, and rest assured that they won’t abandon them anytime soon.

The California Honeydrops
September 30th | 10:00pm | $6

All bands that even begin to proclaim themselves as "blues bands" are inevitably historians in their own right, and that adage is rarely truer than with outfits like Oakland's California Honeydrops. They are a proverbial train ride through the last century of American music, winding and weaving through several decades of history and multiple corners of the country in melding foot-stomping blues, crooning jazz, scorching soul, R&B, swing, doo-wop and dashes of Americana into a sonic buffet. They could easily pick one of these various styles and settle into it – but the journey this band takes and the vast reaches they explore are far too much fun to come to rest.

For fans of: Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke

LISTEN:  “Miss Louise” :: Spreadin' Honey