Whenever the moon is just right, the Vague Panther picks his favorite MP3s from the web to bring you the “In the Know” series. If you’ve got a tip that might pique his interest email him at vaguepanther(at)strangerdance.com.

Y La Bamba – “Fasting in San Francisco”
Portland’s Y La Bamba pairs an experimental folk sound with [...]

Whenever the moon is just right, the Vague Panther picks his favorite MP3s from the web to bring you the “In the Know” series. If you’ve got a tip that might pique his interest email him at vaguepanther(at)strangerdance.com.

Dead Man’s Bones – “My Body’s a Zombie For You”
Dead Man’s Bones is Ryan Gosling (yup, the actor), [...]

Hype Machine — which for those who don’t know (and you should), is a great resource for finding music and music blogs — introduced the Music Blog Zeitgeist earlier this week and it has to be one of the coolest online music projects ever put together. The basic idea is that the music blog aggregator [...]

Mashups as a whole annoy the hell out of me. But I’m somewhat impressed/intrigued by Minty Fresh Beats effort to combine Radiohead instrumentals with Jay-Z rhymes. For those Radiohead fans out there, don’t worry, it’s not just obvious samples – Minty Fresh gives some love to “Gagging Order,” a Kid A b-side.
Download the Jaydiohead project.
Check [...]

Geographer was one of our great discoveries from 2008. The San Francisco trio were recently named one of Spin’s “Three Undiscovered Bands You Need to Hear Now!” and with good reason — their debut, Innocent Ghosts, was easily one of our favorite local records of the year.
Opener “Can’t You Wait” is a highlight from [...]

It’s that time of year again — the turkey leftovers are long gone and we’re hearing Christmas music in every store in town, so it must be time for best-albums-of-year lists.
After screaming matches, insults and a fist fight or two, the dust has settled and the Stranger Dance staff stands before you united with our [...]

If you have a few hours to kill and a hankering for good live music, I’d highly recommend heading over to KEXP’s Web site and checking out its live music archive. The Seattle-based independent radio station has been a Web pioneer since the early days of the Internet and does simply fantastic work, both in [...]

We weren’t impressed by the first single, but Guns n’ Roses has made all of their new album, Chinese Democracy, available to stream from their MySpace page. Forgive me if I remain skeptical.

Fellow San Francisco music ‘zine, The Bay Bridged, just released their second compilation featuring exclusive new tracks from Bay Area musicians such as Rogue Wave, Two Sheds and Okay. I particularly like “Lightning” by Birds & Batteries. Purchase it here.

I’m a little bored with the electro-pop indie scene. Sampled midi-drums? Arpeggiated synth-strings? No, thank you. Still, there are always exceptions, and bands like The Sea and Cake, Cut Copy and San Francisco’s own, Loquat, make great records regardless of their “indie-electronica” classification.