Meet Justin Loans -- known to his mother as Justin Flores, and to the Internet as one-half of smooth-rapping Oakland goofballs RnB Millionaires. The Millionaires churned out a handful of tracks from their West Oakland lab in recent years, but nothing with any serious shelf life. They've been working hard, though; Justin Loans' first solo effort, the How To Fake It In America EP, is out today.

This marks the first official release from the flock of professional roving partiers known as Trill Team 6 -- if you've "expressed yourself" in the warehouses of West Oakland or haunted some of SOMA's underground rap clubs, you might have heard of 'em. The loosely associated group of DJs and their cohorts (which includes Oakland hip-hop mainstay Willie Maze) has contentedly spent the last few years throwing parties like Sick Sad World and rallying friends and family to get fucked up together. Flores' work takes this ethos and runs in a whole new direction.

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Here's a worthy cause for a new compilation: Helping Amanda McCabe, a local music scene stalwart who was a resident DJ at Hemlock Tavern, made cover art for bands like Birds & Batteries and Garrett Pierce, interned at Sub Pop, and contributed in many other ways to the indie music world. McCabe has long suffered from a debilitating strain of scoliosis, for which she's currently undergoing treatment in Florida. The condition is so bad that she "cannot carry a purse, wear a coat, carry a grocery bag, type for longer than five minutes at a time, or needless to say, work," as she explains on her blog.

To ease the financial strain of her care, a large group of musicians, including many from the Bay Area and Northern California, today released Save the Amanda! Vols. 1 and 2, a 40-song compilation of mostly new and unreleased material, the proceeds of which will go to help you know who. It includes some excellent songs from local artists like John Vanderslice, Tartufi, Two Sheds, Foxtails Brigade, Future Twin, and many more.

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Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard

Shannon and the Clams, the ridiculously fun Oakland garage-pop outfit helmed by Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard, has a new label. For the group's new album, out May 21, they'll be moving to Hardly Art, the Sub Pop imprint that's also home to Hunx and His Punx, The Sandwitches, and Seapony. The next release from Shannon and the Clams will be called Dreams in the Rat House, and if first single "Rip Van Winkle" is any indication -- you can hear it below -- we can expect more of the agile, achingly tuneful retro-pop this band is known for. Having just seen them a couple of weeks ago, we can testify that their live show is tops: full of charisma, precision, and incredible sonics from Shaw, Blanchard, and drummer Iam Amberson.

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Rad art, bro.

Meet Snowboarder, the left-field, secret side project just unveiled by Jason Kick of S.F. synth-shredders Maus Haus. It's loud, buzzy, and carefree -- like Maus Haus -- but it's far more hectic: Imagine the Fresh & Onlys on a bender in a German industrial club at 10 a.m. on a snowy Sunday morning.

Kick, Michael Stasis, and David Nichols have been working on the project for what looks like a few years now, hinting at it with bizarre montage videos for "Warp Zone" and "Going Up The Mountain" back in late 2010. It must have been a hard secret to keep, because the record they finally emerged with boasts seven songs of punchy hooks, brazen energy, and pure fun. And like your bro bombing through freshies, Snowboarder is absolutely all over the place, carving up every genre it gets its mittens on.

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As the singer and songwriter of the S.F. rock band Girls, Christopher Owens often seemed to teeter on the edge of an abyss. Songs like "Laura" and "Hellhole Ratrace" are propelled forward by their desperate yearning, by the sense that Owens is losing something he loves, heading toward something he hates, and only barely avoiding some lurking calamity.

The oft-told story of Owens' childhood in the Children of God cult contributed to the image of him as an alien on Planet Normal, barely remaining free of the troubled life from which he'd come. If it wasn't clear enough from the title of the group's 2010 EP -- Broken Dreams Club -- Girls' second and final album, 2012's lauded, sprawling Father, Son, Holy Ghost, found Owens grappling with own life yet again, from an attempt to reconcile his fraught relationship with his mother ("My Ma") to the album's first single, a slab of maximalist, lovesick hard rock entitled "Vomit."

But Owens ended Girls, the duo he founded with bassist and producer J.R. White, last year, for reasons that are still a bit murky. His first solo album, out today, sees the 33-year-old striking a remarkably different tone. Lysandre is the story of an ultimately ill-fated romance Owens pursued during Girls' first European tour in 2008 -- but it's a sweet, rosy-eyed recounting, not a wounded one.

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Christopher Victorio

Ty Segall performing at Treasure Island

S.F. garage-rocker Ty Segall just won't stop. Last year he released three albums -- all of them excellent -- and prepared two reissues of old material that will see release this year. On top of all that, he apparently found time to start a whole new band, this time with old pal and guitarist Charlie Moonheart. Called Fuzz, the group's first single deals in a tuneful assault that more than earns its namesake. A-side "This Time I Got a Reason" is pure animalian sludge, while B-side "Fuzz's Fourth Dream" is a more Sabbathy meander, with a longer, spiraling guitar solo. Both songs are huge and brutal, bearing the ripping, chaotic tones of the Fuzz Face, a classic distortion pedal used by Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, and many others. If you're a fan of Slaughterhouse, the second of the three albums Segall released in 2012 -- and the one we think is the best -- you'll love this.

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The Residents

Anyone familiar with the Residents expects a particularly thorough brand of mind-fuckery from the San Francisco musicians/art-misfits. But there's mind-fuckery, and then there's selling a giant box set that comes in an honest-to-god refrigerator. For $100,000.

That's what the Residents are proposing to do come Christmas Day. Starting Dec. 25, the group is putting 10 editions of its Ultimate Box Set up for sale, each of which includes a copy of seemingly every Residents release ever, plus an eyeball mask (more on that later), and a mystery item reportedly "worth" $5 million.

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Update, 10/29/12: Owens has announced a series of four solo shows, the first here in S.F. on Nov. 9, where he'll be playing the new album in full to a small live audience. The S.F. show at the Regency will also feature the musicians who played on the album. Unfortunately, the show has already sold out.

Anyone wondering what Christopher Owens would be up to after he left S.F. band Girls earlier this year just got a rather exciting answer.

Owens plans to release his debut solo album, Lysandre, on Fat Possum come Jan. 15, 2013. And today he released the first single from the new album, "Here We Go" -- a delicate slice of baroque pop that sounds a lot like Girls' quieter moments.

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Christopher Victorio

The Coup performing at Treasure Island

After a fiery new video for first single "the Guillotine" and that thumping set at last week's Treasure Island festival, we're pretty excited for the new album from Oakland rap-funk outfit The Coup. Sorry to Bother You isn't out until Oct. 30, but you can stream the whole thing now over at the A.V. Club.

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The Rolling Stones, rock 'n' roll's version of a senile third-world dictator who just won't hand over power to the younger generation, have released a new song. "Doom and Gloom" is the first new Stones material in seven years, and premiered only hours ago on Radio 2 in the U.K. It's the first new single off the band's upcoming greatest hits compilation, which is unfortunately titled GRRR!.

All of that aside, however, "Doom and Gloom" is not bad. It shows off a grittier, darker side of the twilight-period Stones, with a rolling bassline and on/off verse riffs that remind us just a bit of AC/DC. The chorus hits like a blast of 1972, with an anthemic chord progression this band must have used 75 times before. But Mick's sticky delivery still suits that kind of thing: "All I hear is doooooom and gloooom," he tapes down over the stretchy riff, "aaaaaaall is darkness in my roooom."

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