​After an eight-month break, the Indie-Mart Party returns this Sunday to Thee Parkside in Potrero Hill, bringing the only three things we care about -- music, food, and booze. Oh, and there's gonna be shopping and such for those of you who don't have your priorities straight (or just want to see some unique stuff, whatever).

The suggested donation for entrance is $3-5, which will help fund Indie-Mart founder Kelly Malone's cancer treatment.

Hit the jump for full details and line-up information.

More >>

​A few weeks ago, we posted about Oakland rapper A-Plus's misguided new project, a Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute EP called Pepper Spray.

We weren't big fans of the idea (at all), but if you disagree and want a copy of the EP for free, head over to Pacific Standard Time at Eve Lounge tonight. Hit the jump for details.

More >>

SF Popfest continues all weekend long, celebrating all things indiepop, and by extension, twee, sweaterpunk, cutie, beardo, shambling, sadmuffin, or whatever else you want to call music involving people (boys and girls, please), guitars (fuzzy, jangly, angular, or poorly played will do), doing-it-yourself, three chords, and a heart. If that's your game, then check out this rundown of the weekend's worth of indiepop.

Tonight, at the Rickshaw Stop, is perhaps the biggest name of the festival, the Undertones, supported by two of S.F.'s own: the Mantles and Melted Toys. Unfortunately, up-and-coming British cutie-pop group Allo Darlin had to cancel their appearance on the bill because of visa problems.

The Undertones are perhaps best known for "Teenage Kicks," without which punk rock wouldn't have been the same. However, since you've presumably heard that song before, here's another great cut from their first album.

More >>

Heather Hryciw

Music and gourmet eats: together at last

​

There's a shared culture between musicians and chefs, says Noise Pop Industries marketing manager Dawson Ludwig, ticking off concrete examples, like getting off work at 2 a.m., and the more esoteric shared sense of underground and independent spirit.

More >>

Photo by Jenne Warren

Get high with Cypress Hill at the Warfield tonight.

​Any crunker still mired to the concept of time recognizes and observes the entirely spurious significance of April 20. Sadly, organized recognition of the day is just as ad hoc, leaving teaheads to the dictates of their collectively whimsical natures. What follows are a few late suggestions for celebrating Doper Day if you want to do more than just fire one up where you stand. Check this handy map for observance of the Thousand Foot rule, and no matter what, do not attempt to operate machinery heavier than an iPhone.

• Cypress Hill at the Warfield tops the list for dopest thing to do tonight. On Rise Up, their newest studio album, members of these pioneering hip-hop rockers hold to the weed that made them famous on tracks like "Light It Up," "Pass the Dutchie," and "K.U.S.H," and their earwiggy joints have as loyal a following among stoners as Paul McCartney or Pink Floyd. Doors at eight. and the opening act will be L.A. snarlboys The Literates, touring in support of their upcoming Blow Your Brains Out.

More >>

We can always count on Good Vibrations for two things: to help us learn more about sex and sexuality - and to keep us from taking it all too seriously. So it is with the Independent Erotic Film Festival. Every year the San Francisco retail institution gathers short erotic films from around the world and screens the best of what they find. This year local drag favorite Peaches Christ joins Good Vibes' staff sexologist Carol Queen in showing us what people think is hot in seven minutes or less. According to what we've seen from the stills and what Queen tells us from helping choose the winners, these go beyond amateur porn. Instead of thinking of it as what your neighbors might do with a Handycam, says Queen, "Think of it as what they might do if they had sophisticated equipment and the ability to storyboard their sex lives." And then there's the humor. One film, for example, is a parody of a sci-fi favorite (wonder if you can guess which one) called "The Filth Element." Another is a music video. Still others explore alternative takes on eroticism and sexuality, including same-sex encounters and a couple looking for a third person to join them. The screening is preceded by a party that includes live mariachi music, margaritas, and burlesque performers.

​Mary Wilson 

Hannah Persson

​Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

Grant Cornett

Buke & Gass aren't kids' puppets, a slapstick comedy duo, or alternate slang terms for bodily functions. The words "buke" and "gass" refer to instruments -- a baritone ukulele and a guitar-bass hybrid, respectively -- as performed by New York twosome Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez. But ignore your preconceptions about ukuleles. This isn't Tiny Tim tiptoeing thru tulips, Amanda Palmer playing Radiohead, or random Internet chicks covering classic rock on a touristy Hawaiian toy. Dyer and Sanchez tweak their strings with electronic effects, which turns their pointillist pluckings, herky-jerk songwriting, and asymmetrical arrangements into something altogether stranger than the twee tunes you might equate with ukuleles. Sanchez, for example, has custom-built unconventional noisemakers for the Blue Man Group, while Dyer's singing can be both a gentle purr or a wild wail, perhaps a bit like a less-anguished Shannon Wright. She's also been compared to both the Gossip's Beth Ditto and the Throwing Muses' Kristin Hersh -- all of which may seem like an odd combination, but then Buke & Gass are a fairly odd band. At times their music sounds like the soundtrack to a very strange nursery rhyme, a sort of sing-songy weirdo prog-pop that could probably share a stage with East Bay freakniks Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. They also augment the buke and gass with percussion (e.g., stomping kick drum, clanking ankle bells, and a "toe-bourine") played by their feet while they simultaneously pick at their instruments. It's a showcase of both deft multi-tasking and distinctive songwriting that's just bizarre enough to crack the shell of your calcified mind.

​Hey, remember Garbage? No no, hear me out. If you go back and revisit their first album, the one with the pink feathers, I think you'll find time has proven them right about a few things: a balance between heavy-alternative jangle and fetching lead melodies, the virtue of buzzing guitars and a rhythm section just a hint funkier than it should be, and the potential of noirish imagery conveyed by a honeyed female voice.More >>