In our ongoing effort to bring music to your ears, this week we're giving away two special prize packs from a long-standing Bay area band, The Mother Hips. Formed back in 1991, it's been six years since the band last released a full album. They're back with a new studio record on April 3rd called Kiss the Crystal Flake. Said singer/guitarist Tim Bluhm: "It is very different from anything we recorded in the past. You know that saying about wishing you knew then what you know now? Kiss The Crystal Flake is that coming true." To celebrate, the band is playing two record release shows - on April 6th and 7th - at The Independent. We're giving away two prize packs, each with one pair of tickets to one of the record release shows, plus a copy of the new CD and the accompanying DVD. Listen to The Mother Hips' "Time-Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear" and enter to win below (contest ends 4/4; winner will be notified via email.)

On to this week's show recommendations. Tonight TV on the Radio play with Noisettes at The Fillmore, and Eats Tapes celebrate a record release for their album dos mutantes at Mighty. Over at 330 Ritch, Popscene presents the handsome men and sexy guitar noise of Calla.

Download "Face Shredder" from Eats Tapes' new album
Download "Bronson" from Calla's new record Strength in Numbers

There's a ton of great bands playing on Friday night, which is one of many reasons why we're puzzled that enough people purchased tickets to DJ AM's "Birthday Bash" at Mezzanine to sell the whole place out. You could see any one of these great shows instead: Maria Taylor playing songs from her brand new album Lynn Teeter Flower at Bottom of the Hill with openers Built For The Sea; Son Volt at The Fillmore with Magnolia Electric Co.; SFist favorites Ratatat at Bimbo's; a MESH Magazine party with Hey Willpower at Rickshaw Stop; or the young Brett Dennen's first of two sold out nights at The Independent. If you're in the mood to check out something you haven't heard before, The Parson Redheads are a 60's songwriter-sounding collective with dreamy harmonies, playing Hotel Utah on Friday and opening for The Mother Hips next week.

Download "A Good Start" and "Lost Time" from Maria Taylor's new album
Listen to The Parson Redheads

More show recommendations, downloads and a video, after the jump.

We missed SXSW last week, but some of our friends were down there covering the mayhem and brought back some great photos. You can see local photographer and friend of SFist Julie Schuchard get up close and personal with Iggy Pop and The Stooges in this slideshow and see tons of SXSW photos taken by DJ Ted of BAGeL Radio. Also check out a bunch of coverage from our friends at Austinist.

Since all the bands in the world have made their way out of Austin, we're getting some good shows here in the city again. Here are our picks for this week:

Tonight Popscene presents The Bravery with some new music they've been working on, as well as a record release party for The Kaiser Chiefs for their new one Yours Truly Angry Mob ("the #1 album in Greece!"). Fans of "Rock Star Supernova" should head to Red Devil Lounge to see Storm Large & The Balls. (For the handful of you to whom the phrase "Rock Star Supernova" rings a bell, here are some links to see what former contestants Toby, Dilana and Zayra are up to). On Friday night, catch a free set by Sondre Lerche at Amoeba at 7pm before his full show at the Fillmore with opener Willy Mason. At Rickshaw Stop, KCRW.com presents Helio Sequence, Dirty on Purpose and The Besnard Lakes. We recommend getting to Bottom of the Hill early to see singer songwriter William Elliott Whitmore opening for Saviours and Red Sparowes.

On Saturday night, Pop Roxx presents Monsters Are Waiting at DNA Lounge. If you're a big fan of Bob Seger, you're in luck. Total B.S. (the man's initials, of course) is a 'tribute to the hard-working rock & roll legend, playing songs spanning his varied career'. Members of Drunk Horse, Harold Ray Live in Concert, and Comets on Fire are Total B.S.

Early Sunday evening brings you an opportunity to be entertained by Leslie & The Lys. Someone's probably sent you a link to "Gem Sweater" or another one of her videos circling around the internet. Looks like pure entertainment to us. Leslie & the Lys also play a 7pm show at the Hemlock with openers Fierce Perm. Also on Sunday night, there's an emo-filled corpo-rock lineup at Slim's with presented by Rockstar Energy Drink, and somehow a pretty great band that we like is included: As Tall As Lions.

Experience Leslie & The Lys:

SFist Julie goes out in Oakland's Laurel District for some smokin' jazz.

No, not the Laurel Heights familiar to San Franciscans, with its chain stores and baby strollers, but Oakland's Laurel District, home to personable purveyors of down-home cooking, musical instruments and lessons, locally-penned books, equine supplies, and the recently revived Laurel Lounge.

Taken over in April 2006 by a local couple -- who also happen to be neighborhood activists -- the Laurel Lounge offers microbrews and mixed drinks, darts, live music, and pool (although pool and live music don't happen at the same time as the table for one is moved to create a "stage" for the other).

Over the weekend, we celebrated St. Pat with the swinging sounds of jazz saxophone legend and local music professor Hal Stein and his Quartet (Lee Bloom on keyboard, John Wiitala on string bass, and Danny Spencer on drums) as they entertained revelers with their take on the standards at this neighborhood everybody-knows-your-name type bar.

We ourselves live not far from this hidden-gem-in-the-rough neighborhood, but there was at least one S.F. resident in the house who could testify on behalf of the West Bay. As she shimmied and swayed in front of the band, she proclaimed to all assembled: "All I do is hang out in San Francisco. I didn't know Laurel Lounge was so COOL!"

Stein and his quartet are scheduled to reprise the gig once a month. Keep an eye on the Laurel Lounge website for details.

We go to this screening of Asian and Asian-American music videos every year! We are now the people in the audience who shout, "Chi-hui!!!!" when the SFIAAFF festival director and music video programmer Chi-hui Yang comes to the front of the theater and says we're in for a "real treat." We don't even know Chi-hui and we almost said hi to him when we saw him on the street the other day. We're stalking the poor music director, that's how into the music video program we are.

This is our first post-YouTube Music Video Asia and we did find ourselves wondering how hard it would be to find video clips to include for you guys to check out. The answer is: pretty hard! The US ones aren't too bad, but a lot of the excellent foreign clips appear to have been recut for this screening -- for instance, the excellent Filipino band Kamikazee's kung fu parody video for the song "Martyr Nyebera" is only on YouTube in Tagalog. The song is still great but you miss about half of the hilarious jokes. (The video is still worth watching, though.)

And the clip above? From our other favorite band in this year's screening, the all-female Japanese ska band, Oreska Band. The video for "Hana No Suku Dance" isn't on YouTube, though, so we've substituted their TV ad for Pocky, above. You get the idea what they're like. (Oreska Band just played SXSW last week, so you'll probably be hearing more from them soon.)

After the jump -- some more YouTube clips of the highlights of this year's video cavalcade! Including: a positive Bay Area rapper and a negative British anti-Bush rapper banned from MTV for his anti-war sentiment, among others.

The SF Asian-American Film Festival hosts not only ten days of the latest and greatest in Asian and Asian-American film, but two nights of current highlights from the Asian-American music scene too: one of hip-hop and electronica, and one of indie rock.

Every year these concerts sell out, so get ready, get set, and get those tickets!

Hip-hop/Dance: Friday, March 16, at the Independent, 5th Platoon's Neil Armstrong and Vin Roc, and SF MC Estiary, along with DJs Mochipet vs. Mike Boo vs. Mike Reed, and DJ Zita. Visuals by Daniel Hai. $9, 21+ (sorry, kids), tickets $15.

Indie rock: At the Rickshaw Stop on Wed. March 21, the full range of the Asian and Asian-American indie rock spectrum, from dreamy local faves Scrabbel to the all girl jangle-pop Oakland trio Dreamdate, a DJ to boot, and the latest craze, the Tokyo scenesters Kiiiiiiiii (we may not have the correct number of i's in there; we're too lazy to check). Kiiiii is described as "like the Olsen Twins, but Japanese and on acid," which we must admit we find to be an intriguing description. Tickets are $10, doors at 9 p.m (and also 21+).

Hey, remember a few weeks ago when we mentioned that Noise Pop was sponsoring a one-day make a music video contest a la Iron Chef? Well, here's the winning video!

The video's by the local band Blammos, for the song "Girl Of My Dreams," where the singer walks around the Mission, singing to as many different girls his team could find that were willing to be on film. It's kind of cute! And, as required, it features the three required elements: lipstick, a flame, and "a constriction." We're not entirely sure what a constriction is, but we're sure it's in the video.

Blammos plays the Hotel Utah birthday party on St. Patrick's Day, and you can see the other SF Noise Pop video entries at Cinemasports.com.

We hope to visit Boston soon, and when we do, we hope Bon Savants will be our ambassadors. Read lead singer Thom Moran's hilarious answers to the below questions and listen to their catchy, shoegazy pop, and you'll see what we mean. They are also humanitarians at heart and requested that we link to The Pendulum Project.

Bon Savants are currently on tour and are stopping in SF tonight to play a sold-out show at Cafe Du Nord with Portland band Menomena, who were featured in SF Weekly and SFist Krissy's column this week. Both bands are heading to South By Southwest next week.

Special thanks to Thom and his thumbs for taking the time to answer these questions via one of those nifty, handheld devices while in transit.

Photo of Bon Savants by JB Galusha

Did you get your tickets to see Menomena on Friday night at Cafe Du Nord? Hopefully you did, because the show is sold out. As we've said before, this record is already on our top 10 of '07, so if you haven't checked the band out yet - what are you waiting for? OK maybe you're broke or you've fallen and you can't get to Amoeba, so we're going to hook one of you up with their amazing album Friend and Foe plus a really nice poster courtesy of their label Barsuk. Since we're currently locked out of our fancy contesting tool, only you close readers will be rewarded with a chance to win: just email yours truly for your chance.

On a more somber note, it was a dark day for internet radio earlier this week as the Copyright Royalty Board just substantially increased the fees internet radio sites must pay to record labels -- fees not paid by traditional radio stations. This is a move that BAGeL Radio founder DJ Ted predicts "will kill off every last independent online radio station and websites like Pandora." SomaFM, another amazing internet radio station operating out of SF, reports that they need to "raise at least $15,000 each month to meet our minimum operating budget." Needless to say, most internet radio DJs don't have that kind of money sitting around. Read Ted's entire post here and if you want to support internet radio, please take 2 seconds to sign the petition. And get your BAGeL Radio and SOMA-FM while they're still hot! (Our hourlong show airs on BAGeL at 4pm & 10pm PST today).

Since South by Southwest, the largest music festival in the world, kicks off next week, most tour vans are currently being magnetically drawn to Austin, Texas. Or perhaps San Francisco is simply spent after all the Noise Pop madness (read SFist Rita's coverage and check out Julie Schuchard's photos). Nevertheless, there are still a few shows of interest happening in the city this week.

On Friday, Bright Eyes play the first of two sold out shows at Great American. On Saturday night, you have a chance to see a whole mess of musical legends in the same room, plus contribute to a worthy cause. Tiffany Travalent, a talented artist and designer who worked at the Fillmore and Warfield for several years, has been dealing with some physical complications which have been causing her severe and crippling pain. You can read all about her story here. She must be a pretty amazing person, because check out the friends who are coming to her rescue: Eric McFadden (P-Funk), Les Claypool, Bernie Worell, Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads), Zigaboo Modeliste (The Meters) and many many more. In addition to the music there will be a raffle and a live auction with a partial list of items including signed instruments, signed posters, tours, gift certificates, etc. Tickets start at $25 in advance, but you can donate as much as you'd like, and $100 gets you a pre-show meet & greet with musicians, drinks, hors d'oeuvres, a commemorative poster and a copy of the night's show on CD. Also on Saturday night, The Long Winters, West Indian Girl and The Morning Benders are at The Independent.

It smelled like someone spilled a pitcher of Sangria inside Cafe du Nord Friday night, when we stopped by to check out the North Carolina band Annuals for Noise Pop. We always find the crowd so interesting at Cafe du Nord, with the pool players chatting amiably in the back, the lively bar, and there's always that smattering of smartly-dressed people on dates, but who look like they aren't really into indie rock.

We always stand in the back at Cafe du Nord because the excellent sound system always sounds best there, plus there's that really bright digital clock at the soundboard so you can check how timely the artists are. We rolled in right as the last opening act, Simon Dawes, was finishing their sound check (only about 10 minutes behind schedule), and found their Weezer-sounding set pleasant.

Annuals (the Noise Pop site specifically says not to refer to them as "The" Annuals) are a ginormous group with grandiose instrumentation -- a sextet where the one woman wears a country dress and plays piano, that kind of band. They've got a very polished sound that reminded us of U2 (in a folk/synth kind of way), oddly enough, and we see them being featured on Aaron Axelson's Live 105 Soundcheck show very soon (if they haven't been already).

Update: Oh wait, we just checked and they were indeed featured on Soundcheck last week -- but unfortunately, they're listed as "The Annual" on the Live 105 site. Annuals can't be too happy about that.

It was a show of nonstop manic glee, as cuddle-pop indie couple-duo Matt & Kim returned to San Francisco to play Noise Pop at the Bottom of the Hill Thursday night. So much love!

Matt and Kim are an insanely cheerful Brooklyn couple who like to make music together. Kim plays the drums and Matt tweedles away on his synthesizer and sings in an endearingly reedy voice. They blasted through a 30 minute set of upbeat, and even more upbeat songs, interspersed with Matt's goofy anecdotes about how he rented their car from SFO and it's a minivan, and talking about how he ate too much at Waziema before their gig at the Independent back in November. Kim doesn't usually talk on the mic but did give a friendly "whassssssup?", to the crowd's shrieked delight.

We were feeling all lame because we went to the show with earplugs -- and then we noticed pretty much everyone around us was rocking the inflatable foam inserts too. Aural health is very important. The earplugs didn't block out the whoooooos! of joy with each M&K song (though they did block out the rapturous singalongs -- well, either that, or Matt was just pointing his mic at the crowd for no reason while not singing along to the choruses of their big hit songs.)

Yea yeah, yea yeah, yea yeah, yea yeah, yea yeah, yea yeah, yea yeah, yea yeah, yea yeah yeah!

YouTube clip of Matt & Kim on Roosevelt Island in NYC, playing Yea Yeah on a portable Casiotone and cardboard box. Okay, it's pretty cute.

Special video bonanza!

Last night we made it out to the Noise Pop BAGeL Radio happy hour at Thee Parkside just in time to see Peloton. That's right, in case you haven't heard or experienced it yet, Noise Pop is in full swing here in San Francisco. Thee Parkside was packed with festivalgoers and BAGeL fans and DJ Ted couldn't help but beam proudly at the full house. It's good to see music fans supporting internet radio. [Speaking of, yours truly is back on BAGeL this afternoon at 4pm PST with our third show ever (tune in via iTunes or at the BAGeL website), playing new songs from Feist and El Perro Del Mar, plus tracks from Menomena, The Constantines, Midlake, Volcano I'm Still Excited!, and a song by an artist that just might get us kicked off the station for good. We reckon Ted's a softie though and maybe he'll forgive us.]

Getting back on the subject of Noise Pop, we hope you already got your plans squared away because many of the shows are already sold out with only a few tickets being released on the night of the show. Unless you were smart enough to buy a badge before they sold out completely, looks like you'll be crossing your fingers and standing in line or trolling for extra tickets on Craigslist. There are still tickets available to many of the movies in the Noise Pop Film Festival, you can always hit the free happy hours and the Expo this weekend looks to be a lot of fun. And if you're not anywhere near San Francisco, the fine folks at Lala.com are providing free streams of all the live shows! To make sure you're in the mood for all this, watch this clip of the Extra Action Marching Band getting the Noise Pop opening party started with a bang.

As for this week's recommended shows, tonight Langhorne Slim and Trainwreck Riders co-headline Rickshaw Stop. Over at 330 Ritch, Popscene presents guest DJ Ted Leo plus an album release party for Albert Hammond Jr. On Friday, there are several great Noise Pop shows to choose from. Get down to your roots with ace songwriters Jolie Holland and David Dondero at The Fillmore. It's weird and wonderful at Swedish American Hall with Vic Chesnutt, Zach Rogue of Rogue Wave and Alela Diane. Get fresh at the Independent with Autolux, Snowden and Malajube. The Bottom of the Hill goes totally old school when The Donnas play a rare intimate show with Boyskout, Bellavista and Push To Talk.

Watch Malajube's video for "Montreal -40°C":