A lot has happened since SOTC met Ava Luna two and a half years ago. Drummer Alex Smith has been replaced by the returning Julian Fader, who played with an earlier iteration of the band (in the interim, he was a member of bands like Quilty and a couple others). The backup vocal trio is down to a duet (Felicia Douglass and Becca Kauffman remain; Anna Sian recently left the group). They released their first full-length, Ice Level, earlier this year. And they just returned home from their first headlining tour, a 30-date jaunt throughout the U.S. and Canada that followed a handful of short support stints opening for acts like Twin Sister and Toro y Moi. (They celebrated their homecoming earlier this month with a Mercury Lounge gig.)

Next up?

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Ava Luna w/Sinkane
Mercury Lounge
Saturday, August 11

Better than: Your run-of-the-mill, 4/4-time, block-chord buzz band.

Ava Luna seems like one of those bands whose goal is to straight-up astound its audience. Though they would probably deny it vehemently for the record, the Brooklyn sextet can't very well hide from that truth when a vacationing Tokyo man happens upon their set in Washington, D.C. and is so impressed that he books it up to New York less than a week later to catch the band again. (This happened on Saturday night.) Could a band with a lesser end than knocking socks clean off accomplish that feat?

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Making Friendz (aka Tami Hart) plays Shea Stadium tonight.

Northside Festival starts tonight! Finally, your very own chance to see the best emerging local bands taking over Brooklyn bars for four nights... or as we like to call it, "pretty much every weekend in New York ever." We here at Sound Of The City are ecstatic about this weekend because we know that nothing lures music fans out to an $8 night at Glasslands like the privilege of piggybacking onto $200 "preferred seating" for a Wavves show.

Excuse the snark, but seeing local bands should be your hustle year 'round. But if you need a goofy wristband and a bag full of worthless promotional swag to do it, here are 10 YIMBY-endorsed local bands you should catch at Northside (or, uh, anytime, really), with handy links to interviews and MP3s.

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Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent. This is a compilation of 2010's best local music, lovingly curated by YIMBY columnist Christopher R. Weingarten. See last year's tape here.

R.I.P. Chris Weingarten's old blue trucker hat. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

Have you heard the one about how the recession is over? Uh, don't tell it to New York City's musical community. While our center-of-the-universe assembly line of hype puttered on unabated, 2010's biggest up-and-comer success stories were actually beamed from the outer limits of the five boroughs--Titus Andronicus (Glen Rock, NJ), Screaming Females (New Brunswick, NJ), Phantogram (Saratoga Springs, NY), Real Estate (Ridgewood, NJ)--places where money can go to tour vans instead of landlords, where musicians aren't paying $400 a month for the luxury of sharing a practice space with three other bands. The remaining New York City indie-crossovers all benefited from frugal one-man home-recording set-ups (Oneohtrix Point Never, Matthew Dear), stripped down line-ups (the Drums, Sleigh Bells, Matt & Kim) or simply embracing the idea that sounding mushy is smarter than buying new gear (Small Black).

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Total Slacker: It is, apparently, never too hot to do this. All photos by Georgia Kral

Total Slacker, Red Romans, Ava Luna
Union Pool
Tuesday, July 6

Last night in the freezing (yessss) back room of Union Pool, three Brooklyn acts gave startlingly fresh performances. The bill--Red Romans, a jangly and well-crafted pop band that's the side project of Chris Burke from Beach Fossils; seven-piece Motown post-punk band Ava Luna; Total Slacker, a Brooklyn three-piece that never plays minor chords (true story)--was made up entirely of friends, though none of the acts really sound the same.

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L Magazine

Twin Sister

Another year, another edition of L Magazine's "8 NYC Bands You Need To Hear." Said this last time around, but the point bears repeating: handpicking a barful of relatively intriguing unknowns in this city isn't an easy task, nor has it gotten any simpler in the last 12 months, especially when "Brooklyn is the center of the universe" is a blog-tag punchline. No, you can't keep secrets here now, if you ever could--you can't even have acquaintances string guitars in your basement without somebody telling the world--and, for all but a few, attempting to king-make bands in New York City is a fool's errand.

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Less Artists More Condos promoter Ariel Panero brings word: tonight's Ava Luna show with Suckers and Marnie Stern, heralded here just hours ago as the epic return of Damon Dash's Under 100 wonderland, has been shut down. Like we say around here, mea culpa.

[Update: Silent Barn picked this one up. See below.]

We will all live to play more Big Buck Hunter in this space, guys. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

They told us we'd gotten it shut down. They told us that it was called DD172, and that it had become a "hippie art collective right smack in the middle of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan." They told us that Less Artists More Condos had left the building. But Under 100, the concert venue hosted deep in the bowels of rap mogul Damon Dash's personal Tribeca townhouse, is officially back! That's right: Tuesday's YIMBY faves and most exciting new band (so far) of 2010 Ava Luna are having their record release there tonight with Suckers and Marnie Stern. There's even an email address for RSVPs: under100nyc@gmail.com. Never let it be said that we murdered the last DIY venue in Manhattan. 9pm, $10, all ages. Holler at them.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Brooklyn's Ava Luna is the rare band that needs to be heard to be believed. In the band's hazy, floaty, post-TVOTR-maybe conceit, post-punk grooves, soaring soul harmonies, and classic indie detachment join forces for something beautiful, infectious, and damn-near indescribable. The twisted brainchild of Carlos Hernandez, the son of a soul DJ and occasional producer of bands like Fucked Up, Ava Luna is the sum of a lot of somehow congruous parts. The minimal drums/bass/synth lineup kicks out the most skeletal of Ze Records-era post-punk/nu-funk; a chorus made up of three backing singers add a razor-sharp doo-wop lilt; the sweat-soaked Hernandez is up front stirring-soul like Jamie Liddell or a James Chance for the Misshapes age. Their upcoming EP, Services (their fifth release for Brooklyn handmade CD-R label Cooling Pie) was self-recorded in the basement of a Brooklyn church and is getting an official party on Friday with Marnie Stern and Suckers. (Venue TBA, so watch their MySpace for details.) Opening track "Clips" makes super-sparse electro-funk clash with lush bah-bah-bahs, then shifts into high gear for a Stax-meets-Kraftwerk chorus.

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