Tami "Making Friendz" Hart.

For New York City, 2011 was the year local musicians proved that RSS feeds didn't kill old-school ideals like "scene" or "community." Every great band seemed to come tied to three or four like-minded bands you could love for the same reasons, often on the same bill. Maybe we read (and wrote) enough trend pieces to believe it ourselves. Maybe bands are just using Facebook connections to write the narrative before writers could. Maybe retromania has led us to think everything is back in a big way?

Don't get too excited. Bloggos still continued to rally deep and hard around the cleverest, firstiest mash-ups of hypester runoff micro-genres (good luck in 2012, A$AP Rocky, Light Asylum, CREEP and Caveman). But while so many jockeyed for positions and pixels, larger stories emerged that felt refreshingly like the street-level phonecall-and-flyer scenes of yore. As, I wrote in SPIN the new hip-hop fraternity of Das Racist, Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire, Action Bronson, Despot and a newly keyed up El-P represent the most energizing force in New York indie-rap since Def Jux's heyday. And as I wrote in the Voice, a beercan-ducking, sweat-gushing, feedback-obsessed swarm of new pigfuck bands have been laying waste to 285 Kent, including The Men, White Suns, Pygmy Shrews and Pop. 1280. Often pushing the boundaries of what modern metalheads can play and wear, there was a downright onslaught of forward-thinking, critically acclaimed extreme metal releases (Liturgy, Tombs, Krallice, Hull, Batillus), which helped turn New York into the most important metal scene in the country for maybe the first time ever. Hell, if record labels still had the money to fly people out here, they'd be swarming!

Below, the 2011 edition of our annual Yes In My Backyard mixtape—this year's encompasses 18 tracks, over nearly 80 minutes—which collects this year's greatest music from New York City.

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K-Holes.

HoZac Records Presents w/ K-Holes, Xray Eyeballs, My Teenage Stride, Making Friendz
Shea Stadium
Thursday, June 16

Better Than: Losing on a walk-off balk.

Half the fun of going to a show at Shea Stadium is walking to Shea Stadium. It's better when there's no one around except for you and the warehouses, so that when you turn from Waterbury onto Meadow you feel momentarily out of place until the venue's dimly lit staircase reveals itself. It's even better when what awaits you after walking up that staircase are the likes of K-Holes and Xray Eyeballs.

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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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This weekend marks the unofficial start of summer, the season where people--despite their best efforts--engage in communal listening thanks to power of radios blaring through cracked-open windows, propped bodega doors, and other points of entry that are cracked just wide enough to let in something resembling a breeze. The unofficial establishment of a Jam Of The Summer has been something of a fun pre-season ritual for pop watchers, who love prognosticating on matters regarding mass musical-consumption tastes. After the jump, five songs that have the bass-shaking power to be heard all over New York City this summer--and song that'll probably get played quite a few times thanks to its seasonally appropriate theme.

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Judging by the video for the pummelingly catchy "Situation," Tami Hart--also known as Yes In My Backyard alum Making Friendz--knows what it's like to have even the most serene situations induce nausea. Like after a deceptively intense session of yoga. And while being with someone who you feel a deep, spiritual connection with. And... well, you get the drill. At least the substance everyone's horking up in the clip looks more like an unbaked cake batter than anything too already-digested. [Via]

Brooklyn's Making Friendz is a self-described "punk 'n' b" dance riot, dragging the glittery disco blips of electro into the No Age age via euphoric, no-fi joymosh. Mastermind Tami Hart came here in 2005 from the same Cali scene that produced the mushy, expansive bluster of No Age, Abe Vigoda, HEALTH and the Mae Shi; that was a raucous second act following her days as a 19-year-old folkie making critically acclaimed solo records for Mr. Lady. All these roads--combined with her love of Justin Timberlake and Missy--lead to Social Life (due June 21 on Brooklyn upstart Last Bummer). While most of the melancholic yet celebratory Social Life circles around a bleary-eyed, cassette-ready, 4 a.m. drum-machine disco, album opener "Situation" is simply an explosive, blown-out jammer. Inspired by her turbulent, alcohol-fueled days in Cali, she aims for No Age sunshine and ends up with gutter-dragging distorto-dance bubblecrunch that could sit alongside YIMBY faves like Sleigh Bells or Year Of The Dragon.

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