Spring means a lotta things: the runways are aflutter with new collections and we can finally stow our dowdy winter gear in the closet and start rocking fresher duds, just in time for the requisite mid-year debauchery of Spring Break.

Flowers are in bloom, the sun is peeping, and love is hanging in the air with the sly promise of an unfinished flirt session. We’re all ready to turn new leaves with the season, and if we’re going to do it in style, we’re going to need a really good soundtrack.

With the music-festival craziness of SXSW coming up in a few weeks, there’s a bonanza of new spring albums to choose from. Here are three cherry picks from three phenomenally talented women, just in time to usher in a truly dreamy springtime.

Valet: Naked Acid
Valet is Honey Owens, a California transplant who’s been a legendary figure in the Portland, Oregon experimental music scene for almost a decade now. She’s lent her blonde elegance and burnout guitar riffs to projects like the legendary drone outfit Jackie-O Motherfucker — not to mention World, Nudge, Dark Yoga (yes, that’s a real band), and the newly-formed Atlas Sound. Not only that, but she’s got amazing style and co-owns one of Portland’s most unique boutiques of vintage gear, Rad Summer.

The amazingly-titled Naked Acid will totally save you the trouble of ever dabbling in the titular drug: it will blow your mind with its snakelike guitar work, the seemingly endless layers of delay-laced chanting, and the semi-conscious, gauzy tones of Owens’ whispery voice. Read More »

Hellogoodbye: Baby, It’s Fact

Hellogoodbye first caught my eye when the roomies in the Real World: Austin house had to film them for a SXSW submission (anyone remember that?). Check out “Baby, It’s Fact”, one of their best videos to date then get it here!

The feud is over claims UK site Digitalspy. For the past few weeks, the saucy Brit songstresses have been battling out their personal differences on the world stage. But now the two have aparantly buried the hatchet after hooking up in Austin, Texas last week during SXSW. “Me and the Winehouse have made up,” Allen said. “We’re now lesbian lovers,” she laughed afterwards.

Remember when you had to scan the web or fumble thru the pages of the local music rag just to find out when Young Love was coming to town? Yeah me too. Well, those days are about as passe as reading your news from a newspaper, thanks to a couple of Seattle-based students / electrical engineers.

According to Esquire.com, “Brandon Smith and Jeff Cole, (who’s still in school), have created the wonderfully efficient—and free- iConcertCal , a personalized concert calendar that tells you when the artists in your iTunes library are coming to town”.

How cool is that? -A calendar inside my iTunes Library, that tells me when and where the artist I am listening to on my ipod is coming to town? What will they think of next? A car that can park itself? Never.

Read the article. Download iConcertCal now.

Amy Winehouse: Rehab

Spring Break in Austin, Texas has nothing to do with sun and sand. It’s all about the music. South by Southwest, the nation’s premiere music festival hit Austin this week featuring 1400 bands from all over the world and hip, hot songstress Lily Allen was on hand and in rare form. Apparently, Allen in the middle of her showcase railed on Brit music news mag and sponsor NME. Steve McLean of Chart Attack witnessed Lily Allen and her choice words for a the magazine:

“I’m a little bit drunk because it’s 11 o’clock and I’ve been drinking most of the day,” Allen said while giggling, before launching into a tirade against NME. “F**k off you c**ts,” she said of the British music tabloid, before adding that the editor had the smallest penis in the world.

I knew this girl had a pair of lungs on her, but how about that mouth?