Thanks to Matt the other day for tipping me off that Austin’s Voxtrot would finally be touring up through Toronto for a show at Sneaky Dee’s on April 13 with California’s Irving. Voxtrot first appeared on my radar when I was wading through bands to check out at SxSW back in March, and though I didn’t end up catching their performance, I was impressed by their ultra-melodic, just retro enough pop stylings. And then I promptly forgot about them.

They did make inroads in the popular conciousness throughout 2005, though, as I’d see their name appear in blogs and whatnot periodically and be reminded, “hey – I liked them, I should check them out again”… and then I’d promptly forget about them again. But I won’t be making that mistake again – especially not now that Spin named them band of the day (there can only be 365 of those in a year!) and Gorilla Vs Bear named their debut Raised By Wolves EP his top EP of the year, and almost top record, period. They will be issuing a follow-up EP in the Spring which will no doubt fuel the slowly but steadily growing buzz surrounding the band – hell, Indie Interviews has them pegged as one of the Texas bands set to explode in 2006. That’s ALL of Texas. And Texas is big, y’know.

Need evidence? Check out one of the tracks from Raised By Wolves and stream some more at their MySpace page. Also, frontman Ramesh Srivastava keeps a blog, so you KNOW they’re cool. Cause bloggers are cool.

MP3: Voxtrot – “The Start Of Something”

Also appearing at Sneaky Dee’s this Spring – Montreal’s Kiss Me Deadly, playing a show March 23. And Evan Dando will be at the Horseshoe, sans “reunited” Lemonheads for whatever reason, on February 11. Tickets are $17.50.

And thanks to that Indie Interviews piece for the info that Shearwater’s new full-length has a title and a release date. Look for Palo Santo in finer indie-friendly record shops on April 22.

I keep wanting this year to be officially over, but the newspapers won’t let it go… The Globe & Mail and Toronto Star both have 2005 retrospective overview thingees.

Stylus pays tribute to some of the big name artists of 2005 in haiku form.

So SxSW 2006 is officially a go. For me, I mean. I booked my flight, hotel and rental car yesterday, and am working on some arrangements for the actual festival admission and whatnot now. It also means I’ll begin posting interesting schedule and artist appearance info as I come across it, alongside such fine sites as SxSW Baby and Donewaiting (I assume See You In The Pit will be back as we get closer to March as well. Having one festival under my belt means I’ll be better prepared to enjoy the festivities next year – hence the rental car (to make the day shows wherever they may be), hotel with free wireless internet (for easy blogging whilst there) and perhaps most importantly, I’ll know where the hell everything is. Yeah.

np – Jenny Lewis With The Watson Twins / Rabbit Fur Coat