Bay Area Picks for SXSW

The members of Scissors for Lefty have bounded around stages in stretchy red suits and enlivened photo shoots dressed in little more than nipple tape and undies. Even without the theatrics, though, the band would still be one of San Francisco's most entertaining acts. Their uptempo indie-pop ditties are littered with hooks, stitched from the lives of antsy post-adolescence and crafted with avid attention paid to classic hook heroes from Pulp to Prince and the Pretenders.

At last year's SXSW, Wooden Shjips was the name ringing in the ears of writers who dig the drone (including Rolling Stone's David Fricke). The San Francisco band makes skillful use of repetition, using the earthy clay of guitar fuzz, delayed vocals, and motorik rhythms to build an altar for sonic meditations of the psychedelic variety. The "trance" tag on the group's MySpace page is apt, as this is the kind of cosmic debris that makes rock music transcendent.