Living about 1700 miles apart (namely in Austin and Brooklyn) doesn't prevent brothers Jared and Michael Bell from conjuring up beautiful instrumental music. Ah, the miracles of inspiration (and of the internet)! Apparently though, also the good old telephone played a role in Lymbic Systym's latest CD called "Shutter Release". After touring with acclaimed bands like Broken Social Scene, The Books, Crystal Castles, the band is about to embark on a west coast tour, scheduled for early January. Definitely a good time to spend a few days in San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Tucson and Austin... The band also released a free download of the song "Bedroom Anthem" - check it out here.

Yes we have a weak spot for Chris Garneau - here's his new video "Fireflies" from his latest album "El Radio"

On Thursday, Dec. 3rd, The Shake will celebrate the release of their new album, "The Shake Go Crazy," at the main room at Santos Party House. The New York 4-piece will be joined by fellow City rockers Milo & The Fuzz, Reckless Sons and Black Taxi. The band also just announced the release of their new music video for their single, "Got No Soul" - here it is - directed by Anders Urmacher (you guessed it, another New Yorker). Those who love fine rock'n'roll done the right way shouldn't miss this show.

Webster Hall - which in the 1950s and 60s was the recording home of RCA records and hosted legendary recordings of Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and Bob Dylan among others - has lately been doing interesting things to help emerging local artists. The East Village venue staff started recording local emerging bands back in January 2009 and ended up gathering enough material to put together a compilation of of new up-and-coming artists recorded during their Webster performances. The resulting CD is called "Live At Webster Hall - The Sounds From New York City Vol 1”. It features 10 artists; some of which we have often covered - The Subjects, Bear Hands, Young Love, Tiger City, Asa Ransom, Static Jacks - plus others we never heard of that we are going to check out pronto; Jump Into The Gospel, US Royalty, The Royal Chains and Young Lords (in the picture). Best Buy (keen to promote their new musical instrument store in Manhattan) has jumped on board and is sponsoring this operation, agreeing to sell the CD in its stores. You can preview some tracks here.

We are sure Brooklyn Psych Rockers Bear in Heaven are not feeling too blue for placing second in last week's Deli's Artist of the Month poll - as Flavorpill just announced that they actually won the site's "Open for Mew" contest. The band is getting quite a lot of attention, in particular after Pitchfork Media assigned the "Best New Music" tag to their new records. See Bear in Heaven open for Mew on December 4th at Webster Hall.