We are still Under The Stars, a quasi-weekly SF music column, still staying on message with strong-ass opinions o plenty this week, presenting new music releases, upcoming shows, and other adjacent items. We keep it moving, hustling with the changes, dodging AI slop channels, and wearing age-appropriate denim while thinking outside the margins.
We’ve been doing this for a while now… Thanks for spending some time with us…
Before we dive into it, just a couple of notes…..
Listen, the 41st annual class of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees is a wily and worthy bunch: Sade, Luther Vandross, and Wu-Tang Clan. Legit. Joy Division/New Order… proper. Phil Collins, for those early albums Face Value and Hello, I Must Be Going, yes. For ripping off Prince’s 1999 with “Sussudio,” maybe not. Billy Idol and Iron Maiden? Meh.
Oasis? That proves what a legacy world tour can do to bump up your status.
Other honorees this year include the rappers Queen Latifah and MC Lyte, as well as Latin legend Celia Cruz, Afrobeat star Fela Kuti, and country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons. They will receive the early influence award, recognizing artists whose sound or performance style has helped shape music.
The musical excellence citation will go to the songwriter Linda Creed, a pillar of the “Philly Sound,” and to three producers: Arif Mardin, Jimmy Miller, and Rick Rubin. It’s a time to rediscover or discover folks, and their legacies.
JUJU ROGERS, PINK GUITARS, SPACESHIPS N VOODOO DOLLS (COUNTERKULTUR)
In the first couple of singles released from this Pink Guitars, Spaceships N Voodoo Dolls album by Juju Rodgers, the funk, the punk, and the soul are so concentrated, it becomes the hip-hop meets psychedelic soul amalgam I’ve been waiting for ever since Fishbone started to slow down a bit. No diss to the groundbreaking band at all; I just wanted more bands who saw a future with so many influences to walk through that wall they broke down. It seems Juju Rogers is of the same mindset.
JuJu calls the ambitious project—his first release in five years—“Afrophunk.” Standout collaborations include Pink Siifu, Jamila Woods, and MONEYNICCA of Philadelphia Hardcore band Soul Glo. This record is about to break brains, make gains, and bring black psychedelic funk back to the forefront. Get ready for the headiness. Pre-order here.
OTOLITHS, LITHOS
There’s an old joke from the ’90s about SF music. Supposedly, if you threw a dead cat (sorry, Mr. Pickles) down Mission Street circa ’98, you’d hit 25 different DJs.
I’d update that bad taste in a joke with indie-jangler guitar-driven bands for the 2026 set. Those outfits rarely exist, however, in a “one-man band” format. The Oakland-based and Chicago-raised musician, Tom Smith, is the force behind the ever-morphing band Otoliths, whose debut Lithos can match the best local shoegaze hustle, that jangle, post-punk, and power-pop crease, then turn it around, vibing off some old Elvis Costello, Sic Alps, Cleaners from Venus. He’s got those moves. There’s even a track here, “Too Slow,” that gives a soulful version of a would-be Reds, Pinks & Purples sweet-type of ballad, if only Glenn Donaldson made those. (He doesn’t, by the way.)
Smith a former member Smokin’ Ziggurats, Office, Mazes, Social Studies, Silverware, and a sideman in Abracadabra, knows his way around crafting tight, catchy, riff-laden songs; not one track out of the 11 here go over four and a half minutes, but I guarantee you’ll be humming and strumming some nicely constructed songs that time travel through guitar driven rock over the recent past.
Pick up Lithos here, and go see this new Bay Area phenom on Thursday, April 30th at Thee Stork Club.
BEL COBAIN, KIZZY EP (BROWNSWOOD RECORDINGS)
Believe it or not, the London-based independent label Brownswood Recordings has been around for 20 years now. Run by internationally renowned DJ, broadcaster, and record collector Gilles Peterson, the label has become a top choice among music fans curious about what’s bubbling up musically in London.
Hackney-born singer Bel Cobain seems to be next. She flows naturally through underscored references to rock, jazz, R&B, hip-hop, folk, and breaks on the EP Kizzy. Recorded during a period of transition for the vocalist—passing of loved ones and pets, endings of relationships and chapters—Cobain’s command of alt-soul, delivered through smoky vocals, yields poignant narratives with blunt-speak aplomb that land raw and lifelike. Grab it here.
GEORGIE SWEET, I SWEAR TO YOU: THE REMIXES (FIRST WORD RECORDS)
Leave it to First Word Records from the UK to not just pick the brightest of vocalists, year after year—tastefully restocking their roster of talent, with proper butter-smooth R&B-adjacent artists who just seem to pop up within their vicinity—but also provide sleek remix projects, so said talent can be engaged with, presented, and heard by all, in the myriad of genres that electronic music provides.
Georgie Sweet, a singer-songwriter from Brighton, who also works as an illustrator and animator, released a sparkly downtempo R&B project last year called “I Swear To You,” produced and co-written by Marc Rapson. It earmarked this young creative as one of those First Word Records standouts who can croon, hush-whisper, and render an arrangement cozy and warm within seconds.
In advance of a remix project EP to follow soon featuring remixes by Kaidi Tatham, Don Leisure, and Last Nubian, to name a few, Nu: Tone of Hospital Records provides a rolling liquid drum and bass take of Sweet’s “Equal Measure” that fits perfectly for those spring into summer mixtapes. Grab it here.
