As singer-songwriters Cortnee Langlie and Stephen Duchardt are big fans of one another. “There’s stuff Cortnee will come up with that I’ll be like, ‘Where is that in your brain?’” Duchardt says, pausing momentarily to enthusiastically slap the table in front of him for emphasis. He is sitting next to Langlie—his musical partner and the other half of the San Jose-based alt-folk duo, Narrators—praising her abilities, both as a guitarist and singer. “That’s amazing.’”

The pair got their start playing at open mic nights around the South Bay. At first they performed on their own, before crossing paths and joining forces.

“Blue Rock Shoot was the primary one,” says Langlie, referring to the Saratoga cafe where she cut her teeth as a musical performer, working through the stage fright that often paralyzed her. Although Langlie was no stranger to the stage—she has experience with theater, where she sang in choirs and performed chamber music—she had to learn to overcome the anxiety she felt while performing her own tunes. “I grew up doing lots and lots of theater, performing other people’s stuff,” she says. “I felt like I wanted to have ownership over my own material and my own way of being onstage.”

Offstage, Duchardt works as a professional recording engineer. He was making the open mic rounds as a solo performer—hoping to become “the next Jackson Browne.” However, after catching a number of Langlie’s sets, “that completely changed.”

After seeing Langlie around at the same open mics he frequented, Duchardt started to entertain the notion of asking her to sing with him. “I’m gonna have to ask her to sing with me, because she’s amazing,” Duchardt recalls thinking.

But he wasn’t the only one paying attention. Langlie had taken notice of his work as well, and one night, Langlie performed one of his songs, “March Against My Walls,” while Duchardt was in the audience. “That was a very powerful thing,” he says.

The two began collaborating and soon discovered that their individual styles, while unique, worked well together—especially when they were crafting folk songs. At first Duchardt took the lead on songwriting duties. However, as Langlie became more comfortable with her abilities, she brought more to the table and the process became more cooperative.

“Pretty much everything we do is a negotiation,” says Duchardt. “I’m trying to get my stuff in as much as I can, and you’re getting your stuff in, and nobody gets their way, ever. But then, in the end, I think it really helps everything sound even better.”

All of that teamwork and compromise is culminating in their debut EP, due out Sept. 19. The self-titled release will express the full range of their influences, they say.

“The songs that we have written together—or have attempted to write together—they have more of a Celtic or old-timey feel,” Langlie says.

The EP, which they are celebrating with a performance at Art Boutiki on Saturday, will also feature broader, more playful interpretations of their previously sparse, soulful work. “There’s everything from two voices and two guitars all the way up to drum set, bass, keyboards, cello—like a full rock band,” Duchardt says.

Narrators took nearly a year to complete; it was recorded all in Langlie’s garage. “Every day, (we) lugged all the gear in and set it up, turned on the computers, and then fucked around til we got something,” he says.

Not bad for two folks who happened to pass through San Jose almost by chance—Langlie was managing a restaurant in Palo Alto and needed a cheap place to live, and Duchardt followed his wife to the valley when she got a job here. “It was cheaper then. And it’s changed so much in the past five years,” says Langlie.

The tech hub that is San Jose offers a deep well of influence for an admittedly old-timey, DIY duo, even though one might not think that it would. “Nothing against San Jose,” says Duchardt, “But this is not a cultural mecca. If you want to do something here, you basically gotta do it yourself. The takeaway from our work together (is that) San Jose is a city that tests your resolve. I think, if you’re really doing something you believe in, if you can do it here, you can do it anywhere.”

Narrators are celebrating the release of their new self-titled EP at the SLG Art Boutiki on Sept. 19.

Though Kathy Foster has long been a Portland denizen, she’s originally from Sunnyvale. “Mountain View; Sunnyvale” she clarifies. “I went to De Anza. Sold vintage clothes at the flea market.”

That was almost two decades ago. Foster has gone on to reach a certain level of indie stardom since her days slinging old stock—as the bassist behind one of the biggest bands to come out of the Northwest in the 2000s: the Thermals.

But that’s not all she is. She’s got several other projects she keeps busy with—breezy indie-pop outfit All Girl Summer Fun Band, duo Hutch & Kathy—and another, called Hurry Up, which is coming to Homestead Lanes on Saturday.

“It just kinda started out as a joke, almost,” she says of Hurry Up’s formation, in 2011. “We were playing New York and she (Maggie) came to our show.” Hurry Up is made up of Foster, her Thermals bandmate Westin Glass, and, Maggie Vale, who worked for the Thermals’ label, Kill Rock Stars, at the time. “We were talking about how we’re always ‘the nice people.’ (And we said), ‘We should start a hardcore band!’”

Days went on, and the joke didn’t die. “We were talking about it, but as we were talking about it, we were like, ‘We should do this.’”

Three years later, and Hurry Up is no longer a joke. They’re a fully fledged band that plays shows and records albums—their self-titled debut, released this summer, is currently on Spotify. Kathy is on drums, and Glass is on guitar—the reverse of their Thermals roles.

And that’s the draw of Hurry Up—for Foster, anyway. Even rock stars can feel the squeeze of monotony, and Hurry Up allows her to let loose a little.

“The Thermals have been kind of a career for me and for us,” she says. “So when we play shows, we usually play big places.” Hurry Up is a much more casual affair. “I wanted to get back to playing small shows. I also wanted to get back to playing drums, ’cause that was my first instrument when I was 16.”

The songs are different, too: they’re definitely louder, but also, in a way, more relaxed. “All the songs that we’ve written are just kinda, like, jamming,” says Foster. “Hurry Up is a little more on-the-spot collaboration… songs that are tongue-in-cheek and whatever feels good, cathartically. It just gets real sweaty and shouty. (This is us) just going for it.”

Hurry Up play Homestead Bowl in Cupertino on Aug. 1 at 8pm.

On her Patreon page, where she does the bulk of her blogging these days, she cites acute Lyme disease, by way of a nasty bug bite (upsetting stuff, but the story of how she came down with it is, as always, beautifully told). She is, as she says, “doing the Totally Adult Thing” and cancelling her appearance in San Jose on Saturday.

(Ed. note: Amanda Palmer has dropped out of this show, citing complications from treatment of acute Lyme disease. Read about it here.)

It’s hard to talk about Amanda Palmer without first addressing her haters. From her days as the frontwoman of The Dresden Dolls to her flourishing solo career, Palmer, like her hero, Morrissey—for whom she’ll be opening at the SJSU Event Center on Saturday—has been on the receiving end of public criticism for pretty much as long as she’s been an artist.

Why? Take your pick. She bared her breasts onstage. She wrote a bouncy song about some pretty dark subject matter—the tale of a girl raped at a party and her subsequent positive STI test and abortion. She asked local musicians to play dates with her for free. She married geek hero Neil Gaiman. She doesn’t shave her armpits.

“People really don’t like being confronted by women misbehaving,” she says, rather calmly for someone who has a section specifically for hate mail on her band’s site. “Whereas men misbehaving can be kind of sexy. That’s part of this game of entertainment.”

She is, admittedly, hugely influenced by Morrissey. Palmer was a teenager in the ’80s—hormonally primed to be influenced by the sweeping drama of The Smiths. “I got my first Smiths tape when I was 14, 15,” she says over the phone, driving home to Boston from upstate New York. “One side was Strangeways, the other Meat is Murder. I just wore it into the ground.”

The Smiths and their contemporaries (Depeche Mode, The Pixies, Nick Cave and “all that dark apocalyptic stuff one of my boyfriends got me into”) have always been lurking in her work, even when she was writing vampy cabaret choruses on keys as one half of “punk cabaret” weirdoes The Dresden Dolls, which is where she got her start. She’s always had a theatrical, sentimental bent, somber but never sappy. Both her and Morrissey’s bodies of work speak of something more suited for the Shakespearean stage or a Lifetime movie than moody, morose rock ‘n roll.

“One of the things I love about being an older musician and having the perspective of time is that your own formation is a mystery to be solved,” she says—posing and then answering a question. “Why did the Smiths speak to me? The music you listen to as a teenager, you take for granted, until you look back at the greater context of things and realize there wasn’t anyone writing songs like that. Now I realize how formative it was.”

These days, after years of sticking almost solely to piano, she’s starting to work her way back to the sounds that started it all. “My really early music has cheesy synths and handclaps,” she says. Theater Is Evil, her 2012 crowdfunded record, which drew $1 million (she asked for $100,000), saw her going all-in on ‘80s conventions—making heavy use of the synthesizer. She is continuing in the same vein with her currently in-progress album, which she is recording with Edward Ka-Spell of The Legendary Pink Dots.

“I had this entire conversation with Edward,” she says. “We sat down (to record with electronics) and it was like I was going back to a language I hadn’t spoken in 20 years.”

Palmer’s opening slot on Saturday’s show came about under sudden, strange circumstances. “I was having lunch with an old manager of mine who offhandedly asked if I might want the gig,” she says. “In the mysterious ways of the underbelly of the industry, I was called up about the gig a few days later.”

She says she isn’t sure whether Moz personally requested her to open. “I’ve never actually met Morrissey, but rumor had it he did attend a Dresden Dolls gig.” (If Morrissey message boards are be believed, he surfaced at a Dresden Dolls show in LA around 2008.) In any case, playing for one of her teen idols seems a fitting end to the most current chapter in Palmer’s career and life.

This will be the last show before she goes on an indefinite hiatus—she’s currently seven months pregnant, and not entirely sure what the future holds, musically or otherwise. “I really, really believe in living a life of no regrets and radical compassion for myself and others. There are times when I wish I did take myself more seriously,” she says. “I feel like the key to life, as self-helpy as it sounds, is pure, unadulterated, simple self-acceptance. We are built the way we’re built. And that’s the thing I love about Morrissey. He’s totally and utterly himself.”

Like it or not, so is she.

Amanda Palmer opens for Morrissey on July 25 at the San Jose State University Event Center. More info.

Anya Kvitka has been quiet for a while.

Professionally that is. In person, she doesn’t stay quiet long. She’s got a lot to say—about the arts in San Jose, about ABBA and about her recent decision to sign with the tastemaking independent label that dug Flying Lotus out of obscurity.

“I’ve purposely been dormant,” she says, nestled on a sagging couch at Philz Coffee in downtown San Jose. “As an artist, you have to really be able to glue yourself to something before committing to releasing that content. I was just very steadily looking for something to be worthy of the fans’ attention. I think this is the first time in that time I’ve reached something that’s tangible—and I’m really excited to see where it goes.”

The “it” she’s talking about is her recent signing to Plug Research, an established and respected indie label based in Los Angeles. “They have an amazing track record,” she says. Plug released Flying Lotus’ debut LP, 1983, and currently boast a roster of boundary pushing artists, like the future-jazz/electronic producer, Milosh, and neo-soul crooner, Bilal. “A lot of these people I’ve looked up to my whole life that I feel are, like, kind of musical pioneers. I just feel like, ‘Holy crap, I’m a part of that now.’”

Anya isn’t the only one excited about what’s ahead. Allen Avanessian, owner and CEO of Plug Research is just as stoked.

Avanessian first became intrigued with Anya after hearing her feature vocal on the track “Penny Nickel Dime,” by alternative hip-hop producer and Plug Research artist Amp Live. Avanessian asked Kvitka to meet with him and play him some of her music.

“It kind of blew me away,” he says. “It was ahead of its time.”

What he heard was a singer with an incredible range—technically and stylistically. Not only could she belt out powerful melodies, but she could assume the soulful timbre of Amy Winehouse, or go an entirely different direction, which Avanessian describes as “future-soul-electronic-pop.”

Plug Research is not the first label to find Anya’s style and sound appealing. She’s flirted with labels in the past, including the majors.

From the moment she began performing, Anya’s powerful vocals cut through the din of the myriad guitar, bass and drums bands in the South Bay. Fans flocked to her, and within months, industry interest began to trickle in. “It was insane,” she recalls. “Within two months I had Atlantic Records calling me. It was weird. Because realistically that doesn’t happen to people.”

Born in Moscow, Kvitka came from a home that valued not only the structure of classical training, but the drama and bombast of pop.

“My mom and my dad kind of brought ABBA, Queen and Modern Talk (into the home),” she says. “Pink Floyd—a lot of that was a great foundation, too, because I’m not sure how many people at that crucial age, where you’re developing your tastes, are exposed to that type of music.”

Kvitka emigrated to the U.S. in 1992, where she continued to develop as a musician. She majored art history and minored in piano performance at UC Santa Cruz—graduating in 2009. While there, she garnered serious recognition as a standout member of the a capella group, Acquire A Capella, and even starred in a viral video—an a capella version of “I’m on a Boat,” by The Lonely Island—which six years ago became a YouTube phenomenon and has clocked almost 3 million views at last count.

It wasn’t even a question of what to do with herself when she came back to San Jose. She started making music, both as a solo artist and with a backing band, the Get Down—blending her omnivorous musical tastes by incorporating elements of her classical music education with her love of pop and R&B.

Eventually, Kvitka become Anya—just Anya—a sultry, silken-voiced soul singer with a little bit of sass and grit.

She has “the look” Avanessian says. “She’s forward thinking about how she wants to do things. It’s unique, but it also has a familiarity to it. That was extremely appealing to me.”

Kvitka says she is happy to be at Plug Research for a number of reasons.

“I did talk to a lot of major labels,” she says. “But whenever you sign to a major—especially when you’re an up-and-coming artist—there are a lot of artistic sacrifices you have to make.”

She has never felt that Plug Research would try to box her in. “Allen (Avanessian) was open to my creative direction,” Kvitka says. “in fact, he was encouraging to it. It just made sense. It was kind of a no-brainer.”

She will celebrate her signing to Plug Research this Friday when she headlines The Ritz in downtown San Jose. “Now that I’m on Plug Research, I really feel like this is the beginning. So, like, this show for me is really just the announcement that I feel like now is the start.”

Kvitka will be joined by longtime collaborator and lead guitarist Matt Gonzales, who has been keeping a busy touring schedule with the nuevo norteño sextet SuenaTron. “We can’t wait to rock the Ritz,” Gonzales says. “There are going to be a lot of surprises.”

Drummer Mitchell Wilcox, also of Cathedrals, and producer Marcus Daniels round out the lineup.

Going forward, Avanessian says the plan will be to release a four- or five-song EP, which he hopes to release by the end of the year. After the EP and a few singles, Avanessian says Anya should be ready to put out a full-length record.

It’s all quite exciting, Kvitka says—though it can also be nerve-wracking.

“Honestly you know, it’s not easy to decide to do this,” she says “Of course I think every day, ‘You know, maybe I should commit to a full-time job.’… I think the hardest thing is when you realize that this really is about convincing yourself.” If all else fails, Kvitka could go and work at a startup—heavy emphasis on could. “My parents are very heavily in the tech world, and I live in the middle of it. I mean, tech is so successful and so tangible. (But that’s) not who I am.”

Music and Arts Editor, Nick Veronin, contributed to this story. Anya and the Get Down play The Ritz on July 3.

Bean Kaloni Tupou talks a lot about safe spaces. It makes sense. The leader of San Jose’s airy indie-punk project, Try the Pie has done a lot to create local places where people can be themselves, no matter their gender or sexual orientation.

As a part of the bands Sourpatch and Crabapple, and as one of the creative forces behind the Think and Die Thinking Collective, Tupou has become a fixture on the South Bay’s DIY punk scene—known for crafting socially-conscious and catchy punk rock, while making sure kids have some place to be that is open, accepting and fun.

“People who find these shows (often) have (that as) the only safe space sometimes in their life,” the musician and community organizer says, sitting on the patio at Boba Bar in downtown San Jose. Tupou, who prefers to be referred to by gender-neutral pronouns, knows the importance of places where people can hang out, free from fear of judgement or persecution. “It’s so imperative to some young people that they have that.”

Though the delicate, sophisticated sound of Try the Pie’s punk-laced balladry might suggest a musical upbringing, Tupou’s earliest exposure to music was in the Tongan church. “Harmonization is, like, really key in Tongan church,” the singer says. “Like, someone will sing and everyone starts singing and finds their place in the harmony. I feel like it was really an early influence on the way I saw music.”

The improvisational nature of Tongan traditional music shares a lot of similarities with the DIY culture Tupou eventually fell in love with.

As a teenager, Tupou began accompanying friends to shows—either at the Billy DeFrank center, a community center for LGBT youth that has become a hub for punk, DIY, and alternative cultures in San Jose—and to other all-ages shows around town.

After graduating from high school, Tupou moved to San Francisco and lived in a house with a group of friends. Tupou’s first band, Sourpatch, sprang from meeting Rich Gutierrez—now the band’s bassist—who shared the singer’s interest in the bouncy pop-punk of Go Sailor.

“‘I want to start a band like Go Sailor,’” Tupou recalls telling Gutierrez. “And he’s like, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Eventually Sourpatch became the most visible band on San Jose’s underground punk circuit. Tupou moved back to San Jose, and helped found Think and Die Thinking, a summer music festival that celebrates San Jose’s excitingly self-sufficient DIY scene and scenes like it from all over the country.

The DIY scene taught Tupou a lot about the bare-bones business of being an independent artist. “Going on tour (with Sourpatch) fueled my passion for wanting to keep doing this,” the band leader says. “Some people graduated high school and never stopped being in bands, and it’s like, ‘I guess I could do this.’ And…the kind of things you hear and are affirmed when you’re in spaces like that…like, ‘We can reimagine our future, and…we don’t have to abide by these constructs that we’re given.’ I think that was really appealing to me as a lifestyle, and the music is definitely something I’m passionate about, too. It’s nice to have all of that.”

Now Tupou finds comfort in Try the Pie. Backed by Gutierrez on bass and Nick Lopez, formerly of Ugly Winner, the band plans to release their first album, Domestication, this spring. Critical praise is already starting to trickle in for the record, and Tupou is gearing up for a tour in support of it. That starts at the Rock Shop on the 6th.

In contrast to Sourpatch and other bands Tupou’s been in, Try the Pie is a little more understated. Poignant. Personal. Whereas other ventures were a democracy—a group effort—Try the Pie is a showcase for Tupou’s songwriting.

Fittingly, as an album, Domestication deals largely with Tupou’s own personal history, growing up in San Jose.

“Most of my family have left San Jose, either (because) it’s too expensive or it’s just not the same as when they grew up—all the orchards and just land everywhere,” Tupou says. “That’s something I think about a lot. I know my family has left, but I still choose to stay here. Traveling or going on tour kind of satiates the need to be in other places or know other places. So if I ever feel like I need a break I can go on a break. I can go to LA and visit friends, y’know, but…I don’t know if I could have what I have here anywhere else. That’s definitely what keeps me here.”

Try The Pie play the San Jose Rock Shop on March 6 at 6:30pm. More info. Local punk icon Tony Molina is also playing. Check out his solo album below:

“I wouldn’t say I’ve been a hardcore punk my whole life,” says Keith Brown, guitarist for Oakland’s border-crossing, blog-darling band, Trails and Ways. Before forming Trails and Ways with three other UC Berkeley alums, he had an appreciation for punk—an admission some might not expect from a member of a band now renowned for its expansively chill, sun-and-surf-and-distant-squawk-of-seagulls vibe. Nonetheless, Brown sees a clear connection between the “direct structure” of early punk and his group’s “visceral hooks.”

Influenced equally by Berkeley’s tradition of social involvement and the patient rhythm of South America, Trails and Ways got their start in the East Bay in 2010, after Brown, bassist Emma Oppen, guitarist Hannah Van Loon and drummer Ian Quirk all graduated from Cal.

Every member of the band had done some traveling by then, and all had paid close attention to the arrangements, song structures and vibes of the varied musical traditions they encountered along the way. Upon their return, they put it all together to become Trails and Ways, a hazy, unhurried, and at times harrowing tribute to tunes from across the globe. They cut a few wispy, shimmering singles, which eventually hit the blogosphere and picked up steam, making them one of the most blogged-about bands of the early 2010s. The singles turned to a collection of up-to-the-minute pop covers (they’re famous for their chilled-out reworking of M83’s “Midnight City”) and debut EP in 2013, and soon—very soon, Brown promises—there will be a full-length record.

On “Mtn Tune” highlife guitars dance around a shimmying Latin rhythm and a fuzzy, syncopated bass line which sounds like it might have been stolen from a Diplo dancehall anthem.

The video for “Tereza” opens with shots of palm-studded beaches and wildly colored marine life swimming through bright blue tropical waters, before transitioning to dusty, dry deserts and bright white icebergs.

It’s hard to get through any interview, article or blog post about Trails and Ways without seeing a reference to traditional Brazilian music—the band themselves cite Brazil as a major influence—but they also carry with them a sharp sense of pop.

“In addition to a lot of Brazilian music, there’s a lot of ’70s and ’60s music we (draw inspiration from),” Brown says. “There’s a whole history of pop music we want to weave together into our own thing.”

Even if they don’t come directly from punk music, they have all been steeped in punk culture. Every member of the band lived in a co-op house in Berkeley at one time or another.

“For me it was really formative—(living) in the coop houses,” Brown says. Living in those environs, the band members learned to construct an insular society, and was just as much a lesson as anything they were absorbing on campus.

Living in Berkeley and travelling the world has also informed the band’s political views, which they share with traditional punk movements. “Our conscience and political beliefs show up in the music and that’s something we figure out as we go,” Brown says. “I’m really interested in the social justice side of climate change. I’m personally very alarmed about the state of the climate. No matter what else happens, if we don’t get our act seriously together, 100 years from now…” he trails off.

Even though they’re known for being a worldly band, they have no plans of leaving the Bay Area. “There’s just an amazing community of friends (here),” says Brown. “I can’t imagine trying to live anywhere else.

“What we do is so interdependent on the help of our friends. The feeling I get in a lot of other music scenes—I get the sense there’s very much a, like, don’t give a fuck, don’t care too much attitude,” he says after stopping to think for a moment. “I feel like in a lot of the scenes of the Bay Area, there’s a strong sense of confidence. It’s not bad to show that you care about (your) message, care about your art.”

As confident as Trails and Ways may be with their message, it’s easy for it to fade into the background of a reverb-soaked, hook-heavy track like “Nunca.” And that’s OK, too. “I want our music to be something you feel in your body,” says Brown. “Something that makes you feel more in love, more…” he trails off.

Trails and Ways play Cafe Stritch on Feb. 20 at 8:30pm. More info.