For singer-songwriters Paul Kimball and John Blatchford—the voices behind indie-folk group Wax Moon—making music together has always been about capturing the moment. From their tendency to play smaller, more intimate shows to their desire to explore the experiential qualities of acoustic sound, their dedication to the craft of live performance is evident in the way they harmonize with each other and their audience.

“We really built Wax Moon around the idea of harmonies and vocals once we discovered that we have a natural blend between our voices,” explains Kimball, the group’s primary songwriter. “Both our sounds have a timbre together that is pleasing, and we discovered that organically and thought, ‘Wow, that’s a good place to start. Not everybody has that.’”

Indeed, not all musicians have as deep roots in the Bay Area’s indie rock scene as Kimball and Blatchford, whose former involvement with local acts like Careless Hearts and The Mumlers  placed them in the same musical circles. It wasn’t until their individual musical ventures fizzled out that they joined together as a duo, taking on a predominantly acoustic sound from their previous “bar rock” acts. With Kimball falling into the songwriting role and Blatchford focusing on harmonies and melodies, the group recorded its first EP, Ready or Not, last winter and just released a second EP, titled Cool Blue Heat, this month.

“I’d say our new EP is more of a companion than a departure from the last record,” Blatchford says. “We didn’t try to separate the ideas behind the songs; they’ve just been flowing. Instead, we’re trying to capture them as they come.”

Wax Moon is currently gearing up for a house show and record release party in Saratoga, further speaking to their intimate and up-close musical stylings. Playing for a crowd of close friends and fans, Wax Moon will perform songs from their newest release like “Dreams Run Dry,” a somber and poignant number with hints of Americana and folk, and “My Future Crime,” which combines a bluesy guitar rhythm with the soothing confluence of Kimball and Blatchford’s vocals. The band’s preferred performance spaces—house shows, cafes, and even galleries—allow the pair to experiment with sound and feed off of the audience’s vibe.

“In terms of performing, we’re continuing to experiment, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and we may ultimately decide that the concept of a stripped-down live performance feels right for us, or we might expand things and go in a different direction,” Kimball says. “But right now, we are still supporting the idea that we started out with, which is that live performances are meant to be momentary conjurings of what we put down in recording.”

Pushing each other’s creative limits has also been central to Wax Moon’s success. Both bandmates had to expand into roles they previously never played—becoming equal halves of a cohesive sound. For Blatchford, who had never sung lead in a band before, many of the conceptual ideas about performing front and center had to be worked out individually, from choosing certain textures to incorporate into the music to simplifying chord progressions and harmonies.

“Now that I’ve decided what kinds of sounds fit the band, I’m able to focus on them deeply,” he says. “I hope to expand my musicianship and what I’ve already learned further.”

Though they’ve only played together for a little over a year, Blatchford and Kimball’s vision for their sound—and each other’s musicianship—is clear. Their ability to creatively push each other’s musical limits has expanded their audience to include types of people they never connected with before, which feels both exciting and refreshing for a duo that’s only just begun their musical journey together.

“It’s been really nice seeing the way people respond to our music, which is very emotionally open and accessible in a way that a lot of the music I’ve played before hasn’t been,” Kimball says. “I really want to keep pushing that, seeing if we can bring more people into the tent of, not just our own stuff, but of appreciating live music in general. I feel like we can help build an audience, not just for ourselves, but for live music as a whole, because we’re looking at things in a different way.”

Wax Moon
Nov 26, 7pm, $10
Visit Wax Moon’s Facebook page for event info.

YEAR-END LISTS typically hew to the comfy round number 10. And although Top 10 has a ring to it, Silicon Valley’s melting pot of musical talent fused genres, collaborated, innovated and turned out so many great LPs and EPs this year that it became a nearly impossible task to narrow it down to even the Top 15 releases, so we squeezed one more pick for a favorite 16. Here, in no particular order, are some of 2013’s best local releases.

The Bangerz: PRiSM
PriSM, the Bangerz’ second soundtrack LP for the Jabbawockeez Las Vegas stage show, showcases the crew going deeper into some amazing futuristic soundscapes. The crew has always straddled a line between throwback hip-hop and cutting edge electro-jams, but it’s all forward thinking with this release. In a sign of the times—as the line between EDM and hip-hop continues to blur—there’s a healthy dose of dubstep influence on this record, as well.

Rebelskamp: The Kill
Going into a recording studio without any written material doesn’t sound like a winning formula for an album, yet Rebelskamp produced a remarkable LP this year. They’ve gotten so good at improvisation that they don’t sound like they’re inventing the music on the spot. Yet, the spontaneity of such a freeform formula remains intact. These songs go any and everywhere, drifting through funk riffs, psychedelic space jams and crazy free-jazz. A highlight is “The Rebel,” with local rapper Dirtbag Dan freestyling a couple verses.

Philthy Dronez: Wepa Life
Up until recently, Matt Gonzales was known mostly as the go-to guitarist for local bands. (Anya and the Getdown, Raul y Mexia, Chris Reed—to name a few). Now the world gets a taste of his solo project: producing Latin-infused electro-beats under his alter-ego, Philthy Dronez. His debut EP, Wepa Life, was released on Global Bass Experience a few months back. It’s a short EP, about 15 minutes, but it’s bumpin’. It centers on the emerging new-cumbia sound, but also veers into electronic and hip-hop territory, and even some old-school cumbia.

Boboso: Grown Ass Man
There are three things Boboso raps about: food, cats and his love for the female derriere—often within the same song. Yet, he’s not exactly a comedy rapper. He can really rhyme. Plus, his production skills are top-notch: classic West Coast beats with surreal twists. The Beach Boys sample on “That Breathe In, Breathe Out Shit” is a particular highlight. Jeff Rosenstock from Brooklyn punk band Bomb the Music Industry also lays down an impressive verse on “Sartorial Panache.”

Careless Hearts: Alum Rock
Alum Rock isn’t just the latest album by Careless Hearts; it’s the culmination of five years of life-changing events. They started out a laidback Americana group, but since 2008’s Heart’s Delight, they’ve gone through some major lineup changes and played a life-changing show with punk legend, Stooges guitarist James Williamson. It shows in the roots-rock, power-pop songwriting on Alum Rock. The release rocks harder, louder and with more passion than their first two albums.

Antwon: In Dark Denim
In Dark Denim isn’t as accessible as Antwon’s prior work and takes the San Jose rapper in a new direction. His beats are grimier, the samples are darker and the lyrics are dirtier than ever. “Work 4 Me,” with its down-and-dirty hip-shaking beat and raunchy lyrics, sounds like he’s seducing the listener. All the while, Antwon’s fanbase continues to grow, with a successful run at SXSW, an appearance at Treasure Island Music Festival and two national tours during the last year.

The Albert Square: How’s Everybody’s Doings?
Last year, Sim Castro reformed his punk rock outfit the Albert Square. The songwriting is much in the same vein, subtly nuanced ’80s and ’90s post-punk-inspired, but the band’s performances are far more unhinged—a good thing. Their newfound spastic energy complements Castro’s reflective songwriting quite well. However, the strongest song, “(Proud) Parents,” is oddly the most reserved track on the EP.

The Limousines: Hush
It’s been a couple years since synth-pop duo the Limousines released their brilliant debut, Get Sharp. Despite all the views they were getting on YouTube and radio play they received, they had major problems to sort out with their label, but Hush was worth the wait: Its synth beats are dancier, the production is more refined and in place of their signature clever nihilism, Hush offers lyrics that are raw and honest. Hush was made with funds from a Kickstarter campaign that sought $30,000 but ended up raising $75,000.

Dinners: Black Rabbits
If such a thing as a San Jose “supergroup” exists, Dinners might be that band, featuring members from Worker Bee and Doctor Nurse. Dinners go into a different direction than either Worker Bee (moody indie rock) or Doctor Nurse (psychedelic folk) with lo-fi noise-pop and a heavy dose of Guided By Voices influence. At first listen, Black Rabbits sounds like the kind of four-track recording popular with ’90s indie bands, but it’s actually a quite meticulously, thoughtfully crafted album. The cover art is amazing, too.

Rey Resurreccion, M-10, Locsta Villan: First Street Sessions
Some of rapper Rey Resurreccion’s finest works are collaborations. Last year, he worked with the Bangerz to make some killer old school hip-hop tunes. This year, he got together with emcees M-10 and Locsta Villan and created the 1st Street Sessions. Together the trio has produced eight laid-back, dreamy hip-hop songs that should be on urban stations all across the country.

Raul y Mexia: Arriba y Lejos
Brothers Raul y Mexia released a fun, passionate Spanish-language album this year on Nacional Records, the current leaders of cutting-edge Latin music. Arriba y Lejos combines elements of cumbia and other traditional Latin sounds with hip-hop and electronica. The duo, who are sons of Hernán Hernández, bassist of famous Norteño band Los Tigres del Norte, has created something that both pays tribute to classic Latin music, like their father created, and all the newer American music they grew up with here in San Jose.

Sean Blak: #Basslife
Sean Blak books live hip-hop shows, puts on battle-rap events and holds a weekly Tuesday night residency, “the Trap Shop” at Johnny V’s. He’s also a prolific rapper, with a ton of lo-fi, surreal homemade hip-hop records online. His best this year is the LP #Basslife. On it, he takes some of the strangest, most intimate beats and makes them sound like outrageous club bangers.

Slime Girls: Vacation Wasteland
By the time Slime Girls came together, the chiptune scene was already well-established. Yet they’ve still been able to find their own sound within it, taking all the old Nintendo chip Gameboy sounds and mixing them with surf, punk and ska. Their latest EP, Vacation Wasteland, is a seriously fun collection of instrumental chip-rock tunes. It was originally pressed on cassette because they’re that into old technology.

David Brookings: The Maze
The Maze is David Brookings’ sixth full-length album since 2000, yet he’s still working on building his fanbase in the Bay Area. He moved to Northern California from the Memphis by way of Richmond, Virginia, in 2009, and produced his five albums before heading West. The Maze, like its five predecessors, brings together ’60s psychedelic-rock and ’80s New Wave.

Derek See: She Came This Way
The title track to Derek See’s She Came This Way is an amazing psychedelic-pop gem. At first, See, who normally plays guitar in soul group the Bang, recorded it, along with a couple other tunes, just for fun. It was good enough for an indie label to offer to release it, and they even ran out of the first pressing. It’s the kind of song that, had it been written in 1967, would have been a Summer of Love FM hit, no doubt.

Noothgrush: Split LP with Coffins
Back in the ’90s, sludge metal group Noothgrush were a pretty big deal. Along with Sleep and a few other bands, San Jose boasted a strong doom metal scene. Noothgrush just recently reformed, and they also just released a split record with Japanese metal band Coffins. The third track, “Thoth” is particularly special, as it contains spoken clips from the late, great, much beloved KFJC DJ, Cy Thoth, who died earlier this year.

Even Now, four years after the fact, the members of Careless Hearts are still amazed that they played with Stooges’ guitarist James Williamson at the Blank Club.

For Williamson it was a warm-up gig. He dropped out of the music business decades earlier, and needed to prepare himself for touring with Iggy and The Stooges. For Careless Hearts it was an unexpected, life-changing event.

They spent months with Williamson, rehearsing the songs, but also hanging out with him and listening to his stories about Iggy, David Bowie and other icons from the early ’70s.

The experience had a much bigger impact on the band than even they could have expected. They had just broken form, after all, leaving behind their Americana roots to play an entire set of The Stooges’ songs—the blueprint for punk rock—and they did it really well.

“I was rattled. How do I make sense of this? Playing rock is so fun,” says singer/guitarist Paul Kimball. “After we played with James it was hanging right out there in front of me: We need to play more rock. That’s the shit I came up on.”

Now Careless Hearts are releasing their third LP, Alum Rock—their first full-length album since playing with Williamson. They’ll celebrate its release on Friday, Nov. 29 at the Blackbird Annex. This album is completely different than their last, 2008’s Heart’s Delight, which was a country-rock album. Alum Rock has traces of country, but it’s mostly a collection of roots-rock and power-pop songs. Plus the band is heavier, looser and louder than ever before.

Playing with Williamson isn’t the only big change the band experienced since Heart’s Delight. They also lost original guitarist Derek See, who now leads local soul revue, the Bang. See is a skilled genre purist, as is evident in his work with the Bang.

“When he left, we all were looking at each other, like we don’t have to play it a certain way,” Powers says.

It wasn’t quite as simple as just playing the songs differently. They had no idea what they wanted to do or how they should do it, but it felt like a change was in order. So they just started writing and demoing a whole bunch of songs, many of which were scrapped—some reworked several times before getting thrown out.

“I have this work ethic where if I can’t intellectually work out a problem, I better just work on the next song. The ideas will work themselves out. That’s totally what happened,” Kimball says.

Shortly after See quit, they also lost their steel guitar player, Jody Clarke, further distancing them from their original country sound. Their bass player, Brian Michael, took See’s place on the guitar and they recruited Brian Dupras to replace him on bass. In that time, they continued to write more material, trying to discover what this band was now. When they wrote “The Righteous Road,” the ninth song on Alum Rock, it was transformative and eye-opening.

“When I wrote that song, I could see the whole album,” Kimball says. “There’s really no country in it, just an earnestness to it. Sometimes you write a song where it’s exactly what you meant it to be, and it felt like the path forward.”

The song is Replacements-esque in the powerful riffs and in its subtle marriage of roots-rock and punk.

Right from the album’s opening track, “Push the World” it’s obvious this is a different band. The song is a straightforward power-pop rocker, punctuated with a catchy anthemic chorus. In fact, even the lyrics go into newer, more direct territory.

“I try to write as honestly and as clearly as my courage will allow me,” Kimball says. “If I look at the stuff on Heart’s Delight, I think there’s a lot of real stuff, but filtered through fiction. For this record, I allowed myself more times to write things I didn’t understand on this record than I ever have before.”

The new album includes some fictionalized stories, but on “Come Back Home” Kimball shares, from a parental perspective, what he thinks familial love should be and the album closer, “The Last Orchard in Town,” is basically a journal entry. (“I pull my bike through the last open gate/that holds our last century’s hunger at bay/surprised by how much chain link fence keeps away.”)

On several occasions, Kimball discusses the city of San Jose—no surprise given that the album’s title, Alum Rock, shares a name with a local neighborhood. “Bascom Ave” references the well-known San Jose street, but it’s “Push the World” that really delves into the character of San Jose. (“The tenth largest city in the nation/we got a long way to go.”)

“San Jose is a complicated thing, kind of a troubled place, a place with a personality disorder,” Kimball says. “There’s a lot of really great people here doing really cool things. There’s a lot of insecurities and feelings of anxiety and resentment on what it isn’t. And all of those contradictions are fascinating to me. I relate to them. I have all these conflicts in me, too.”

Fri 29
Careless Hearts
Blackbird Annex, San Jose
Fri, 8pm, $5

After a summer schedule full of interesting bookings, Naglee Park Garage will host two more concerts before ending its live music season for the year. Doctor Nurse brings atmospheric indie rock on October 17 and the Golden State Ramblers close the season October 24 with folk, Irish and novelty tunes from the 20s-40s.

The shows are always free at Naglee Park Garage and are held every Wednesday during the extended summer season outside on the patio. The lineup this year included young indie-rock acts (Curious Quail, Orangutang), alt-folk artists (The Wild Reeds, Will Sprott), roots-rock groups (Careless Hearts) and reggae-world beat fusions (Los Hot Boxers, The Champions, inc).

According to owner Chris Esparza, the weekly Wednesday shows were consistently successful. People enjoyed the combination of good live music and outdoor dining. He plans to have live music return in 2013 every Wednesday, most likely beginning in May.

Doctor Nurse play Naglee Park Garage on Wednesday October 17th at 7pm. The Golden State Ramblers play Naglee Park Garage on Wednesday on October 24th. Both shows are free.

San Pedro Square Market and hosts an all-ages show for SVSX with Careless Hearts, Doctor Nurse, and Dirty Pillows.

Careless Hearts
9pm San Pedro Square Market
Careless Hearts began as pure San Jose alt-country. After building up a following in the South Bay and elsewhere since 2005, their career took an unexpected left turn in 2009 when they found themselves backing Iggy & the Stooges guitarist James Williamson at the Blank Club, Williamson’s first performance in 35 years and a warm-up for his return to touring with Iggy Pop. (The Blank Club performance was released as the 2010 album James Williamson and the Careless Hearts.) The event was a turning point in the Careless Hearts’ career; afterward, they released a three-song EP that found their finely crafted roots thunderstruck with Iggy’s (and Williamson’s) fiery “rawk” influence. It remains to be seen what direction the Careless Hearts take next, but with the band’s proven talent and new adventurousness, their next record is sure to be a welcome surprise no matter what.

Doctor Nurse
8pm San Pedro Square Market
Doctor Nurse’s approach to songwriting is similar to that of indie-rock legends Guided by Voices. Both groups pluck the best elements of psychedelic rock, prog-rock, lo-fi indie and power-pop and blend them into an amalgam of gorgeous, offbeat, well written rock & roll.

The similarities stop there; while Guided by Voices churns out partially complete lo-fi gems as quickly as the ideas pop in their heads, Doctor Nurse works slowly and methodically. The band, for instance, spent years working on Calm Seas, Phantom Lights. The album is not only full of intelligent, grandiose psychedelic indie-folk, clearly written by educated music lovers, its production is masterfully nuanced with glistening layers of keyboards, guitars, percussion and vocal harmonies. It is the kind of album worth listening to on headphones to pick out every subtle detail with each listen—or live in concert, where the waves of sound and vibrations overtake you.

Dirty Pillows
7pm, San Pedro Square Market
Formed in 2008 by guitarist/vocalist Alejandro Villanueva (who goes by his nickname “Millhows”) and drummer Jeff Evans, Dirty Pillows plays music that celebrates the pair’s shared influences—Modern Lovers, the Damned, Talking Heads—but also captures the raw, rushing sound of the earliest days of punk.

The South Bay duo’s visibility has been patchy at times, but they’re making a big push right now. Their recent song “Love Happening” sounds like something the Brian Jonestown Massacre might have released. As Evans describes it, “That song is the one that everybody has their own interpretation for.”

Evans and Millhows manage to create psychedelic, pop and garage tones with only two band members. Jeff is not afraid to hit his drum kit, and somehow Millhows makes sense of the army of loop machines and effects in front of him. “I sort of seem to channel this very post-punk, choppy, very angular guitar spirit,” Millhows says of his guitar playing.

A lot has happened to Derek See in the last year. It’s been about that long that since The Bang, the girl-group band he started with his partner Angeline King, broke up.

“There was a lot of turmoil,” he says, in the line-up at the time, with different members pushing for different directions. He and King wanted to eventually re-start the band, but they didn’t want to rush it.

“We took a little bit of time off,” says See. “We thought a lot about how we were going to approach it when we regrouped.”

And indeed, The Bang 2.0, which headlines at the Blank Club Saturday, is quite a bit different than its predecessor. Now, instead of three girl singers up front, there are two—King and new addition Rachel Mae Havens—but the whole band sings, as well. Richard Gutierrez has joined on drums, with Jafar Green holding down the basslines.

Perhaps the biggest change musically, however, is the addition of a co-lead guitarist in Alison Green (of the all-girl Kinks tribute band the Minks). It’s a surprising change, since See’s guitar is synonymous with the sound of the Band, but he says he couldn’t be happier.

“It allows me to play more how I want to. Trying to play horn parts and keyboard parts, it was exhausting,” See admits.