Even if you don’t recognize the name, you’ve probably heard the Stone Foxes. Their music has been used in multiple TV shows, including Showtime’s Shameless, FX’s Sons of Anarchy and a 2013 Jack Daniels TV campaign that prominently featured their cover of Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee” (a song once covered by The Rolling Stones).

Ahead of the release of their most recent album, the Stone Foxes ran into an increasingly common problem for bands these days.

“Every single person who makes vinyl is backed up like 6 months,” singer and multi-instrumentalist Shannon Koehler says, referring to a global dearth of vinyl pressing factories.

Despite the hold up at the plant, the San Francisco band’s fourth full-length, Twelve Spells, still managed to ship in time for its March 18 U.K. release. When I speak with Koehler, he is just completing the final preparations for shipments and signing records for pre-orders.

Though technically an album, the production of the set of songs on Twelve Spells was unorthodox. Instead of going into the studio to record the whole album in one go, the songs were recorded at different times. Even more unorthodox is the fact that the composition of the band itself changed in the process. In this sense it is a document: capturing a band in flux, and highlighting the changes the band has gone through since being featured on national television.

“It was this chronicle of how new guys got into the band,” Koehler says, describing the album’s development, and the gradual accumulation of new members.

A propos of the process, the band decided to release each of the songs individually, putting a new one online once a month for a year.

“At the end we thought, well, this is an unconventionally put-together record,” Koehler says. “Should it be put out like a conventional record? We kinda thought it would be cool to give our fans something new every month.”

It’s clear that the whole band thinks of the record as their first step in a new direction. And for the three newest members (guitarist, bassist, and drummer), it literally is.

Since its U.S. release last September, the band has been touring regularly, crisscrossing the states and making their first jaunt across the pond. England is a long distance for the California natives, and they recently followed up the tour with a show that took them almost home, to Fresno—near where the core members of the group grew up, just outside the even more remote Tollhouse, population: 2,000.

The group’s rural upbringing is clearly audible in their sound, which pays homage to all things Americana. And though it might now have rebranded itself around hyperreal techno-capitalism, not that long ago, the sound of San Francisco used to be similar.

“There’s such a rich heritage,” Koehler says, poignantly, on the music of San Francisco. “From the garage guys, down to the punk ’80s scene, to the Dead and Big Brother, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, Canned Heat, Sly Stone, and all that stuff …”

The sounds of San Francisco’s Summer of Love can be heard all over Twelve Spells. Keyboardist Elliott Peltzman channels gone-electric Dylan with tremulous, “Like A Rolling Stone” organ and stabbing metallic Rhodes chords. Lead guitarist Ben Andrews strangles his axe with Hendrix-ian aplomb and occasionally picks up a fiddle along with bassist Brian Bakalian. And when the Foxes are quiet enough, you can almost hear the casters of the speaker cabinets rattling in harmony with the amplifier tubes.

With these elements in place, they have all the touchstones of a classic San Francisco lineup. Though they’re based only an hour away, the Stone Foxes have rarely played in San Jose.

“It’s kind of bizarre,” Koehler says. “It’s like Santa Cruz, you know, they’re both great spots, but for whatever reason we don’t get down there very much.”

For years there was not a single mid-sized venue downtown. But with the recent opening of the Ritz, more national acts—like our neighbors, the Stone Foxes—are finally coming to San Jose.

“We’re excited,” Koehler says. “Its cool to be able to stay close to home on a weekend and just party as hard as we can.”

The Stone Foxes
Apr 1, 8pm, $10-$13
The Ritz, San Jose

Quietly tucked away in downtown Mountain View, the Dana Street Roasting Company puts on wild, high energy shows a couple times a month. One of the defining characteristics of the shows has always been the variety of styles present on any given bill—punk rock, hip hop and folk bands regularly share a same bill on a typical night at the DSRC. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, like on Sunday, October 21, which will be a night filled with nothing but Doom Metal.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be diversity between acts. The lineup includes every different shade of doom metal and ear-drum bleeding heavy-alternative metal there is. Headlining are Qumram Orphics, which features former members Hans Keller. They play eerie, electro-metal druid drones, which are sure to freak everyone out. Also on the bill are Silly Creature, a Santa Cruz instrumental prog-metal, math-rock group; Dark Earth, a San Jose stoner metal band that channel the sounds of early Black Sabbath; and Sewer Thug, a weird one man sludge-metal outfit, who takes inspiration from early Flipper.

Doom Metal night at the Dana Street Roasting Company is on Sunday October 21st at 6:30pm. The show is only $3.

Since 2009, four San Jose women, known at the Like-Me’s, have been at the forefront of modernizing Khmer (Cambodian) music. The fact that only two of them are Cambodian makes the story that much more interesting.

The Like Me’s take folk, rock, soul and classic Khmer music—singing in both English and Khmer—and fuse the genres into one. Their newest song, “Behdong Khmean Kongval,” adds electronic dance-pop to that list.

The key to the Like Me’s success, or at least how they’ve garnered so much exposure in Cambodian communities worldwide, is their videos on Youtube. While always on a shoestring budget, their videos are well-produced thanks to so much donated assistance from friends and admirers in San Jose. One of their previous videos, “Sva Rom Monkiss,” a remake of a classic 1960s Khmer song by by Pan Ron, is basically a period piece set in 1960s Cambodia.

The video for “Behdong Khmean Kongval” opens in a drab office where singer Laura Mam presumably works. She walks in and decides she’s had enough and throws all her papers in the air. She grabs the other members of the Like Me’s and starts to dance. As the music changes, so does the setting. They sing and dance in a low-lit dance club, perform on stage at a large rock venue and do synchronized dance moves in what looks like an 80s hip-hop video. At the end, it’s all just a fantasy in Mam’s head one day before work. Watch the last 30 seconds of the video. The punch line at the end is priceless.