The shows coming to San Francisco this week give us an excuse to talk about some of our favorite music of 2007.

Perhaps the best album we've heard this year comes from a Texan named Annie Clark, a.k.a. St. Vincent. She's a seasoned touring guitarist for Sufjan and the Polyphonic Spree, but at only 24 years old she just released a debut album that's sophisticated, brave and artistically mature enough to make you think that whatever you were doing when you were 24 was insufficient. St. Vincent has a rich, feminine croon and a penchant for stretching it over rugged and challenging soundscapes. The diversity on this album shows she's got a lot in store for us; we haven't been this excited about a new artist since we first heard Feist 2 1/2 years ago. Expect a long and vibrant musical career from St. Vincent. We've got a pair of tickets for one lucky winner to see her at Cafe Du Nord on Friday night, plus a copy of her outstanding debut album Marry Me. Watch her work her black patent mary janes over a stomp box in the video below, and then enter to win. (Contest ends Friday morning! Winner will be notified via email.)

Click the link below for more show recommendations, videos and concert reviews.

Friday's going to have us running across town from St. Vincent's headlining show at Cafe Du Nord to Rufus Wainwright's performance at the Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium. Lately we've fallen completely in love with his most recent record Release The Stars. He's still got that unmistakable voice and mastery of the cinematic and grandiose ballad, but nine years after his debum album dropped he's still stretching his songwriting into high art. Release The Stars has a firm spot in our Top 10 of '07.

Rufus is getting interactive on this tour, offering one lucky fan the opportunity to get onstage and perform the spoken word part from "Between My Legs" with him. He's not leaving it up to chance though; he's been recruiting possible collaborators via audition videos posted to YouTube. You can view the auditions here (sorry, auditions for the SF show are closed). This guy's got our vote.

Here is where you need to be on Saturday afternoon at 2pm: at Amoeba to see The Swell Season. Have you heard of a little film called Once? Oh, it's only our favorite film of this year and one of our favorite music-related films of all time. The film features Glen Hansard of The Frames and Czech songstress Markéta Irglová (two very talented musicians in 'real life') as a struggling street busker and an inquisitive, aspiring singer, respectively. Not to give anything away, but they do make beautiful music together in a simple and very special way. Music and musicians are generally parodied or misrepresented in cinema, and this is the most real portrayal we've seen on-screen, perhaps because Hansard and Irglová did make an album together outside of the movie. Hear their harmonies and melodies for free when they perform songs from Once together as The Swell Season at Amoeba on Saturday afternoon, then see the full show later that night at Noe Valley Ministry.

Also on Saturday night, KALX presents that Von Iva CD release party for Our Own Island that we told you about last week, along with Sugar and Gold at 12 Galaxies. Wear spandex, it's easier to dance in. Another Irish singer songwriter, Fionn Regan, performs at Cafe Du Nord. He produced his debut album The End of History himself and landed it on the Mercury Short List.

Watch the video for Fionn Regan's "Be Good Or Be Gone":

And Now For Some Show Reviews
We were so excited to see last night's Hall & Oates show and write up a review for you all, but the woman at the Palace of Fine Arts' will call window said she had no tickets for us. Our hook up for the press tickets, Hall & Oates' publicist, blamed it on the management, saying he received this message last night: "We got f***ed on tix for tonight making seats for press. Just a heads up. Sorry." Now, we estimate that guest list screw-ups happen to about once in every 20 or so shows we see, and our experience in working in the music industry gives us plenty of understanding about the miscommunications and mistakes that can happen. We just wish they didn't happen to us in this particular instance. So, yeah. That's our review of the show. If you were there, tell us about it so we can live vicariously.

We did get into Eisley's show last Thursday at Swedish American Hall. It was a rare chance to see the family outfit perform completely acoustic in an intimate setting. They'd just come off a plugged-in tour with Gomez and The Fray playing enormodomes like the Shoreline and were joking about how playing acoustic guitars is a lot more physically demanding. The quintet (three sisters, a brother and a cousin) from the tiny town of Tyler, Texas, were in good spirits during the show, demonstrating their Southern charm with self-deprecating between-song banter. Read more of our review on our blog artisthenewreligion. Eisley's new album Combinations comes out on August 14th and you can catch them, plugged-in, on tour this fall with Mute Math.