It's the music fest that all the hip kids and true indie and indie-ish music fans have been waiting all year for, and it's finally here. The two-day long Treasure Island Music Festival kicks off on Saturday, and the line-up is pretty swell -- with the likes of Passion Pit, The Streets, Girl Talk, Brazilian Girls and MGMT on Saturday; and Grizzly Bear, Beirut, The Decemberists, The Walkmen, Yo La Tengo, and The Flaming Lips on Sunday. ALSO, the 12-2pm slots both days are filled with fun local acts like Murs, The Limousines, Crown City Rockers, Sleepy Sun, and Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, so show up early and represent.

The best part about this festival, in our eyes, is its size. Unlike at your Coachellas, and your Outside Lands, and your Hardly Strictly Bluegrasses, there's no having to choose between two acts you love or run around between stages. The Treasure Island stages are a mere few hundred feet apart, and the acts don't overlap. All you do is shift your attention left and right, and the laziest and most stoned can choose never to move their blankets at all and just camp out in between the two stages. Sure, the beer's still expensive and it's a bit of schlep to get out to the island, but there's a reason so many great acts have signed on this year -- it's a special little experience. (Tickets still available.)

A couple weeks back we filled in the Friday Drinks column with a post about Cline Cellars, and today we're back with the launch of a new column about local wineries which we're going to call Wednesday Wine Tasting until we come up with something better.

We couldn't help but notice the focus on food and wine at this past weekend's Outside Lands fest, which we associated with the Gen X demo of many of the bands, but also it's kind of what makes the two-year-old event so very San Francisco. (SF Weekly's SF Foodie blog has already pointed this out.) The Winehaven tent, organized and hosted by Vintage Berkeley, included food vendors like Hog Island Oyster Co., Namu and Andalu, and therefore was was base camp for the foodie and wine-o set in between music sets.

We signed ourselves up for a "barrel tasting" on Sunday, in between Bettye LaVette and Matt & Kim, which consisted of a half hour sitting inside an enormous wooden barrel and tasting wines along with one of the winemakers in attendance. Our winery choice, Preston of Dry Creek, turned out to be one of the better choices we made all weekend.

As many of you probably know, the weather took a turn for the San Franciscan on Sunday and Golden Gate Park remained socked in all day. But that did not deter fans from coming out to Outside Lands to see their beloved M.I.A. (who made a single shout-out to the Beasties and sang a two-song cover medley, and also had two slightly creepy twin redhead backup dancers), Modest Mouse and of course, Tenacious D. Whatever you may say about them not being real musicians, they certainly are entertainers, and from the flat screen TVs in the Winehaven wine tent their set sure did look fun. Band of Horses' late set in Lindley Meadow was mesmerizing and mellow, and Calexico also did a bang-up job with six or seven horns on stage to boot. But the best performance of the day, if we had to choose, came from recently re-issued soul singer Bettye LaVette, who sang a doozy of a number called "Let Me Down Easy" and also covered Sam Cooke's "Change is Gonna Come," which she sang at President Obama's inauguration. See some pics here, also including Slug of Atmosphere fame, the hippie-hunky Avett Brothers, the "brothers" Gene and Dean Ween who constitute Ween, and those joyful and boisterous kids from Brooklyn, Matt & Kim.

See pics from Day 1 here and Day 2 here and a few extras on photographer and music editor Moses Namkung's Flickr stream.

The second day of Outside Lands on Saturday was equally as hot (temperature-wise) as the first, and the crowd was estimated at near the festival's capacity of 60,000 -- and it was all probably thanks to Dave Matthews Band and The Black Eyed Peas (and not, as we might have hoped, TV on the Radio, who were nonetheless swell). Other highlights were the Street Sweeper Social Club (featuring Boots Riley of The Coup and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine), Deerhunter, Bat for Lashes, the ever emotive Conor Oberst, and we got to hand it to Jason Mraz for keeping it breezy with a set of surf music -- not our thing, but the girls seem to like it. Here are some pics by SFist music editor Moses Namkung, and a gallery of Day 3 is here.

It was hotter than anyone could have dreamed possible for August in SF yesterday, and the sun stayed out much of the day for the opening of the Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park yesterday. Many fans of all ages showed up, and judging from the crowd on the Polo Field around 8 p.m., Pearl Jam is still huge! Who knew. Here we bring you some pics from the scene, including Akron/Family, Los Campesinos! (who were sort of like The Psychedelic Furs meets Le Tigre), Silversun Pickups, Blind Pilot, The National (who were phenomenal), Thievery Corporation, and of course, the now white-haired but still rocking Tom Jones. Apologies for all ye Eddie Vedder fans -- there were special approvals required to photograph His Highness, and we were not among the chosen.

Today's lineup includes The Mars Volta and TV on the Radio, as well as Jason Mraz and Dave Matthews for all you softer souls. See our recs for Saturday and Sunday here, watch videos from yesterday and live coverage today on YouTube, and on Sunday you can follow @johnhughesdead on Twitter for live updates from "the Tripping Fields."

This track off of Thievery Corporation's lastest album features jazz guitarist Chuck Brown, a.k.a. The Godfather of Go-Go. Check out TC, maybe with Chuck in tow, at Outside Lands tomorrow night, simultaneous with Pearl Jam's set.

The weather for Outside Lands this weekend is looking downright grand, so for those of you with tickets and those still on the fence, SFist brings you this roundup of highlights.

It's been dubbed "quite possibly the most Gen X music fest ever created" (hat tip John Hughes Is Dead), and certainly with headliners Pearl Jam (who have a new album out, don't hate) and Dave Matthews Band (feel free to hate, but we know they're a guilty pleasure for some of you) the crowd is bound to skew more to the 30- to 45-year-old end of things. Not to mention the Winehaven tasting tent -- we'll say no more. Below, our highly subjective picks for music acts not to miss. (Full schedule here, iPhone app here.)

FRIDAY
1:45 p.m. - Akron/Family
If you dig that 70s guitar-and-harmony thing a la Fleet Foxes', you should check out these guys.

2:30 p.m. - Los Campesinos!
Don't be fooled by the name -- these boys hail from Cardiff, Wales and their sound is raw, playful and punky. If it's not your thing you can pop over to Loop Station! at 2:45.

4:10 p.m. - Blind Pilot
They're from Portland, super folky with great lyrics.

Oakland's own Loop Station! comprises the classically trained duo of Sam Bass and Robin Coomer, and their unique mix of cello and raw, lyrical emotion has earned them a gaggle of Bay Area fans. They perform live, each with a foot-pedal-controlled loop station tool that they use to layer cello and voice tracks over one another. They'll be playing two sets this weekend at Outside Lands, one early on Friday and one on Saturday. Here's a video of them performing "The Last Time I Saw You" at DNA back in '06.

Good news, music-loving hermits. YouTube announced today that they will live stream this weekend's Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival. The live broadcast can be found over at youtube.com/outsidelands beginning Friday, August 28 until Sunday, August 30. The festival coverage will include such notables as that Dave Matthews guy, Jason Mraz, Thievery Corporation, The Dead Weather, Silversun Pickups, Raphael Saadiq, Tenacious D, Cage the Elephant, Atmosphere, and M.I.A. (who should prove most interesting since she doesn't want to be there in the first place.) Also, there's an Outside Lands app available for those of you with iPhones.

Well, this is, as the gays say, just fabulous. The glorious M.I.A. took to Twitter on Saturday to (rightfully) bitch about having to open for Tenacious D, that funny-/fat-man band your younger brother likes, who replaced the ailing Beastie Boys at Outside Lands Festival.

MIA's gold nuggets of wisdom about having to open for Jack Black are as follows:

@_M_I_A_: "P.S I ORIGINALLY BOOKED ON SHOWS COZ BEASTIES WERE HEADLINERS , BUT NOW THEY AINT DOING IT AND I JUS WANNA SAY , WE HAVE TO GO HARD!!!"

@_M_I_A_: "CANT BELIEVE THEY REPLACED BEASTIES WITH TENACIOUS D ??????????????????????AND IF I PULL OUT THEY SUE! SO REALLY? TENACIOUS D AFTER ME ?"

@_M_I_A_: "SO ME AND JACK BLACK ARE BACK TO BACK, BEASTIES GET WELL SOON!"

ALL CAPS rage aside, she has a point. According to Spinner, M.I.A. "originally agreed to the show because the Beastie Boys were headliners and that now she'll just have to 'go hard.'" (We don't know what "go hard" means, but it doesn't sound good.) She ends her online rant by pounding on the keyboard, "YOUR ALL WELCOME ON STAGE FROM THE GET GO, FUCK IT! IM TAKIN BIRD FLU OUT OF THE SET ! JUS TO MAKE A POINT!"

You heard her, folks. Rush the stage on Sunday, or feel her fury unleashed.