Shit. It's Valentine's Day this Thursday and by the looks of it most of you have already planned your perfect date. Three shows are already completely sold-out: The Kills at Rickshaw Stop, Slightly Stoopid at The Independent and Common at Mezzanine. While there are still several shows you can chance Thursday night, it might be wise to stay home and wait till the weekend to take your crush out. We are. Friday, the local music......

John Vanderslice is someone you can truly count on. Aside from his incredible talent, we're always impressed with his indie rock work ethic. He keeps his studio Tiny Telephone open as an incubator for top quality recordings, he's always good for a genuine smile and a hug when we run into him, and about once every 18 months or so he releases another incredible album through Seattle-based indie Barsuk Records. His latest release Emerald......

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......

Happy New Year everyone! What We Did On Our Christmas Vacation After having our plans to fly to Denver thwarted by a sinister snowstorm, we headed straight to Texas. We spent most of the time in Houston with our family and managed to type out our top 10 albums of '06 while our nephews watched "Pirates of the Carribbean" for the nth time. One night was spent in Austin with one of our favorite people......

When life gives you lemons, you.... *set BART on fire *break someone's cell phone (allegedly) *wait for the Mac DVR *get in a District 6 shouting match with Joe Scarborough *do roids *win our Fake SF contest *read SFist on your Palm *vote for your favorite Gavin + Sofia couple name *pee on a Thomas Kinkade *check out St. Vincent de Paul's Project Runway benefit *yvesdrop *protest the 12 Galaxies! (scroll down to the......

The SFist offices are jazzed about the season finale of Project Runway tonight. Some of that is because this season was pretty lame compared to last, so we're just happy it's coming to a close and we can move on and forget. What we think would liven it all up would be better challenges, like this one: Take a box of donated thrift store clothes and make something beautiful out of them. Oh snap!......

Putting together Cares for more than a year now we've learned about the breadth of "helping" organizations in the bay area - from environmental groups to people helping people (and animals) and everything in between. We've cajoled you to give time and clothes and, our all-time, number-one favorite, cash. And now, we're asking you for something else. If you watch any late night television you may have seen a series of commercials jointly produced......

Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi..... ....Oh, hello! We were just warming up our voice over here. After we posted about local choral group Volti's world premiere of No More To Hide, a choral work in tribute to same-sex marriage, and after its rave review by left-wing choral blogger Civic Center, we thought we'd go check out their full performance last night at St. Francis Lutheran (the church between the Blockbuster and the Burgermeister on Church Street). The show was organized around the theme of love and commitment, and featured not only the world premiere of No More To Hide but also a setting to song of three sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The chorus's voices were in full throttle and they easily ran through a Rita Dove poem and some e.e. cummings as well. Volti specializes in contemporary choral music written by living composers -- wjhich made for a very nice touch when three or four of the composers came up before each piece and explained the effect he or she was trying to achieve with the work. We particularly enjoyed not only Stacey Garrop's entertaining explanation of her rollicking Millay numbers, but also her mother's beaming expression in the audience. Sweet! A sick soprano and a cantata to celebrate Gavin Newsom after the jump. Picture of Volti from their website...

You probably haven't been to a vocal concert since your high school crush object sang that solo from Carousel in the annual choir festival. What relevance does choral music have to my everyday life? you ask. Well, how about a celebration of everyone's equal right to love? San Francisco's Volti, a new-vocal music group (the adjective "new" modifies "vocal music," not the group itself, which has been around for over 25 years), is performing the world premiere of No More To Hide: An American Wedding Cantata, in tribute to last year's same-sex marriages. No More to Hide sets to music a verse from 1 John 4:7 ("Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.") and snippets from Leaves of Grass ("I dream'd in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth.") -- and for you civil rights activists on a budget, will be performed for free at City Hall next Wednesday, November 16, courtesy of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services and the Music@MONS program. (don't worry, folks, there's seats.) If you like to absorb your choral music in a more pastoral setting, Volti will perform No More To Hide, along with several other gay-themed works (more Whitman, and some Edna St. Vincent Millay) at St. Francis Lutheran on Mon. Nov. 21, which was expelled from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America for ordaining gay and lesbian pastors in 1990, and thus was totally free to bless the same-sex weddings from 2004. Tickets available here (and also a Sunday performance in Berkeley). Picture of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, same-sex marriage no. 1...

This is gonna be a busy weekend... Skip the after-work bar and get some activist cred by heading down to the Powell Street cable car turnaround to rally in support of Cindy Sheehan. Or celebrate the twelfth anniversary of the zinesters at the Infoshop in Berkeley after Critical Mass. And the late-night progressive can get funky at HipHop4Change at Studio Z. SFist Jake and friends Izum do their World Beat thang tomorrow afternoon at......