It’s rare that a place like MZ that hears literally hundreds of new songs by hundreds of new artists every month, encounters something this good, that it hadn’t known about before. But it’s really that good. Humbodlt Lagoon, for those of you too fickle, ADD or otherwise, to listen, is pulsing, breathing, stream of consciousness, mind-bending, intellectual, visceral and totally rocks.

Tags: Artist of the Month, best new indie artist, Chi-Town, chicago, Deftones, Fugazi, His Name Is Alive, Humboldt Lagoon, Jesus Lizard, LA music blog, Mercury Rev, Obama, Pavement, Phleg Camp, Shudder To Think, Soundgarden, Sparklehorse, Tool, Tricky

Blue Rabbit out of San Francisco comes at you like an urgent whisper, channeling early 90’s wombadelics like Lush and Cocteau Twins, the rumble and earthiness of Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits and the soft-compressed breaks of the Bristol Trip Hop in a way that feels as fresh as the 2009 calender you just thumb-tacked to your wall.

Selected from hundreds of submissions, we asked band leader Heather Anderson to fill us in. Here’s what we discovered down the rabbit hole…

Tags: Band Leader, Band Mate, best new indie artist, Blue Rabbit, Built for the Sea, Canadian Music Week, Captain Beefheart, CMW, Cocteau Twins, Collaborative Art Project, Concept Art, Craigslist ad, Debut Album, Fleetwood Mac, Heather Anderson, indie artists, No Doubt, Rabbit Hole, Sadie Jones, San Francisco, Storybook, Twosome, Wiretap Music