Proclaiming to be better than both birthday cake and birthday parties, the local duo Birthday Suits blow out the candles with their heavy hitting noise-rock.

Named after a Neutral Milk Hotel song, Communist Daughter is the newest project from the former front-man of Friends Like These, Johnny Solomon.

Local indie rockers One For The Team have done it again. Their third full length release "Ghosts" is a collection of heavy hitting pop anthems.

Brothers Dan and Matt Wilson have been playing together since they were kids. They've both had successful careers in bands like Semisonic, Trip Shakespeare, and Twilight Hours as well as solo work. But they've never shared the stage for a solo show before. They will later this month, when they play a show at the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis.

The Clientele are a London-based British band that originally formed in 1991, under the name The Butterfly Collectors. However, it wasn't until 2003 that their first album, "The Violet Hour" was released which saw great acclaim but little commercial success.

The four-piece that call themselves Field Music began in Sunderland, in northeast England in 2004 and has played with the likes of Maximo Park and the Futureheads.

With many of their songs about "trying to make it" in the music business, Hockey are slowly going to run out of material to write about. Often compared to The Strokes and LCD Soundsystem, the Portland, Oregon new wave pop band have making new fans since they began in 2007.

Free Energy is a Philadelphia-based band, but one with roots in the Minneapolis music scene. A couple of the guys in the band, Scott Wells and Paul Sprangers, were both members of now-defunct local faves Hockey Night.

Five albums into his stunning solo career, Brooklyn-based acoustic artist Clarence Greenwood, known to the public as Citizen Cope, has once again charmed the independent music world with his newest release, "The Rainwater LP."

One of the most explosive forces in the indie rock community in the last few years, Wild Beasts have inspired everything from critical praise to interpretive dance troupe covers. The UK four-piece mix shoegaze traditions with glammy theatrics to tell their stories.