Hope you had a great holiday weekend, if you celebrated Easter or Passover or just being alive. For my Chicago people, I want to spend a couple minutes talking about some upcoming shows that are worth your time and hard-earned money to check out. First up? These United States. They’ll be at Metro this upcoming Friday, the 13th. They’re opening for Trampled By Turtles, who by the way, are also pretty good. The show starts at 8pm and tickets are $20. Download a song from These United States below, and buy tickets to the show here.

Secondly, we have Said the Whale. Their album Little Mountain came out last month and is quite the indie pop delight. You can stream the whole thing at their website and download a sample mp3 of the song “Heavy Ceiling” here. They’ll be headlining a show at Double Door on April 18th with a fully packed bill that includes Audiences, Otter Petter, Bambi Raptor, and Chains of Love. Tickets are only $7 if you buy them in advance, which ultimately comes out to about to just over a dollar a band. You can buy tickets to that show here.

As for today’s week-starting Pick Your Poison, I’ll recommend tracks from Catcall, Cookies (with Colin Stetson), Dive covering a Kurt Cobain demo, The Great American Canyon Band, Led Er Est, Six60, The Wedding Present and Wintersleep. I also recommend the These United States track, if you didn’t understand that implication when I was talking about their show at Metro a minute ago. Oh, and in the Soundcloud section you can stream some great songs from Alpine and introduce yourself to upcoming Pitchfork Music Festival artist Outer Minds.

Artifice – Dreams (Fleetwood Mac cover)

Blue Foundation – Lost (Sun Glitters Remix)

Brass Bed with Allison Bohl – One (Harry Nilsson cover)

Catcall – Paralysed

Cookies – Crybaby (ft. Colin Stetson)

Dive – Bambi Slaughter (Kurt Cobain Demo)

The Eastern Sea – A Lie

The Great American Canyon Band – Burn

Iman Carol Fears – Manic

Josephine Foster & The Victor Herrero Band – Sangre Colorada

Led Er Est – Kaiyo Maru

Mickey Hart – Slow Joe Rain

Notes Floats – Automatic Friends

Six60 – Forever

Star Slinger – Bad Bitches (ft. Stunnaman and Lil B)

These United States – Dead & Gone

The Wedding Present – You’re Dead

Wintersleep – Resuscitate

SOUNDCLOUD

Alpine – Icypoles

Charles Hammond Jr. – (Re)Introduction

Eamon McGrath – Instrument of My Release

Outer Minds – Gimmie A Reason