Festival Radness Alert! SF Outside Lands, which will be held at Golden gate park in San Francisco from August 22nd - 24th, has announced their headliners: Radiohead. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Jack Johnson.

You know they’re going to announce some more rad additions; this is a three-day festival so those three will probably just be the tip of the iceberg, but one hell of a tip that is: Tom Petty and Thom Yorke? Do you really need any more?

Well, more couldn’t hurt. Be sure to check back at www.sfoutsidelands.com in the coming weeks for more news.

Do yourself a favor and fast forward to the 3-minute mark. You can thank me later.

Okay, the long-winded title of our daily new band blog (”Synthesis Band You’ve Never Heard of Band of the Day”) may, by definition, rarely allow for hip-hop artists to get up in this piece. But it’s not like that. At Synthesis you will find a wide array of musical styles fighting for their time in the jukebox. Someone stops an Afropop CD to put in some power metal, only to later be replaced with some fey-assed twee pop, followed by outlaw country and a ska compilation. Then Video Matt or DT will put in some pop-punk that makes me want to punch myself in the balls over and over….just how it goes. So we mess with a bit of everything, and today that bit of everything is Michigan artist Yoshi.

Yoshi’s got chops, not only as a vocalist/MC, but as a producer and musician as well. Moreover, his shit is smoove, effortless flow with tracks that are real nodders. If you’re looking for a genre, Yoshi would have to be “conscious hip-hop,” a moniker I kinda hate. The sound’s where it’s at, though. His lyrics definitely benefit from his experience as a slam poet, crafting unique phrases that twist and turn into inventive cadences. He’s got a new album dropping soon, so be sure to check his space, drop him a line and get in the know.

MI and WI hip-hop heads, check out his show dates after the jump:
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Finally a part of the hyphy movement I can feel good about: Scraper Bikes. Way safer to ghost ride. And you don’t even need to get a lease, relish! Wait a couple months and every suburban white emo kid will be rolling one of these, just like every single emo band t-shirt suddenly looks like a Bape hoodie from 2005. Check the cut from Oakland’s Trunk Boiz:

Lab coats aren’t typically synonymous with danger, but that may be beginning to change in Santa Cruz. A biomedical researcher and faculty member from UCSC was recently the victim of home invasion by animal rights activists who objected to her use of animal testing in cancer research. While the faculty member was not herself injured, her husband was struck with an “unknown object” and the event reportedly left her young children “terrified.” The masked bandits, believed to be students, are currently still at large.

The audacity of this activist zeal is partly admirable, but in this case the execution of doctrine must be questioned. Can violating the sanctity of a stranger’s home and inflicting torment upon its inhabitants be justified by the amalgamation of publicity and national notoriety? Regardless of how you might answer it is interesting to note that despite all this commotion the researcher will continue to research, and the activists will continue to “actively” dissent.

Looks like American idol hopeful David Hernandez has gotten himself into a bit of hot water. It turns out the 24-year-old star of terribly soul-less cover songs did a three-year stint as a nude dancer at Dick’s Cabaret in Phoenix, AZ. Dick’s Cabaret… Wonder what their clientèle mainly consists of…

So yeah, Hernandez used to wiggle his Johnson for dollar bills. No report yet on whether or not he gets kicked off the show. You know how America feels about what we teach our children. We would NEVER ALLOW OUR CHILDREN TO IDOLIZE STRIPPERS…

Xtina

Avril

Britney

Never. Though photos of him stripping have yet to surface, VFTW uncovered a few other ‘playful’ photos.