There's no off-season when you're a Wolf Parade fan. Sure, the edgy Québécois combo may be on hiatus for 2009 —after releasing the mighty At Mount Zoomer last year— but the Parade forever marches on. At times like these, its members just busy themselves with their own projects.

Spencer Krug recently completed the soon-to-be-released second Swan Lake LP, Enemy Mine, and rumors abound that a fourth Sunset Rubdown album is already in the can, awaiting release late in the year. Co-WP songsmith Dan Boeckner's been busy, too.

When away from Wolf Parade, Boeckner presides over Handsome Furs, a duo he shares with his wife, Alexei Perry. The lovebirds unveiled their musical marriage —which matches Boeckner's Beck-like vox to brittle drum-machines and shrill guitar— in 2007, with Plague Park, and have now finished up a follow-up. Face Control is due for release on Sub Pop on March 10, and puts in an early claim for one of the creepiest record covers of '09.

Face Control Track List
1. "Legal Tender"
2. "Evangeline"
3. "Talking Hotel Arbat Blues"
4. "(Passport Kontrol)"
5. "All We Want, Baby, Is Everything"
6. "I'm Confused"
7. "(White City)"
8. "Nyet Spasiba"
9. "Officer of Hearts"
10. "(It's Not Me, It's You)"
11. "Thy Will Be Done"
12. "Radio Kaliningrad"

• Listen to "I'm Confused" (via The Fader)

Bon Iver had a pretty magical 2008. Justin Vernon's man-alone-in-his-cabin debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, won near universal critical acclaim, including a spot on my Top 20 Albums of the year list. Now, with 2009 freshly dawned, Vernon is already back with new audio.

Jagjaguwar Records has just put up an MP3 of "Blood Bank," the lead track from his January-20-due EP of the same name. Thus far, the four-song set has been kept a closely-guarded secret, but now the title-track's out of the bag, and we're all free to listen. I recently interviewed Vernon about Bon Iver, although, truth be told, we spent more time talking about basketball than Blood Bank...

• Bon Iver's Bonne Année
• Interview: Land of Talk's Elizabeth Powell

Photo © [Drew Kieser]

Of recent, the slyly-legendary Ian F. Svenonius has been concentrating on things other than being one of the world's great rock'n'roll frontmen. Like hosting a casual internet chat show, or writing possibly the best book ever penned by any member of any band, ever.

Having displayed his renaissance-man credentials for all the world to see, Svenonius —the former frontman of the Nation of Ulysses, Cupid Car Club, the Make-Up, the Scene Creamers, and Weird War— is back with a shiny new project: Chain and the Gang.

Apparently "concerned that the spread of liberty has been detrimental to the world" —citing "fast food, bad architecture, militarism, rampant greed, environmental destruction, imperial conquest, [and] class struggle" as evidence— Svenonius says his band name is a plea for bondage; a catch-all for his new, tongue-in-cheek anti-freedom movement.

Suitably enough, the first Chain and the Gang album is titled Down with Liberty... Up with Chains! And though C&TG essentially finds Svenonius working solo for the first time since his 2001 album as David Candy, he does get help from such K Records luminaries as label founder Calvin Johnson and Blow heroine Khaela Maricich. If this all sounds intriguing, know that K currently has the entire album streaming, in advance of its rumored late-March release.

If you're diggin' the Chain and the Gang jams, be excited by the news that Svenonius will be hitting the road come April, buddying up for a yet-to-be-completely-booked tour with Johnson's mysterious new project, The Hive Dwellers. But that's another story for another day.

Down with Liberty... Up with Chains! Track List
1. "Chain Gang Theme (I See...)"
2. "Cemetery Map"
3. "Trash Talk"
4. "Reparations"
5. "What is a Dollar"
6. "Interview with the Chain Gang"
7. "Deathbed Confession"
8. "Room 19"
9. "(Lookin for a) Cave Girl"
10. "Unpronounceable Name"

The 2009 South by Southwest festival is looming on the horizon, as always, in mid-March. The largest congregation of music-biz glad-handers, exuberant bloggers, and frustrated bands in the world, SXSW will take over Austin from March 18-22, with whole downtown streets shut down for the sole purposes of rock and/or roll.

The festival recently unveiled a 'partial list' of bands due to be performing. This first round is, we should caution, just the very tip of the iceberg, with hundreds upon hundreds more to come to the party between now and then. But, from the initial unveiling, a roughly-sketched-together list of picks thus far would be:

• Akron/Family (pictured): Recent signees to Dead Oceans, Akron/Family forge a forested, freaked-out take on folk-rock, mixing wholesome four-part harmonies and experimental free-jazz excursions with equal aplomb. Currently finishing up their first LP for DO, A/F always bring the hippy-ish business live.
• Buraka Som Sistema: Hailing from rough-and-tumble Amadora, on Lisbon's outskirts, these Portuguese party-starters draw heavily from kuduro, an Angolan dance movement that splintered off of techno. BSS have, notably, collaborated with MIA, and their debut album, Black Diamond is a critique of Angola's foreign trade in oil and diamonds, and the war and suffering it invites.
• Crystal Stilts: The moodiest, dudiest, most Joy-Divisionish New Yorkers since Interpol, Crystal Stilts play music swimming in muddied, studied echo and delay. Last year, these hipsters uncorked a pretty sweet debut disc, Alight of Night, which lead them to being one of 2008's Breakout Acts.
• Micachu: 21-year-old London oddball Mica Levy has yet to settle into a singular musical identity: making Grime tracks, killer pop-songs for Matthew Herbert's Accidental imprint, and staging avant-gardist performances in which she uses glass bottles, vacuum-cleaners, CD racks, and home-made electronic apparatuses as instruments. It almost goes without saying, then, that her live-shows come with a sense of adventure, bound forever for the unexpected.
• Thee Oh Sees: John Dwyer has been in almost as many identity-shifting garage-rock outfits as Billy Childish, but his latest, Thee Oh Sees, may be his best yet (yes, better than the Coachwhips!). Last year the crew released the kookily-titled The Master's Bedroom is Worth Spending the Night in, a set of snappy, ultra-taught rock-songs working with wiry simplicity and pop-like exuberance. And to watch Dwyer on stage is to watch him sweat.

But, whilst that's a good start, stay tuned. I'll have plenty more SXSW highlights and recommendations for you as the conference draws near.