When going to a Future Islands show, you can expect three things: Tons of dancing, sweating, and energy. The Baltimore trio fulfilled those requisites when they played to a packed crowd on Friday at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach, CA.

My first experience with M83 was some six years ago in a coffee shop at USC. He was busy pushing buttons, and refusing to stand on ceremony by actually acknowledging his audience. I was a student with a budding musical curiosity and a complete lack of earplugs.

Last night, two months before the release of its second LP, The Lion’s Roar, First Aid Kit played its first sold-out headlining show in Los Angeles, at the famed Troubadour.

Let’s get one thing straight—Slow Club is not twee.

It was nearly midnight when Still Corners took the stage at The Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles. While perhaps cliché to note, it was a fitting hour for the bewitching quartet to perform.

While 21-year-old Lydia Loveless introduces the last song of her set, the title track of her 2010 debut album, The Only Man, she says matter-of-factly, “It’s about shooting your dad in the face.” She’s not kidding; that’s indeed what the song is about.

CMJ 2011 took over various New York City venues in mid-October. Most New Yorkers probably didn’t notice, but it was a big deal to those in the indie music industry. Over the five days we witnessed a mixed bag of sets, with one of the clear standouts being Canadian duo Purity Ring. Other highlights included Zambri, Inc., EMA, and all the bands that played Under the Radar‘s CMJ party (including The Stepkids, Chad Valley, Still Corners, and others).

The action at Thursday night’s show at The Henry Fonda in Los Angeles all led up to one single, near-indisputable truth: Anders Trentemøller is a badass.

While I was only able to attend the last two days of this year’s CMJ Marathon in New York City, it’s fair to say that the east coast event is a very different kind of beast in comparison to the whirlwind of its much bigger brother in Austin’s South by Southwest.