This just in from Mr. Colin Clary: Not one, but two, VT bands made indie music blog PopMatters Best Indie Pop of 2008 Top 10 List! And they are — drum roll, please! — The Smittens and The Capstan Shafts. Weird that this came in as I was working on my own top 10 . . .

Anyway, if I could borrow a phrase, “Yow!” Congrats to both bands.

In other news, Higher Ground just announced that Andrew Bird is coming back to town on April 5. It’s a Christmas miracle!

Dan Bolles is a culture coeditor at Seven Days. He joined the paper in 2007 as its music editor, covering Vermont's robust music, comedy and nightlife scenes for a decade before deciding he was too old to be going to the Monkey House on weeknights to see rock shows for a living. He became assistant arts editor in 2017 and culture coeditor in 2021. Bolles has received numerous local and national awards for his writing on Vermont arts, sports and the occasional celebrity canine murder mystery. He loves...