Buzz Rankings: 4/3.

This Week, Madison King Reigned.

Each week, we take a survey of the local music scene and try to determine which acts in town are really putting in work and seeing it pay off. Which bands have the most intriguing shows coming up? Which bands are getting the most press around town? Which bands have accomplished the most notable feats of late? Based off these criteria, our music writers submit a list to be weighted and compiled into a master list revealed each week in this here space. We like to think it's fairly revealing. Check out our previous Buzz Rankings here.

It's been a couple months now since Madison King held a listening party for her then-upcoming sophomore effort Onward & Upward at Twilite Lounge, where she also happens to bartend.

Since then, the disc has made its way to seemingly every critic in town.

In turn, just ahead of tonight's official album release show at Trees, King's record was called “…one of the best records to emerge from North Texas thus far this year.” by the Star-Telegram's Preston Jones. And the effusive praise didn't end there: Dallas Observer writer Kelly Dearmore gushed that King's record boasted “tight melodies that beg to be sung along with.” Dallas Morning News contributor Hunter Hauk, meanwhile, wrote that King's “lived-in voice sounds perfectly natural spouting lines about dysfunctional love.”

Hell, even we weren't immune. Just this morning, we went so far as to say that the album's closing track, “Saved by a Son of a Gun,” is “the most raw and rowdy thing she's put out to date.”

The biggest compliment send Kind's, though, just might have come from Old 97's frontman Rhett Miller, who tweeted yesterday his approval of King while linking to Dearmore's piece:

That's some high praise, to be sure.

It was enough, anyway, to earn King her first-ever trip to the top of our weekly local music power rankings.

Needless to say, King's album release show tonight at Trees — one that'll feature opening turns from Dead Flowers and Dovetail — should be a pretty crowded deal.

But also expecting to play to big crowds this weekend are Eli Young Band and Pat Green, both of which are expected to play in front of some 40,000 people at this weekend's free March Madness Music Festival. The former, we should point out, also performed at one of Conan's locally filmed shows this week.

And also on the small screen — like, computer screen small — this week was Power Trip, which, for whatever reason, appeared on yet another PBS web segment.

Elsewhere: A.Dd+, Tunk, Ghost Image, and Blue, the Misfit each released new worthwhile tracks; The Misteries made its live debut; and Buffalo Black landed a placement in an upcoming Spike Lee joint.

(Also receiving votes this week: Terrence Spectacle, Ronnie Heart, Dead Flowers, The Orbans, Parquet Courts, Eyes, Wings and Many Other Things, The Unlikely Candidates, Brutal Juice, Pinkish Black, Brandon Ford, Cygnus, SymbolycOne, Pleasant Grove, Monster Brown, Tape Masta Steph, The Cush, The House Harkonnen, The Polyphonic Spree, Black Milk, Jessie Frye, VohnBeatz, The Roomsounds, Blood Saints, Yells at Eels, New Fumes, Rania Khoury, Whiskey Folk Ramblers, Matthew and the Arrogant Sea, The Chloes, Hares on the Mountain, The Naptime Shake, Sin Motivo.)