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Six Area Music Fests Make Announcements and Azealia Banks Steps To Erykah Badu.

Stop us if you've heard this one before, but festival announcement season is, like, way in full swing.

Of course, cliches like this one tend to become this way because there's some level of truth that lies at their heart — and, this week, with no fewer than six festivals making announcements of varying degrees of importance, that's certainly the case.

For instance? Just this morning, Spune announced that the Fort Worth edition of its Untapped series will be returning to Panther Island Pavilion on May 5, with a lineup consisting of De La Soul, Big Data, The Lone Bellow, The Sword, Ariel Pink, Knox Hamilton, Greylag, Telegraph Canyon and Doug Burr. As per usual, 250 beers from over 70 breweries will be available for sampling, too. Pre-sale tickets are currently on sale here through next Monday, February 23, with the general public on-sale starting February 24.

Meanwhile, as Spune did with Untapped a few years back, Third String Festivals will start throwing versions of its mall-punk heavy South By So What?! festival to markets outside of the area, starting with next year's ninth annual offering, which will subsequently rebrand itself as the So What?! Music Festival. According to a press release, Florida, California and the Midwest are likely candidates for future incarnations of the fest.

“When analyzing our ticket sales data over the past five years, we've seen an increasing amount of traffic coming from outside of Texas as well as outside of the United States,” says Third String founder Mike Ziemer. “Our festival has become a destination event and the time feels right to bring it to new markets.”

Third String also announced that its other popular festival, Unsilent Night will make its return to Dallas this December 27, when it takes over The Bomb Factory for the first time ever.

Meanwhile, 35 Denton added Flatlanders legend Jimmie Dale Gilmore as one of its headliners. Cooler than the newest names of artists playing that fest, though, are some of its promotional efforts. For the Gilmore announce, for instance, they got Brent Best, Hillary Early, Petra Kelly and Scott Danbom to cover notable Gilmore cut “Another Colorado.” Check that video out below.

That fest also recently launched a new series on its blog called “Bands on Bands,” in which acts performing at this year's fest interview each other. The first column finds Daniel Folmer picking the brain of Daniel Markham. Another reason to check the blog? The fest's organizers say they'll announce 150-plus more bands playing at their fest in the coming days.

On a similar note: Dallas' most interesting festival, Spillover, announced another handful of names playing its fest this March. Those new adds would be Alvvays, Cancer Bats, White Mystery, All Them Witches, Alex G, Elvis Depressedly, Dirty Fences, Bully, Slothrust, Weyes Blood, Makthaverskan, The Velvet Teen, Tweens and Sick Feeling, with still more set to be added in the coming days.

And, finally, the minds behind Rageville Music Festival say this year's second annual offering will be an “all-day music experience.” Lineup info and other details will be announced via a series of free-to-attend, RSVP-required shows, the first of which will go down April 10 at Crown and Harp.

Moving on, several local artists did their damndest to give us some non-festival-related news worth discussing this week. First up was the Toadies, who paired with This American Life to help a New York woman tell her beau of eight years “I love you” for the first time. The resulting video is all kinds of adorable, too.

It's a lot cuter than, say, Azealia Banks trying to start a lame Twitter beef with Erykah Badu late last week. We won't waste much more digital ink on the non-story, other than to point out that you can read play-by-plays of this and Banks' previous highly publicized social media beefs at the link above.

Closer to home, Vice Palace's Arthur Pena will begin “curating” a selection of cassettes that will be available for purchase at The Wild Detectives starting later this month. Says Pena via Facebook: “This curated store will feature tapes from Dallas' most rad bands to national music from this cities [sic] most progressive record labels!” Pena will begin hawking tapes following a February 27 grand opening/listening party that'll be DJed by George Quartz.

In seemingly related news (update: but not, it turns out) the Grammy-winning, Dallas-based producer John Congleton isn't exactly a fan of tapes.

While we tend to agree, it's hard to argue that anybody willing to actually pay for music these days is completely in the wrong.

Speaking of Congleton; The producer worked on a The Undoing of David Wright LP nine years ago that only finally saw the light of day earlier this week. Originally slated for an August 2008 release, the long-defunct Denton trio's sophomore LP was only recently mastered by Michael Briggs and is finally available as a free download via BandCamp. Stream and/or download it below.

More (actual) new Denton music comes by way of The Birds of Night, which is gearing up to release its new self-titled LP on April 21. Produced and mixed by recent Grammy-winner McKenzie Smith at his Redwood Studio, the band's first single, “Dark,” is not only the highest fidelity recording the band's released to date, but it takes their Strokes-leaning tendencies to new heights as well. See if you agree below.

Even harder-hitting is the newest Blue, the Misfit-produced single from Snow tha Product, which includes an amazing, all-Spanish verse from the point of view of her reprimanding mother. It really helps put this one over the top. See what we mean below.

Then there's the new, debut EP from The Rodeo Brothers, which was released on Valentine's Day. Headed up by theElm Street Tattoo artist Chris Erickson and his Dwight Yoakam-esque vocals, the outfit's first effort finds it pulling off some pretty convincing '70s country. Find that one below.

Finally this week, some quick notes: Pop Press International sat down with former Dallasite Daniel Francis Doyle to discuss his recent quote-unquote retirement; the Greater Denton Arts Council will honor Dan's Silverleaf owner Dan Mojica with its 42nd annual Community Arts Recognition Award during a February 27 ceremony; and, lest the fact that there hasn't been a show there since November wasn't indication enough, Queen City Music Hall officially announced its closing late last week.

Rageville cover photo by Kathy Tran. Got a tip for White Noise? Email us!