Women That Rock is hosting its first-annual Halloween concert event Tuesday October 30th at beloved NY venue Brooklyn Bazaar, 150. This festival-style evening showcase will feature performances by six amazing femme-fronted artists, including Mrs. Smith, Ruby The Hatchet, Fern Mayo, MONTE, Clever Girls and The Values. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door.

In addition to the incredible artist lineup, guests will enjoy live Halloween tattoos, tarot readings, a Women That Rock Halloween photo booth experience and more spooky surprises! The evening will be MC’ed by popular Brooklyn-based artist Mima Good disguised as a surprise Halloween alter-ego. The event is being sponsored by Austin Eastciders, Fender & Guitar Center.

Women That Rock is a community of music curators and tastemakers dedicated to promoting and supporting the best up-and-coming women and gender-nonconforming artists. In addition to daily artist profiles and regular articles and promotion on their website, Women That Rock hosts 1-3 events a month in New York City, including a special NYC PRIDE event at Coney Island Baby in collaboration with Jess Jouise Dye (lead singer of popular Brooklyn band High Waisted), and a special summer showcase at Brooklyn Bazaar featuring GYMSHORTS, Sharkmuffin, MONTE, Lady Bits & Sister Munch, just to name a few of their previous events.

At the end of last year, Brooklyn’s Fern Mayo released their studio debut, followed last month with EP Hex Signs. The three track release maintains their angular brand of indie pop, labelled by the band as “skronk pop” and “dust punk”. Opener “Pinesol” features off-kilter instrumentation, and a urgent, tense rhythm section, as frontwoman Katie Capri sings about lost love and the numbness that comes with it. On the song “New Ketamine” (streaming) Capri examines and challenges the need to cling on to traditions even when they’re destructive. The tight and anxious guitars and drums on the track seem to reflect the suffocating nature of traditions. Fern Mayo will be playing Shea Stadium on August 10th and Le Poisson Rouge on the 25th. - John Honan

The two song, uber lo-fi debut demo from Katie Capri’s brainchild, Fern Mayo, might have been a blip on the music radar of 2014 (even though the band made our Best of NYC list that year), leaving early lovers desperately in need of more. The October release of the (now) trio’s Happy Forever EP (streaming below), further honed a craft of raw emotionality and glum combined with surfy melodic grooves, while exploring sudden rhythmic changes and fuzzy chord rage. The addition of bassist Nicholas Cummins’ moody backing, and Charlie Bueno’s raw but eclectic drumming contribute to a sound that's now more full and mature. The seven song EP (plenty of bang for your buck here) rips through the human psyche of want and loss, hammered home in Capri’s harrowing wails, “we’re all just trying to be happy here,” on the track, “Chomping at the Bit.” Their recordings place all focus on the feelings derived from instruments and voice, though one can only imagine the increased intensity of a live performance - and they've been doing a lot of that this year, as recently noted by OhMyRockness. You can see Fern Mayo at Silent Barn on January 14th. –JP Basileo

Although being human is a wonderful thing (at least most days), unfortunately it's a condition that implies imperfection - so hopefully you'll keep this in mind while reading the following post...

When tallying up the votes of the jurors, we unfortunately overlooked two of them. This led to six bands being excluded from the best of NYC readers poll. That sucks, we know, and we hope bands and jurors will accept our sincerest apology. Honest to God, running twelve of these polls is something we won't wish to our worst enemy, so many details, so many potential pitfalls. Anyway, to make up for our mistake not only we added the bands back in the Best of NYC 2014 list, but we'll post their streaming music right here, and we'll give them the opportunity to get their fans involved in our upcoming Artist of the Month Poll, whose results will be taken into account for the Best of NYC chart.

Needless to say, these artists will be featured in the Best of NYC issue in the spring.

Big Huge (Garage Pop)

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Black Diamondz - (Alt Soul)

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Feral Foster (Folk+Blues)

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Fern Mayo - (lo-fi)

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Flagland (Slacker Rock)

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Michael Daves (Folk)