Category Archives: News

January Update

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First off, we’re fortunate enough to be in the running for the Deli Magazine’s Emerging Bay Area Artist of 2011 poll.  We’re currently in 3rd place, and we need your help to win this puppy.  Only takes half a second.  Cast your own vote, get your friends to vote, shout it from the rooftops!  Here’s the link:

http://sf.thedelimagazine.com/snacks

Secondly, here’s a smangin video of us doing the unreleased original ‘Your Own Water’ near the end of our set at the New Parish in December:

We’ve got several shows in the works at the moment, and they’ll all be announced soon once we’ve ironed out all the details. It’s an exciting time for us!

Be healthy, be well, etc.

Maya Goes Solo / Hello 2012

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First off, a big 21-gun salute to Fever Charm, Prima Donna and 1234Go! records for having us on the 6th.  We had gobs of fun. Onwards and upwards.

Maya recently released a sparkling cover of The Ronettes’ 1963 classic “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall in Love?”, and it’s been absolutely tearing shit up. After Cover Me premiered the track, Indie Shuffle picked it up, as did The Wounded Jukebox and Metrojolt. The newly redesigned On My Radar and 1146 Miles got their boogie on, and The Dadada rambled on us.  Quite nice of them all.  In any case, take a listen:

Pretty dreamy, right? Snag a download before we reach our limit on Soundcloud!

Happy new year!  Adventure and Fulfillment to you all in 2012.

Be healthy, be well, etc.

Shows!!!

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Two more shows booked!!

On November 19th we’re playing at the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity in Davis, CA. Doors at 7!! Tickets are $8 $5 in advance, $10 $8 at the door. Facebook event here. November 19th’s right around the corner too! ‘Sgonna be great.

Secondly, we’ll be playing at Oakland’s New Parish Music Hall on December 22nd along with Finish Ticket, The SHE’S and the Tumbleweed Wanderers!! This show is 18+. Buy tickets here. All our friends will be back from college so we’re gonna tear the roof off.

Feel free to contact us on facebook or via email with any questions about the event.

We’ve also just added a handy “shows” tab on the top menu, which serves to list all our upcoming shows and catalogue all our past appearances.

Cheers.

Show Recap / Music Beam Interview

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First off, thanks everyone for coming out to the show on Saturday!! What a fun night. Fantastic audience energy throughout our entire set. We really couldn’t ask for anything more. You guys sold out the theater! We had an amazing time, thank you so much.

Only minor blemish was that the Aurora Theater next door was apparently doing a play about death during our boisterous, energetic rock show, and they kept swaggering over and making us turn down to about half our normal volume. We complied, but then eventually succumbed to temptation and RRRAMPED IT RIGHT BACK UP AGAIN for a big finale and encore. Cheeky. We’re gonna do lots more shows like this (preferably full volume) in the future. If you need entertainment for any sort of party, show, etc, think of us.

Right. Second order of business is that Alex’s interview with Belgian blog The Music Beam is now online! He got a little carried away at times, it’s an interesting read. Take a look at his tangential ranting about pop music, Vampire Weekend and the recording process right here.

We’ve got a lot of different things in the works, including printed EP’s, band T-shirt’s, and possibly a couple more shows. Stay tuned!

Miscellaneous Local Hero Notes

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Evening all.

Lots to report. First off, let’s give a big happy hug to Earmilk for posting on us. While we didn’t make it into their intriguingly-named “Straight From the Teet” section (not totally sure what it is, but I want to be involved), we still did get a nice lil’ post from them on the main part of the blog. Press Box is featured.

This is easily the biggest blog that’s written about us and we couldn’t be more excited. It also got Press Box onto Hypem, so heart away.

A couple smaller blogs have also picked us up recently, including Music That Isn’t Bad, French Blog Another Whiskey for Mister Bukowski and Belgian start-up The Music Beam. We might even have an interview for you later on.

Next item.

Some of you may be familiar with T Mercy, our suave, mysterious fellow Berkeleyite best known as the mastermind behind the illustrious and successful Beautiful Swear Words. If you haven’t checked out BSW, please do so now.

Go on, we’ll wait.

Anyway, T Mercy was kind enough to create a splendid logo for us.

There’s also a black version. Sexy. You can expect to see that on a T-Shirt real soon.

Lastly, make sure to return tomorrow for a BIG, EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT. OHHHH YES.

Be healthy, be well, etc.

Hype Machine Blitz

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Ok y’all, so The Hype Machine is a blog aggregator (not to be confused with the fearsome bog alligator), which takes the most recently posted songs from about 1500 different music blogs and adds them into a database, where people can listen and vote them up. It’s an amazing way to discover new music, and it’s also one of the most powerful tools for generating artist buzz and attracting blog attention. The Guardian named it one of the 100 most essential websites of 2009, CNN’s done’s pieces on it, it’s been called “the future of all media”, etc.

So when The Wounded Jukebox posted on The Gold Coast last month, our song got added into the Hype Machine! This was very exciting for us.

Now we have a task for you. It’s incredibly easy but also hugely important. Here’s what we need you to do…

1) Listen to The Gold Coast and DOWNLOAD for free!
2) Sign in/up for HypeMachine (worth doing anyways, takes 20 seconds)
3) “Heart” The Gold Coast – this is the most important step.

DJ (our publicist) also conveniently created a facebook event detailing it further.

We need as many people to do this as possible to provide an initial boost so that blogs and other listeners will notice us. Nobody listens to a song with 20 hearts on hypem. A song with 200, however, attracts significantly more heat.

Do this and we will love you forever.

We also have several show proposals in the works. We’re peeing-our-pants-excited, and we’ll let you know as soon as we confirm a show.

We Are Now Four

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We’re thrilled to announce that Local Hero has added a member! We are now a quartet. The unflappable heathen, Maya Laner is joining us as a second vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. You may know her by her mysterious folk singer alias, Phyllis Buttlick (check out the Dark Dark Dark cover on her soundcloud. Truly amazing.). She laid the proverbial smack down at the Starry Plough last night with Alex, and yesterday we posted a very rudimentary demo of Alex Turner’s “Stuck On the Puzzle” with her on tha tracks.

Maya plays accordion, ukelele, organ, guitar, and mandolin, and she can sing better than the rest of us combined. I’m so excited I think I’m going to throw up. Stop drinkin that sucka juice.

Be healthy, be well, etc.

Aldgate Pickin’ Up Speed

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Two more blogs have done pieces on us! SF Rebirth wrote a glorious, eloquent review of The Aldgate EP (chalk up another Vampire Weekend comparison) and music aficionados The Wounded Jukebox posted on The Gold Coast. Head over there for a free download. Exciting, no?

We’ve actually also got a show in the works, not to mention t-shirts, physical EPs, a music video and maybe even a CD release party. Oh yeah baby.

Stay tuned.

On an unrelated note, here’s the story of the day. O, how the mighty have fallen.

Be healthy, be well, etc.

The Aldgate – EP by Local Hero!

Momentum?

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Hello all,

Exciting news! Two websites have picked us up. Hallelujah.

First off, local news site Berkeleyside interviewed Alex and wrote a feature on us. I think we look rather dashing. They also bundled in a free download of “The Gold Coast”. Come and get ‘em (or even better, support the band by paying out the nose for it here).

Secondly, check out music haven The Metropolitan Jolt’s somewhat-less-than-glowing (but undeniably well written) review of The Aldgate EP. No such thing as bad press, I suppose.

We’re also barraging all our favorite music blogs with press packets from all angles. Tell your friends!

Be healthy, be well, etc.

THE ALDGATE IS HERE

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THE EAGLE HAS LANDED! After over a year and a half of writing, recording, mixing, mastering, overdubbing and generally fooling around, THE ALDGATE IS FINALLY HERE. OH YES! It’s streaming in its entirety at the bottom of this post, as well as on our soundcloud, myspace, and facebook. In addition, the entire thing is for sale on bandcamp and something new and fancy called vibedeck. It’s $0.99 for a song and $4 for the entire EP.

We’d love to give them away for free, but we’ve shelled out quite a bit of money on making this thing. We just desperately need to break even so we can keep making more music. We really, truly appreciate every single download you guys make.

Today’s an exciting day for us, but this is where the fun really begins. You can look forward to some shows, more recordings, an interview or two, and a whole lot of mildly amusing babble emanating from our twitter. As Kurt Vonnegut once said, “nonsense is strength”. Lots of love to all of you.