L.A.-based outfit He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister are seeing their album Nobody Dances in This Town get a wide release Jan. 22 via Park the Van. The album features the brother-and-sister vocals of Rob and Rachel Kolar singing over an amalgam of outlaw country, folk-rock and rockabilly that should tickle the fancy of any fan of such genres. At times they sound like Johnny and June; others, Exene and John. To kick it off, the band, which also includes Lauren Brown (tap-dancing drummer), Oliver ‘Oliwa’ Newell (upright bass) and Aaron Robinson (slide guitar), is performing an album-release show at L.A.’s The Troubador Jan. 19 (with Jenny O., Tommy Santee Klaws and Ramshackle). I caught up with the band, whose will take their twangy sound up the West Coast and around the country in the coming months.

PST: Is the first thing people usually ask you about your name, even though it’s usually spelled out right in the press material (much less the band name) that you are indeed brother and sister?

Rob: Yes, Rachel is my brother and I am her soul sista’.

Rachel: They do. I think The White Stripes made journalists question the authenticity of the sibling band.

The Kolars. Photo by Zane Roessell/LA Record

PST: Do you think there’s something particularly special about sibling vocals and the way they mesh?

Yes, Christmas came early and Santa brought me sciatica. (Even though I specifically asked for a pony. With sciatica.)

What is sciatica? It is a set of symptoms including pain that may be caused by general compression or irritation of one of five spinal nerve roots that give rise to each sciatic nerve, or by compression or irritation of the left or right or both sciatic nerves, the source of which typically stems from tiny devils prodding the inside of your bowels after the neighborhood witch has cursed you.

San Francisco songstress Jessica Pratt is blowing up. She's on fire. She's on fire and blowing up. Since her debut album of lush, hand-picked folk melodies dropped a just few months ago demand for Jessica's debut, simply titled JP, has become as difficult to keep up with as the multitude of glowing reviews surfacing all over the interwebs lauding Ms. Pratt's ability to make everyone mistake her bewitching, home-brewed folkways for that of retro private press obscurities. If you think this isn't going to be yet another reverent review let me get right to the point: believe the hype.

Like so many jewels that cannot stay buried in the deep forever, Jessica Pratt has risen above the morass of the San Francisco music scene like a diamond atoll emerging from an ocean of acts drowning in their own in reverb, reciprocity, and relative "esoteric" influences. A momentous feat for any solo musician, let alone any woman, struggling just to tread water in the threadbare, barely-there music industry these days.

That Tim (White Fence) Presley launched his label Birth Records just to put Ms. Pratt's record out speaks to the immediacy of her music. It's a sound that cannot help but conjure familiar feelings upon first listen (for any vinyl junkie anyway), and the comparisons are flying. Presley himself has oft been quoted as saying she brings to mind  "Stevie Nicks singing over David Crosby demos" and others have pointed to the way in which her vocal stylings bait and switch Nicks, Joanna Newsom, and Karen Dalton among many others. While we're at it, I'd like suggest the inclusion of Dolly Parton to pinch hit in this approximation game as the fluttery trails Pratt punctuates her lyrical lines with in songs like "Hollywood" and "Half Twain the Jesse" resemble Dolly's vocal filigree.

I have to admit, however, I find all these comparisons tacky and terribly trapped-in-the-90's buzzbin in the sense that any woman that ever flaunted a decidedly "unique" voice back then was appraised by nineties alterna-trinity: Björk/Tori Amos/P.J. Harvey. For me, it's offensive to struggle to assay the impression of a fresh voice with those we already know and love because burdens the emerging artist with the luster, or shadow, of an others' work. While I cannot deny the correlation of Jessica Pratt's magic to that Newsom or any other would-be contemporary, it should be noted that as far as patently "unique" voices go s. Pratt's is just about as unequivocal as they come.

Americana heroines The Be Good Tanyas will play the Bootleg Bar in Los Angeles August 17, following their gig at Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival on Saturday Aug. 11 with the likes of Metallica, Sigur Ros, The Kills and more.

Amoeba Music is proud to present the show, which also features Leftover Cuties and Willie Watson of Americana string band Old Crow Medicine Show. This is a 21+ event. Tickets are available at Amoeba Hollywood! As is their latest album, A Collection (2000-2012), which gives an overview of the 21st century roots band’s existence. Their three studio albums, Blue Horse, Chinatown and Hello Love, are available as well.

The Be Good Tanyas, consisting of Frazey Ford (guitar, vocals), Samantha Parton (guitar, mandolin, banjo, vocals) and Trish Klein (guitar, banjo, vocals), formed in the late 1990s after meeting at tree-planting camps in British Columbia — yes, apparently these exist in Canada, which is clearly a more thoughtful place. The band also once included the Tom Waits-feted folk singer Jolie Holland. The band is known for its exquisite harmonies, renditions of traditional songs such as “Oh! Susannah” and particularly a rousing take on “The Lakes of Pontchartrain,” as well as original songs faithful to traditional roots music. Ford’s sweetly warbling voice also has been featured on her solo ablum Obadiah, released in 2010. You may have heard her haunting “Firecracker” now and then on KCRW, where she also recently performed.