It scooped the best music-video award at last month’s Okanagan Film Festival, not long after taking the “Best Use of Creativity” honours at New Jersey’s No Exit Music Video Festival in January. Now Vancouver’s TV Heart Attack is looking at a trifecta after scoring a Leo nomination for its “Bang Bang Bang” video. “We’re getting a lot of mileage out of a video we made for $500,” frontman Jason Corbett told the Straight.

It took a little longer than expected, but the Great Outdoors is here to remind you that spring has finally arrived. The local folk-pop collective has just released the first in a series of seasonally inspired EPs entitled, not surprisingly, Spring. Appropriately enough for Vancouverites, who have just endured the coldest April since 1972, according to Environment Canada, Spring was delayed by a few weeks. Frontman Adam Nation told the Straight, “It’s a little bit late.

Eagle-eyed NOFX fans should be on the lookout for various band members when they arrive in Vancouver today (May 8). The San Francisco punk veterans have scheduled a day off in the Rainy City before playing the Commodore on Friday night. “[Guitarist] Eric Melvin is really into hockey,” Melanie Kaye, a rep for the band’s label, Fat Wreck Chords, told the Straight. “He’s got a hockey game lined up on all three Canadian dates, so he’s bringing all his gear.

Staff and friends of the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society were shocked to learn that long-time production manager Lawrence Anthony suffered a brain hemorrhage on April 18. “It happened at Festival House on Granville Island,” the society’s media director, John Orysik, told the Straight.

It’s an unlikely marriage, but “Vancouver’s hardcore bar” meets highbrow in this month’s The Wire magazine. The long-running U.K.–based journal of experimental music turns its attention to Vancouver’s lively avant-noise scene in its Global Ear section, using the Cobalt’s Fake Jazz Wednesdays as its starting point.

Speaking of antisocial—and proudly so—the annual North West Metal Fest is now taking applications to fill its two-day bill. Promoter Jason Crone, of Left Hand Path Tattoo, told the Straight he’s looking for “anything punk. I mean hard, crusty punk, or anything from heavy metal up. It’s gotta be the heaviest of metal, really. Death, grind, thrash—that kind of stuff.”

There were lots of disappointed folks who didn’t make it into the Raconteurs’ sold-out Commodore show last Sunday, but a chance encounter with two of the band members in Gastown worked out for two lucky fans. “We were walking down Cordova, and there was Jack White and [drummer] Patrick Keeler,” Josh Hillrich told the Straight. “My girlfriend was talking to me, and I just blanked out when I saw that iconic face. I totally went fan-boy on his ass.

In further Jack White news, the pasty-faced star was on the guest list for Airbourne’s sold-out Plaza show last Saturday, along with the currently-recording-in-Vancouver AC/DC, and, er, Chad Kroeger. None of them showed up, according to Live Entertainment Director David Hawkes, but the Aussie hairballs’ show wasn’t short on excitement.

Pat’s Pub has played host to some of the more interesting and outré musical acts that have passed through Vancouver recently. Now, after two years of featuring bands like indie heroes Oneida, the avant-prog of Japan’s Ruins, and the soccer-mom guitar virtuoso Marnie Stern, the Downtown Eastside venue has finally replaced its antique PA system. Pat’s Pub booker Steve Chase told the Straight that the upgrade couldn’t come soon enough.

Nobody should be surprised to see the New Pornographers and Destroyer representing Vancouver at this year’s Sasquatch Music Festival, but how about the Choir Practice?

In early February, after a four-year break, beloved Vancouver indie-pop band the Salteens announced plans to release two new songs per month, available for free from the band’s Web site (www.salteens.com/).

It didn’t make the final five, but Red Cat Records co-owner Dave Gowans is perfectly happy with the Main Street store’s performance in a CBC Radio 3 survey to determine the best independent record store in Canada.

It’s that time of year again as the organizers of Music Waste, Vancouver’s premier underground music festival, start to sift through the heaps of bands that want to play the annual event. Set to take place June 5 to 8 at a number of venues, including the Astoria, Pub 340, and Hoko’s, Music Waste will try to fit as many acts onto Vancouver stages as possible. “People have been applying since September,” organizer Cameron Reed told the Straight.

A homegrown benefit concert for expat musician and producer Scott Harding is shaping up to be quite a local talent retrospective. “It’s a cavalcade of stars, like the Apollo in Harlem in the ’60s,” quipped Pointed Sticks vocalist Nick Jones about Hardstock 08, which takes place at the Commodore Ballroom on April 25. “It’s been a groundswell,” he continued, in a call to the Straight. “We were looking to do this with his friends, and he has an awful lot of them.

Like your music wintry, precious, and Icelandic? If so, the highly acclaimed Sigur Rós concert film Heima might be for you. Shot in 15 locations, including deserted fish-processing plants, caves, and “the hoofprint of Odin’s horse” (actually a horseshoe-shaped canyon), Heima follows the postrock band as it tours its homeland of Iceland, performing free and unannounced concerts following the release of its 2005 album Takk… The film makes its Vancouver debut at the Vancity Theatre April 18 to 20, wit