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If you missed Kid Sister's performance not long ago at LIV, here's an opportunity to check her out again in a slightly more relaxed setting. Giant Step always curates quality events, and for Art Basel the label is putting on Chicago's favorite femme fatale electro-rapper at the Delano. She and her fans will celebrate the release -- finally! -- of her proper solo debut album, Ultraviolet. (Wonder if we'll hear any of the shelved tracks that were meant to make it onto the first version of the disc?) In one of a bazillion Basel-week gigs, Miami New Times' 2008 Best Club DJ, Induce, also provides the party soundtrack. The event's also sponsored by Svedka Vodka, in a mission to get to all you "cultural influencers," so RSVP for a liquored-up good time, gratis. 

via oh-wow.com

The real Max Fish

In a departure from his usual soulful house sets, the Philly DJ/producer King Britt gets glitchy and left-field in the Miami installment of Saturn Never Sleeps, a monthly party he cofounded with his fiance, Rucyl Mills. King and Rucyl man the beats on laptops and other sundry gadgets, including, possibly, a Nintendo DS. The free gig is a three-night stand, running Thursday, December 3 through Saturday, December 5. (While you're still on the computer, check the Saturn Never Sleeps blog -- it's full of video clips and informative posts on fun things like digital art and circuit-bending.)

With all the Art Basel hype (only one week away, woooo), you can be forgiven if you forgot our previous announcement about the Miami Music Festival. In its inaugural year, it's a three-day shebang styled after bigger industry conferences like SXSW and CMJ, with simultaneous showcases at a bunch of different venues, and panels and workshops with industry folks. You can also be forgiven if that last sentence makes you really skeptical, considering how other large-scale local music festivals have gone off recently. 

Despite the hordes of electronic dance music artists living and working out of Berlin -- natives and foreign transplants alike -- few embody the spirit and sound of Berlin's contemporary EDM scene as fully as DJ/producer Cassy. Born Catherine Britton in England to a Caribbean father and Austrian mother, Cassy got her start performing as a guest vocalist on Elin's "Music Takes Me Higher" on Sabotage Records in 1999. Soon after she got bit by the techno bug and began honing her skills behind the decks.

By 2003 she made the move to Berlin, where she's staked her reputation as one of the city's most formidable DJs and most forward-thinking producers, with releases on the Cocoon, Minus, Get Physical, and Perlon imprints. Blending elegant atmospheric textures with understated rhythms and a distinctive soulful vocal style, Cassy sounds something like a futuristic minimal techno Sade. Her residencies at the esteemed Berghain and Panorama Bar nightclubs have made her a staple of Berlin's late-night scene, and in 2006 she was invited to mix Panorama Bar's debut club offering. Fast-forward to 2009 and Cassy is once again spearheading a new compilation mix, In the Mix - Simply Devotion, this time for the prestigious Cocoon label, and supported by a North American tour that fortunately for us includes a stop by the Electric Pickle on Saturday. This one's an early bird special starting in the afternoon, so be sure you make it in time for Cassy's set!

Cassy at Electric Pickle, with Will Renuart, Alejandro Sab, Michael Christopher and Basti. Saturday, November 21. 4 p.m.-10:30 p.m. 2826 N. Miami Ave., Miami.  

Check out Crossfade's brief Q&A with Cassy after the jump.

If you thought that the fact he's only 6 phone calls away from everyone in the world made Kevin Bacon cool, prepare to be blown away. He sings. He and brother Michael (can someone start a 7 degrees of Michael Bacon meme, please) have been performing as The Bacon Brothers all of their lives, but professionally since 1995. While the folk country rock duo may not have crossed your radar yet, they're playing at the historic Lyric Theatre (59 SW Flagler Ave.) Sunday at 4 and 7 p.m. Click here to get acquainted with their sound and here to get reacquainted with Kevin dancing in skinny jeans.

Unmitigated cool never goes outta style. Ever. Especially when said cool comes from one of the originators. See then it's something at once insidious and divine, a thing in and of itself, unexplainable, indefinable and blessed beyond belief.

That kinda cool also tends to be highly emulated. And no one was perhaps more emulated throughout the Swingin' '60s than a dame named Ronnie Spector, front chick of The Ronettes. The beehives, the tight skirts, the black slashes of heavy eyeliner, all spoke bad girl in a time when there really wasn't such a thing. And Ronnie's gang set the stage for all the good female trouble to come.

After Ronnie hooked up and marryied Phil Spector back in '63, she and the Ronettes had a run of Top 40 hits which included "Be My Baby" and "Baby, I Love You," as well as a slate of Christmas classics that still get played to this day. But by the end of the decade their star had faded and Phil had pretty much lost his mind.

I'm going to resist the urge to use the name of this weekend's festival in question in some ill-conceived pun or a shoddy play on words, and just power through right into the info you seek. I'm also going to try to ignore that little bit of track music that begins to wrack my head from within at the mere mention of this name--you know the one, that incredibly annoying salsa loop that plays any time E, Bravo, Travel, FLN, Food Network or any other cable network does a show in Miami.

Because let's face it. Caliente Music Festival sounds damned corny. But the lineup is smokin' (...damnit, I couldn't resist). Legendary Colombian salsa group Grupo Niche, the "Pavarotti" of salsa Tito Nieves, one of Santo Domingo's greatest merengue exports Hector Acosta "El Torito," and Jerry Rivera, the man behind hits like "Amores Como el Nuestro" and "Cara de Nio," all under one roof? Dare I say that roof will be on fire? No. No, I don't. And I'm ashamed for even attempting it.

Calliente! Music Festival takes place on Saturday, November 21 at 7:00pm in American Airlines Arena. Tickets run $35--103.