The Girls, featuring Alison Brie. Courtesy. San Francisco’s popular comedy festival, SF Sketchfest, is expanding further into music. Now in its 13th year, the two-week-long festival features 12 “music meets comedy” events. At the top of the bill is the return of Maya Rudolph’s Prince cover duo, Princess, while…

The Girls, featuring Alison Brie. Courtesy. Actress Alison Brie has been busy. The current season of “Community” has already been filmed and is airing now. She’s got a new film opening in a couple of weeks (The Lego Movie), and she’s bringing her harmonizing trio, The Girls, to SF…

The Pacific Mambo Orchestra. Courtesy: Steve Jennings/Recording Academy/Wireimage.com San Francisco — Nearly two dozen local Grammy Award nominees looking forward to this year’s Jan. 26 ceremony received early honors at a gala Tuesday night in The City. Hosted by the San Francisco chapter of the Recording Academy, the party…

Minna Choi (left) and Magik*Magik Orchestra, Courtesy: 7X7. For five years, Magik*Magik Orchestra has played the role of sidekick to artists from San Francisco’s The Dodos to singer-songwriter John Vanderslice to Sting. When We Were Young: Magik*Magik Orchestra with The Dodos, Geographer, Rogue Wave and more 8 p.m., Tuesday,…

Lily Allen performs at The Fox in Oakland on Oct. 8 2014. Roman Gokhman/STAFF. Lily Allen went from being a “buzz” artist to having some widely talked about public issues with alcohol, to “wardrobe malfunctions,” and was even accused of having some racist imagery in a song meant to…

Marina and the Diamonds perform on April 17, 2015 at the Warfield in San Francisco. Roman Gokhman/STAFF. This is the final part in a five-part series. Read how I’m scoring my list and find out about my “special consideration” acts in PART 1, the runners-up in PART 2, 15 through 11…

Franz Ferdinand performs at the Fox Theater in Oakland on April 28, 2014. Roman Gokhman/STAFF. This is the fourth in a five-part series. Read how I’m scoring my list and find out about my “special consideration” acts in PART 1, the runners-up in PART 2, and 15 through 11 in PART…

Bastille performs at then Warfield in San Francisco on April 10, 2014. Photos courtesy: Jon Ching. This is the third in a five-part series. Read how I’m scoring my list and find out about my “special consideration” acts in Part 1, HERE, and the runners-up in Part 2, HERE. 15. Bastille at…

Jimi Goodwin of Doves. Courtesy. Doves may have been inactive since 2009’s “Kingdom of Rust,” but multi-instrumentalist and singer Jimi Goodwin is back at it with his first solo album, “Odludek,” and “Oh! Whiskey” is like chicken soup. Actually, I don’t like chicken soup. Make that tomato soup on…

Jessie Ware performs at The Chapel in San Francisco on Oct. 21, 2014. This is the second in a five-part series. Read how I’m scoring my list and find out about my “special consideration” acts HERE. I call these next three shows the runners-up because I didn’t want to have…