Ultra Q, Courtesy: Andrew Diaz. Some bands can get by on streaming royalties for a while in the event of a catastrophic pandemic, but Oakland’s Ultra Q is not a “streaming band,” frontman and bandleader Jakob Armstrong said. Brothers Enzo and Chris Malaspina, Kevin Judd and Armstrong, the youngest son…

  Not many bands would pass up multiple opportunities to open for Green Day, but Oakland’s SWMRS had a reason: nepotism. Because the pop-punk band’s drummer, Joey Armstrong, is the son of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, SWMRS had felt that others were judging them as getting a hand…

Every week there’s a plethora of new music at our fingertips. Artists on platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp are plentiful, and the radio offers a steady deluge of new singles, but who has time to sort through all that? RIFF does! We’ve pooled our resources to find some of…