It's easy to dismiss high pitched girl voices. Deep, womanly voices, from jazz and R&B virtuosos Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin to 80's sirens Siouxsie Sioux, Annie Lennox, and Alison Moyet, always get all the glory for the fire that seeps through every soulful note.But artists like Kate Bush, the Cocteau Twins, and Belle & Sebastian's Isobel Campbell have proven that to ignore the ethereal voice is a great loss, that high doesn't mean weak or less textured. April's compilation features soaring vocalists at their best in a wide-ranging mix that runs the gamut from bubble gum to apocalypse.

LA and SF denizens each see their city as the center of the universe, and as far as music goes, each city has always had a lot to brag about. At venues like The Smell and Spaceland in LA, and Bottom of the Hill and The Hemlock in San Francisco, the bands in this month's Mix Tape remind those in their respective cities why it's worth it to pay the rent.

There's a giant poster of Kevin Bacon at my gym, with a thoughtful quote about why he enjoys working out and how much he loves said gym. He's not alone -- he's standing next to his brother Michael Bacon who shares the same piercing blue eyes and apparently, the same gym. That's how I found out that Kevin Bacon is not only an incredibly prolific actor but also an occasionally gigging musician in the band The Bacon Brothers. Which, of course, got me thinking about the Kevin Bacon Game, the oddly addictive trivia game that swept across US high school and college campuses (and depressing cocktail parties) in the late nineties. So this month's Mix Tape traces the ties that bind awesome new artists from one to another, all the way back to...that's right, Mr. Bacon himself. Let's get this party started, shall we?

Some leftover songs from last November's Mix Tape that never saw the light of day. The playful "theme" song to last year's best movie. A lonely killbot's wish for better days. "Hollaback" in Portugese. And a song that sounds like it could spark a new dance craze. Tidying up for 2008, we take care of some unfinished business and look forward to perfect pop in the new year.

December's Mix Tape was meant to be a "Best of" list, and certainly most of the songs are our favorites this year. However, while compiling the mix, we noticed that most also had a somewhat retro sound. From Siouxsie's Shirley Bassey-inspired single "Here Comes That Day" to the soul revival of Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black," it looks like the sixties have returned sonically, with beats slightly tweaked to appeal to modern feet. 2007 might also be the year that everything got really BIG, with the orchestral bombast of Arcade Fire, the ravishing crescendo of Rufus Wainwright's "Between My Legs" and the giant sound of The New Pornographers. Everything old is once again new.
Mix Tape compiled and written by Mark Taylor and Keith Laidlaw.

When billionaire Warren Hellman started the Strictly Bluegrass festival in 2001, he asked his favorite folk and roots artists to perform in Golden Gate Park and invited the public to come watch -- for free. By the third year of the festival, Hellman found the lineup expanding to include some distant musical cousins. He subsequently amended the name of the festival to more accurately represent the sounds heard over the weekend. This month's mix tape celebrates the "hardly" in Hardly Strictly Bluegrass by featuring the rockers, punkers, and popsters that have added some twang to their repertoire over the years and are performing at this year's festival.

Like Alvy Singer's bookshelf in Annie Hall, this month's Mixtape is comprised solely of songs, albums and bands with death in their titles. Well, almost all of them. We couldn't resist throwing in Japanther's "River Phoenix," a baffling but wholly indelible ode to the fallen teen idol.

Seven years ago, hipster kids in a Volkswagen eschewed a house party to drive out under the stars, enjoying life and Nick Drake's "Pink Moon." Since then, ad agencies and Fortune 500 companies have scrambled to attract the youth market with the assurance that their stodgy, old brand actually has its pudgy finger on the pulse of the sonic zeitgeist. Sure, there have been some serious flubs along the way. But, with the help of KCRW deejays and other tastemakers, some companies have managed to get a boost to their bottom line from the off-kilter stylings of anti-establishment rockers. It has even gotten to a point where you stand a better chance of hearing indie rock while watching Desperate Housewives than you do listening to your local alt-rock station. These are just a few of the great songs currently on the corporate radar.

For decades, the phrase 'Australian music' conjured images of Men at Work, AC/DC, INXS, Midnight Oil and Olivia Newton-John. The Vines aside, not much excitement had made its way north from "Down Under" since the '80s. But, at long last, in the past few years, we've seen a surge of interesting new music from the Aussies and their neighbors to the East in New Zealand. Here are some of the bands making waves in the South Pacific -- the first three hailing from New Zealand, the last six from Australia.

As the Beastie Boys once stated so eloquently, "only 24 hours in a day, only twelve notes that a band can play." This should go down in history as the mantra of the music festival-goer. Despite aspirations to run the gamut of the bands at this year's Noise Pop, I was once again reminded that there's only so much time. I only caught half of the bands that I had planned on seeing, but you can hear them all. From cool jazz to hip-hop to a '60s psychedelic ballad, Noise Pop once again succeeded in breaking free of the constraints of its name and producing the eclectic soundtrack of our lives -- for the next month at least. This month's mix begins with five songs by bands I managed to see at the fest and ends with five songs by the ones I missed.

Doesn't everyone try to start out the new year with a brighter, more hopeful outlook? I find this practice a little odd as the day after December 31 is just another day in the long march of time, but as we choose to mark the advancement of time on that very day each year, we also use it as an opportunity to try and regain control over our lives after the long, hectic holiday season. I never make new year's resolutions, but I do find myself vowing to get more done or be more positive or just plain try to be a better person. This month I imagined making a soundtrack for a more joyous, more productive life -- though I have already resumed some of the bad behavior I swore off just a few days ago. Oh well...

This month: a couple of x-mas tunes to help get into the seasonal mood and a preponderance of wintry songs that blow cold and send shivers. From a track off Sufjan Stevens' new x-mas album to a Vince Guaraldi/Peanuts classic -- with a whole lot of indie pop in-between -- this month's Mix Tape tries to capture the sound of the season, falling rain and blowing wind with a few muted sleigh bells far off in the distance.

Inspired by a recent outing to a Sippy Cups concert, this month's mix is a frolic in pop land that features: a cleaned up version of Lady Sovereign's "Love Me or Hate Me;" the rockin "Drinking from the Sky" by the aforementioned Cups; a tune from The Tragic Treasury, songs written by The Gothic Archies inspired by Lemony Snicket's bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events children's books; a Bay Area marching band that evokes thoughts of both Disney elephants on parade and the Las Vegas Grind series; plus new tunes by British post-post-punk band Clinic, Finnish band Kiila and locals Mates of State, The Blank Tapes, Honeycut and Devendra Banhart. Sweet! "It's all in the Mix" like Twix or like Tofifay, "it's (just) too good for kids."

Have you ever felt like your life is a movie and the music coming through your headphones is the soundtrack? October's Mix Tape borrows heavily from various soundtracks or features songs that are just downright cinematic.

September's Mix is a bit of a hodge podge. Alison Levy's blog reviewing the Rhino records release of Children of Nuggets got me thinking about how every generation is influenced by the one that preceded it. If you think about it, you can trace all of the music being made today through various twisty roots that reach back to the earliest decades of the last century -- and probably beyond that as well.

This mix settles into a mid-tempo groove early and pretty much hangs out there for the duration. Starting with bittersweet pop from indie faves Belle & Sebastian and Fiona Apple then "working" in a little local hip hop with Native Guns, we check out San Francisco's tribal hippie flower power purveyors Vetiver and sample some "carriage house rock" with Oakland's The Heavenly States. Our Arts & Culture intern extraordinaire, Kristin Hocevar, who has spent her summer break working at KQ, shares her thoughts on each song.

Welcome to KQED's Mix Tape. This July we thought we'd provide you with a few tunes to take to the beach. Beginning with a little bit of Scooby Doo soul via Gnarls Barkley's monster smash hit, "Crazy" and ending with the crunchy eighties-retro "Glass Ceiling" by Metric, the mix sounds especially great coming out of a transistor radio, on warm sand, wind in hair, seagulls caw-cawing...