American singer-songwriter Aimee Mann will be making an appearance in Toronto this week. She’s about to embark on a tour in support of her new album, @#%&*! Smilers (out June 3), which will see her back in Toronto for a concert on August 28, but you can catch a sneak preview instore at Sonic Boom (512 Bloor Street West) this Friday, May 9 at 6:30 p.m. Mann is possibly best known for her musical......

Nominations are in for CBC Radio 3's #1 Independent Record Store in Canada. Of the 47 stores repping St. John's to Victoria, Toronto holds a tidy seven spots. Best city odds of the competition. Drumroll: Penguin Music, Criminal Records, Monster Records, Slinky Music, Rotate This, Sonic Boom, and Soundscapes. Sounds about right. First round voting kicks off today and goes until next Wednesday, when the list is whittled to 20, and so forth for......

Hot on the heels of a sweet little in-store at Sonic Boom, Brooklyn's Nada Surf have further endeared themselves to Torontoist (and allowed us to make yet another obvious "Popular" joke) by so obviously featuring our wonderful city in their new video for "I Like What You Say" (via Chromewaves) from their upcoming full-length, Lucky. How weird would it be if the band actually played a show at Filmore's? Only a sad animated cardboard......

Sure, they penned the obviously raddest one-hit-wonder of 1996, but since that fateful year, full of cheerleaders and homoerotic football players, Nada Surf have continued to rage against the dying of that hit-single light. They may have fallen off MTV's radar, but so have most things north of Christina Aguilera's baby-bump. Since leaving Elektra in 1998, the band have built a quiet following of appreciative indie rockers around the world, unconcerned with attaining the......

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! Newsflash: Rave culture is still alive and well in 2007. This always comes as a surprise to some of us at Torontoist. Wasn't raving like soooo 1992..? Perhaps we shouldn't have been so hasty selling off those old Underworld......

I first heard about Mancunian singer-songwriter Jim Noir last April, while traveling through London. By the time I returned home, his debut album, Tower of Love, seemed to be getting attention in Toronto too, including a large display at Sonic Boom. But Jim Noir himself was not so lucky crossing the ocean. When Sean Lennon took the stage at the Opera House last week, he welcomed Noir and his band, saying he was glad they......

Compared to the past few weeks, this one's a bit quieter in the live music world, but there are still some decent shows to check out. Of note, Beck brings his two turntables and a mic to the Ricoh Coliseum tonight (too bad about the location), you can get Comfortably Numb (in a few ways, we're sure) at the Opera House or check out the moustachiod Killers at the Kool Haus on Friday, and......

It’s weird to think of used CD stores belonging to another era, but apparently it’s true. In just a short time, stores like Sonic Boom and Second Spin have added vinyl to their selection, while others are going out of business. One of these is Flash and Crash- its selection is/was second to none and never outrageously priced. (Note to other used record stores: you just can’t price a used cd at $19.99 and......

In this episode, we find our hero getting his used CD's turfed at Sonic Boom, the "we'll take anything" new and used CD shop. Illustrated by "target="new">Alice; embarrassing CD rejection courtesy of Josh and the Sonic Boom guy.......

Zoinks is right: There's a new music store west of Christie! Torontoist has yet to check out Zoinkz, but hopes that the presence of a new CD shop on Bloor can disrupt the axis of low-balling around the CD Replay-Sonic Boom corridor. One would think there'd be a good selection of Ethiopian/African music in this area. If anyone's got a beat on this place, please holler.......

Counting down the top used record stores in Toronto.... 3. Sonic Boom (512 Bloor St W) Sonic Boom takes the cake for the largest used record store around downtown. But with great size comes great...patronage. That is to say, everything's been picked-over. Good luck finding anything Pitchfork-approved or even remotely hip - it's either not there or upwards of $20 new. Even old Whiskeytown records (is that hip?) break the $20-mark with tax. Sonic Boom......