Dig This: Rivers, Children of Pop, Guilt Party, Bloombox & Cosmic Sound

The current volume of local music is staggering, so Rocks Off wants to help you (and ourselves) keep up.

​Dig This is back with round four of our perpetual local band profiling, reporting back on all the internet trolling we've done and the acts we've discovered in the process. Here's our latest collection, a few of whom you can find playing shows this weekend, and one other who just scored a record deal. Get hip to your local music makers already, and dig in.

Rivers: If we're a bit red in the face, our apologies. We just finished slapping ourselves for sleeping on this trio, whose blues-based rock jams are big, fuzzy, and contain lots of shouting and a more-than-ample supply of drumwork.

There are drums galore, with riffs to match. It's a salty brand of rock, with plenty of vengenance, fueled by a whiskey rage, and probably a little bit of mescaline. (Nobody just names a song "Spirit Child," after all.) Rivers will be rightfully opening for the legendary Meat Puppets at Fitz on Sunday. Oh, and in addition to an ironclad aesthetic, they call Houston the Heart of Texas. How can you not love that?

Other Sites: Bandcamp, MySpace

​Children of Pop: What started as "an independent chillwave music idea" from Chase DeMaster (formerly of suburban power-popsters The Ride Home) has yielded fruit. News came out on Tuesday that Children of Pop has just been signed to California's Lefse Records (Neon Indian), with an initial 7" and full-length on the way. The signing even made national music blog Stereogum. Labeling this as merely chillwave might be a bit narrow, though - it's dreamy and layered, with some well-thought density.

Other Sites: Bandcamp, Facebook, Twitter

​Guilt Party: This brand new punk entity put some tracks online this week that take less than two minutes to examine. It's thrashing hardcore reminiscent of the '80s, and brutally short. We're talking less than a minute per track.

If we've heard correctly, Jacob Majors is involved in this, but not much else is known. These tracks were recorded at The Boathouse - the recording arm of Steamboat Ampworks - and it looks like they'll be out on a Bummer Tapes release before long.