You may recognize the handsome gent in the photo above as Michael Lee, a critical piece of one our favorite things to happen in the music scene of late, The Young Evils. And you'd be absolutely correct! But what you're looking at in this particular context is Michael Lee as lead singer of the band Mal de Mer, the third band on our lineup for Friday's Imaginary Holiday Spectacular.

Mal de Mer first popped full-force onto the imaginary radar earlier this year, when they took the first-of-three spot opening for Telekinesis at the Crocodile back in March. Like we said then, we knew of MdM but didn't quite know enough about MdM, so we set to do some digging — and immediately fell in hearts. Allow us to refresh your memory of what we penned up about them then:

"The vibe varies from a Henry Clay People-esque alt.dirty-pop on songs like "Bubble Bobble" to the more melancholy, moderately anthematic sad-pop sound of "All I Want" — but there's a running consistency through all the songs they've put out, and that consistency is one of No Bullshit. MdM isn't out to please the herd or become the next-best-something-or-other, they're just making the sounds that they need to get made. This, coupled with their all-star lineup (Michael Lee, Lesli Wood, Jimmy Curran, and Eric Wennberg), would make it appear as though the band itself could do no wrong. And based on the attention they've gotten so far, that might just be the rightest thing we've heard all week."

All of that still rings true, and tenfold at that. While The Young Evils have been keeping Lee busy, he reported in recently that he's almost done writing the next Mal de Mer album (!!!), and he's not the only one — The Redwood Plan has a new album in the works as well, and Lesli Wood and Eric Wennberg have been rhythm sectioning for Wood's husband's new band, Lazy Animals.

We're stoked to hear them at the show, and hope you are too! If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you can still take advantage of the advance price: just pop on over to the Brown Paper Tickets page here, and you can get some more digs about the show at the Facebook page here.

Get that backend warmed up for Santa's lap — we'll see you Friday!

{Photo of Michael Lee / Mal de Mer by Victoria VanBruinisse.}