SunGhosts and Friends Celebrate Winter at Churchill's

Floridians don't really know how to handle winter. While the rest of the country is shoveling snow and huddling around trash-can fires, we're wearing shorts and hitting the beach. But we still find ways to celebrate the season — for example, with "Lots of good rock 'n' roll, lots of good dancing, beer, and balloons." That's how Arminio "Crocodile Deathspin" Rivero describes No Wavve's Winter Wipeout, a celebration of Miami's best season taking place at Churchill's December 22.

Rivero's Kendall garage-rock band, SunGhosts, will headline the shindig, supported by five other local bands along with Nashville's indie-rockers Future Thieves. "SunGhosts is having a weeklong tour where we're playing a different show every night for a week," Rivero says. "We figured we might as well end it with a homecoming show for Christmas."

Supporting the bill are pop-punk locals TopTier, tropical punks Salas, surf punks Beach Dog, and Verali, whom Rivero describes as "the closest thing to Sublime I've ever seen live." Even though everyone at the show will be in the holiday spirit, co-organizer Claudia Rodriguez says the party won't favor any one holiday in particular. "We're veering away from any religious celebrations," she says. "I just want it to be a fun winter festival. We're going to collect donations for [animal-rescue charity] Paws 4 You. We might have a videogame tournament, and we'd like to have a bonfire in the back if it gets cold enough and the fire code allows it."

The year has been good to SunGhosts. Yesterday the band had its first documentary air on the local PBS show Art Loft. "Our singer Nik Olas used to work with an aspiring filmmaker, Michael Lowney," Rivero explains. "Michael got a job at PBS, and he asked if he could make a documentary about us."

Though the bandmates still hadn't seen the movie at the time of this interview, they were beyond hyped about the minute-long trailer and planned to watch the broadcast together as a band. "He filmed our album-release party in May and interviewed all of us," Rivero says. "Hopefully, I don't sound too stupid. They have some really cool footage of us crowdsurfing." Sadly, SunGhosts' fans will have to be patient if they want to catch a repeat. "You're going to have to wait until March to see it on YouTube. There's a really good, exciting reason [for the delay], but I'm not allowed to say why."

No Wavve's Winter Wipeout
With SunGhosts, Future Thieves, and others. 9 p.m. Thursday, December 22, at Churchill's Pub, 5501 NE Second Ave., Miami; 305-757-1807; churchillspub.com. Tickets cost $5 via holdmyticket.com.