Run by a tiny rock chick named Nicole Irizarry, this local booking-slash-whatever agency made its debut with last year's first So Raw Festival. It starred peeps such as the Jacuzzi Boys, Melted Sunglasses, and Lil Daggers. Since then, Irizarry and her coconspirators have brought free beer and scuzzy garage punk to the Miami scene on a bimonthly basis. The whole thing culminates June 18 with the So Raw Fest. On the eve of this big moment, New Times spoke with Irizarry about party philosophy, piñatas, and pizza.New Times: What was So Raw created to protect?Irizarry: Fun on the cheap. We wanted to bring attention to the local music scene and show off everything we love and hate about Miami. If we had to protect something, it would probably be fritas and tallboys. NT: Can you recap the So Raw season so far?Irizarry: We've put on seven shows since the first festival. Because every show has been at a different venue, it's been pretty hectic. We've had all the bands cancel 20 minutes before the show. We've had fights. We've also had piñatas and a mummifying contest. All in all, it's been awesome.NT: What will So Raw Festival Part II look like?Irizarry: The truth for the 2010 scene is that we have a temporary store this year for the months of June and July, so we're gonna be able to represent even more music through record sales. We'll also have snacks and coffee. As far as the rest of the year, we've got more shows and more free stuff coming along. If we had to be clairvoyant, we'd say we would have our own venue/gallery space with unlimited free drinks and pizza, a pool table floating on top of a real pool, and one of those giant pianos you play with your feet, like in Big, in front of a light-up mural of Tom Hanks.

Boxwood (AKA Jose Ferrer) says he almost exists as two separate entities. There's the contemplative songwriter, at home in his warehouse space turned loft/studio, laying down each track of each song and penning thoughtful and often poignant lyrics that probe various aspects of the human condition. An examples is "There a Fire," in which he sings, "And I know these things are going to have to wait/By the time you wake up they'll be gone." And there's the artist you see at his captivating performances, where he constructs songs from scratch; the guy is a one-man band relying on an array of instruments and loop pedals as well as his own ingenuity. He's reluctant to become known for the latter, preferring to focus on his content. But to the outside observer, it's just more evidence of an incredibly creative and inventive songwriter and musician.

For the past couple of years, the solo musician born Eric Lopez-Zareno quietly built his presence on the local rock scene. For a while, he was known mainly as a journeyman player in any number of the low-fi, garage-inflected bands firing up along the Biscayne corridor. At the same time, though, he was perfecting the sonic brew of his own solo act, a usually one-man show that traverses rock, atmospheric psychedelia, and movie-score-style sounds, all steeped in an ever-present, creepy synth. And that's about as much as you can generalize about Teepee, who prides himself on never playing the same show twice. Some are straightforward solo affairs, in which he runs through shambling ditties with actual song structures. Other times, he aims squarely at left field, losing himself in wandering psilocybin jams. And sometimes his friends join him, when he circles back to shambling, three-chord, feel-good fuzz-rock. What he is, every time, though, is entertaining and unmatched in creativity by the usual boring acoustic-guitar strummers who otherwise crowd the "solo musician" field.

Local neo-folk act Raffa & Rainer's quirky, insightful, and downright haunting ditties of life and love leave little room on your palate for anything else. Comprising vocalist-guitarist Raffa Jo Harris and guitarist Rainer Davies, this duo has a sound that's delightfully campy and evocative of other idiosyncratic folk artists such as Kimya Dawson, Kate Micucci, and SoFla's own Rachel Goodrich. The foundation of their music is earnest and heartfelt songs crafted simply and beautifully. Check out last year's release, No Mercy (a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, considering their style), which includes "North Carolina Boys," "Umbrellas," and "Long Way Home." The album benefits from four well-worn years of experience, during which time locals have seen the band everywhere from Wynwood Social Club to White Room.

When naming the leader of the Latin jazz explosion in South Florida, look no further than Sammy Figueroa. He has played on myriad records, providing the rhythmic structure for several mainstream hits. Born in the Bronx and discovered at age 18 by legendary jazz flautist Herbie Mann, he relocated to South Florida in 2001, where he discovered a rich and diverse group of Latin jazz geniuses. The next year, Figueroa and his Latin Jazz Explosion band made their first appearance at the Hollywood Jazz Festival. Blessed with a smooth voice and extensive familiarity of jazz, Figueroa has also found a calling as a radio host. His show, Latin Jazz Quarter, airing every Friday afternoon on WDNA-FM (88.9), is one of the station's most popular. Figueroa not only plays Latin jazz but also allows listeners to experience the musical stylings of African drums, Middle Eastern folk, and Native American chants. At the end of 2008, he put together a band called Sally's Tomato, an ode to the music of Cal Tjader. With two Grammy nominations and appearances with Diana Ross, Joe Cocker, Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, and David Bowie, Sammy Figueroa is truly jazz greatness.

Competition for top honors in this category was fierce. As the informal capital of Latin America, Miami-Dade has an ample assortment of música del sur. But Conjunto Progreso makes a hell of a strong case. A Cuban jam band through and through, Conjunto offers sumptuous son that any of the masters might envy. With multiple vocalists, guitar, bass, piano, bongos, congas, trumpets, tres, clave, cowbell (for which we have a fever — the only cure being more cowbell), and guiro (which actually has nothing to do with Jersey Shore), Conjunto is a full-blown orchestra. And the band sounds like it. Much like Tula leaving the candle on in her room, the descargas they throw down at all of their frequent local gigs could be deemed a fire hazard. They seriously light it up.

After years of playing at local clubs, rapper/singer Platano (Ivan Rodriguez) has truly become a Miami original. His style is a mix of every tropical genre. Mixing Spanish and English, Platano combines all that's cool in Latin music and delivers it with a clear sense of originality. Signature song "Helicoptero" is a kaleidoscope of throbbing bass lines and Caribbean drums that will get anyone and everyone jumping. With an established local fan base, Platano also tours outside of South Florida. To many people across the nation, his original sound represents what's cool about Latin music in Miami.

A young Derek Miller, then the guitarist and one of the main creative forces of pan-South Florida hardcore band Poison the Well, told New Times in 2003: "We get a lot of grief from guys who just want to hear screaming, but you reach a point where you've said everything you can say with a scream. As far as I'm concerned, singing is endless. I can hear someone sing forever." Soon after parting ways with PTW, which just wouldn't move past all of that screaming, he began his search for the perfect singer. He slummed around for a while, trying to get a new musical project off the ground. At one point, he tried his hand in California, then moved back, and eventually, like way too many promising local musicians and artists, heard the siren songs of Brooklyn. That's where he found vocalist Alexis Kraus, who, oddly enough, also has Florida roots and used to sing in a teen girl group. Together they formed Sleigh Bells. The rise was meteoric. Just one example: They took the top spot on New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones's list of best albums of 2009. Never mind they'd released only a handful of MP3s at that point. To complete their debut album, Treats, they signed to M.I.A.'s record label. It was met with critical acclaim and even cracked the Billboard Top 40. While the band still reps Florida, we'll always secretly wish that the two Floridians had actually, you know, met and formed here. We just hope that, unlike way too many Brooklyn-based bands, they don't forget South Florida on their touring schedule.

Apparently, size matters. In the past year, either owing to locals' thinning wallets or attempts to evade tourist traps, smaller and more personable venues have made a huge comeback. Giant nightlife staples once reigned supreme, but today's world is slightly different. Many local partiers are searching for smaller locales — or maybe they've just grown tired of the $20 parking, $20 cover, and $20 drink charges. This past December, the price to be in the presence of Lady Gaga and one of her science-project outfits at Miami's larger-than-life Fontainebleau Resort was $425 — for general admission. That's a lot of money to spend for a night out dancing alongside a slew of sunburned out-of-towers seeking photo ops. And then there are those MTV reality-show characters who keep making appearances with their camera crews at Miami's mammoth clubs. Yet there are many night spots throughout the city where cover charges either don't exist or are minimal, and the crowds are purely local. Try explaining the Electric Pickle to a foreigner. Or check out the recently opened Cafeina in Wynwood. Maybe Miami's after-darkers have become recessionistas. Or perhaps they believe they are too good to mingle with tourists. Whatever the reason, the town's holes-in-the-wall are enjoying the love.

AJ the R&B General is a man who frankly speaks his mind. Take, for instance, this come-on from the song "Ape Sex": "Baby, he might have good sex/But, baby, I got ape sex/I hit it like boom, boom, boom, ah, ah." Then, on "Professional Dancer," he sings, "The way she work that pole is so amazing/All the money in my pocket she gon' take it/I ain't never seen nothing so beautiful naked." And of course, there's the sweeping chorus: "I'ma throw my money at her." And finally, from the most blush-worthy entry in the AJ oeuvre, "Satisfaction": "Sitting on my face/Love the way you taste/Gripping on your waist while I'm making my tongue say/La la la la la la."But the 24-year-old crooner somehow gets away with it all, thanks to a talent for writing scarily catchy melodies and choosing ultrahigh production values, mostly bolstered by beats by local producers Phat Boy Beats. He also has a mellifluous tenor that holds up live as well it does on record, a rarity in a sea of industry wannabes.