Around Hear: Hot HotChaCha

One of Cleveland's hottest bands is almost ready to unleash its full-length debut. HotChaCha has finished recording The World's Hardest Working Telescope & the Violent Birth of Stars with Ryan Weitzel, who engineered and co-produced with the band. He'll release the all-girl quartet's album in October on his Exit Stencil label.

"What you hear [live] is what you will get," says singer Jovana Batkovic. "There are a couple more layers of sound on the album. Most of the songs have been played live, and there are a few that have not. So it will be a nice change for fans."

The disc includes nine songs and a short guitar interlude. Weitzel says he thinks they capture the group's raw-nerve alliance of garage-pop, melodic punk and jarring alternative. The band plans to release another EP this winter.

HotChaCha plays the Grog Shop (2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Hts.) on Sunday, Aug. 30. Child Bite, DD/MM/YYYY, and Tiger Fighter open. Doors 9 p.m.; tickets are $6.

The overdue book about Nine Inch Nails' Cleveland-birthed Pretty Hate Machine may never arrive. The editor of the 33 1/3 series — a book series about classic albums — says he's "pretty sure [the] book isn't going to happen." Youngstown native Daphne Carr, series editor of Da Capo's Best Music Writing, was working on it.

After wrapping a midwest tour to Minneapolis and back, the La Rock Inc. collective returns home with a three-CD release party on Friday, Aug. 28, at Bela Dubby (13321 Madison Ave.). The indie microlabel will unveil Presque Vu's Capgras, Mush Mouth's To Be Continued ... and Soapbox Prophet's Sermons on the Subtleties of Love and Hate.

Label head Johnny La Rock says, "The Presque Vu disc is sort of [like] the Postal Service meets Atmosphere. Mush's disc is very old-school — sort of a modern-day Sugarhill Gang or Kurtis Blow. Soapbox Prophet is folk-punk, [with] some spoken-word."

All three perform, along with MC Homeless, Mic Ra and DJ Furface. Admission is free. CDs are $5 each.

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