HOT PICKS FOR CANADIAN MUSIC WEEK

Can it really be Canadian Music Week again?

Some of us are still recovering from last year’s wild-’n’-crazy festival season in Toronto, but the spring is here and there’s another long run of music marathons soon bearing down on the city.

Now in its 34th year, CMW — which runs until this coming Sunday at innumerable live-music venues about town — has the distinction of being the only major club crawl-styled fest left on our calendar, since its longtime rival North by Northeast has this year decided to mostly do away with its old, similar model and focus its music-gathering energies on a single festival site in the Port Lands on June 17 and 18. So if grabbing yourself a badge or a wristband and bouncing all over the downtown for a few days in search of new sounds is your cup of tea, then Canadian Music Week is your go-to right now.

You’re urged to peruse the full CMW calendar and avail yourself of tickets, wristbands and or badges at cmw.net. But in the interests of simplicity, we’ve distilled the week’s activities to a single must-see show a day for your benefit — and thrown in a couple of safe bets on the side, just to cover all the bases. Happy hunting!

WEDNESDAY

The Magic Gang at 300 Club (300 College St.), 10 p.m.: Four tuneful young lads from Brighton who make sunny, harmonious guitar-pop that’ll sound pretty sweet on your next warm-weather road trip.

Wednesday backups:

á Baio at the Velvet Underground (510 Queen St. W.) at midnight

á The Dues at Cherry Cola’s (200 Bathurst St.) at 1 a.m.

THURSDAY

Foxtrott and TOPS at Lee’s Palace (529 Bloor St.) at 11 p.m.: Two of the coolest things to happen to Montreal in a long time, together on one bill. Foxtrott is the bass-bangin’ alter ego of one-woman electro-pop band Marie Helene Delorme, who was responsible for one of 2015’s best albums in A Taller Us and is a vocal force to be reckoned with live.

TOPS, for their part, make spry, spindly indie-pop that creeps up on you slowly and then refuses to go away. A terrific twosome. Thursday backups:

No Joy at the Velvet Underground, 11 p.m.

Vogue Dots at Studio Bar (824 Dundas St. W.), 10 p.m. FRIDAY Partner at the Silver Dollar (486 Spadina Ave.), midnight: A saucy Sackville punk duo with much more sardonic smartypants-iness to offer beyond its smashing 2015 viral video hit “The ‘Ellen’ Page.”

This’ll be the last of these ladies’ three consecutive nights headlining Dan Burke’s NeXT at CMW series at the Dollar, so they’ll be dug in and set to stun. Friday backups:

White Lung at the Velvet Underground, 11 p.m.

Skepta, Danforth Music Hall, 10 p.m. SATURDAY Dilly Dally at Lee’s Palace, midnight: As you might have noticed from the above recommendations, there are a lot of gals kickin’ a lot of ass all over Toronto this week.

We’ve saved you the best for last. This co-ed quartet has been eyed — with entirely good reason — as the next big indie-rock thing to emerge from our town since the release of the bruising Sore last year, so why not blow out your Saturday and your eardrums all at once with one of the most ferocious young live bands in the ‘6’? Saturday backups:

SWMRS at Sneaky Dee’s (431 College St.), 11 p.m. Sunflower Bean at Hard Luck (772 A Dundas St. W.), midnight.