Swede Home Chicago

By Lizz Kannenberg on Dec 13, 2007 8:22PM

Besides free booze at office parties, too much rich food, and the stress of gift buying, the holiday season also brings a couple of music-centric certainties: "Best Of" lists and benefit concerts. Keep an eye on Chicagoist for the former, and break out your taste for lutefisk tonight for the latter. Schubas will play host to a show benefiting the Swedish Covenant Hospital and featuring a lineup ripe with Chicagoist faves, playing both original music and covers of Swedish artists. The idea s to raise some dough for the Northwest Side hospital that is trying to advance a holistic approach to medicine in Chicago, and we kinda dig that, so check it out.

The Bon Mots are jaunting around town on the strength of a more-than-solid jangly rock album, 40 Days and 40 Nights With the Bon Mots. Few groups in this city can claim a wider range of influences or a better ability to incorporate them into original music that's fresh and innovative...or a more impressive knowledge of British Invasion-era pop music.

Le Concorde has impressed trippy pop aficionados outside of Chicago for a couple of years, and the band's hometown has finally seemed to catch up. Suite is a lush collection of pretty-to-pensive-to-party songcraft that's part Postal Service and part Jackson 5. Like, woah.

Add to that the Hood Internet sounds of regular Renaissance man about town DJ STV SLV playing Swedish vs. Chicagoan mashups and indie rock vets The Gnomes , and we're talking one totally Swede time.

The Swede Home Chicago benefit is tonight at Schubas, 8:00 p.m., $20 or $10 with the above flier.