The Calgary Jazz Festival may have our cover this week, but Fast Forward Weekly is an equal-opportunity music lover. In the spirit of balanced journalism, Goings On will get you started on the other music festival hitting town this week — the third installment of Sled Island.

The fest kicks off on Tuesday, June 23 with a trio of showcases, plus a poster show at Artlife. The Cantos Music Foundation will cover the artier side of things, featuring sets by (mostly) instrumental post-rockers Get Through Summer (formerly known as Whale Mountain), the folk-inflected Secret Brothers (the always fantastic Laura Leif and a host of Calgarian collaborators) and Morgan Greenwood, the robot-brain behind local favourites Azeda Booth.

Tubby Dog’s leaning towards rock’n’roll that night, with sets by local thrashers Sub-Linguals and Vancouver’s jerky, occasionally downright spastic rockers The SSRIs. The fine folks at Tubby Dog are rounding off the night with a 90-minute set from DJs Jonathan Toubin and Noah York.

On Wednesday, June 24, the choices get a little hairier. I’d recommend kicking things off at Central United Church, which features Vancouver instrumentalists Fond of Tigers, Ontario’s impossible-to-pin-down Slim Twig and indie-violin maestro Final Fantasy.

Once that’s all wrapped up, you’ll have plenty of time to head to the local hip hop showcase at the Bamboo Tiki Room, which includes Ricca Razor Sharp and Dragonfli Empire. After that, it’s a bit of a dash to The Ship & Anchor, but it might be worth the sweat to check out Canadian punk mainstays SNFU. But then you’ll be missing Thighs at Vern’s and Shearing Pinx at Broken City, so it’s not quite ideal.

By the time Thursday, June 25 rolls around, you’re pretty much on your own. Israeli punks Monotonix will put on a hell of a show at The Distillery (and so will their openers, including The Cripple Creek Fairies and These Arms are Snakes). If your goal is rocking out, you won’t do much better. Or you could head to the No. 1 Legion, which not only provides garage rock par excellence with The King Khan and BBQ Show and spazz-dance two-piece Woodhands, but also a pair of unannounced surprise shows that, if tradition holds, will be pretty fantastic in their own rights.

And that’s not even mentioning Hot Little Rocket and Ladyhawk back-to-back, or the glorious return of The Neckers.... I guess you’ll have to check out our Sled Island coverage next week.