If you’re to believe the music section in this week’s Fast Forward Weekly, you’d be well convinced that Calgary is undergoing a metal-ocalypse. Well, that’s halfway true, but there are music options for the less PVC-inclined, as well. Good ones, at that.

Start with globe-trotting Sasky country gem Gary Fjellgaard, one in a long tradition of cowboy troubadours. Owner of the third best moustache in music (and please, spare us the Movember jokes), he’s a proud prairie boy, and his songs show it. Expect an evening of neckerchiefs, cow-rustling narratives and windswept blues. And if you are wondering how neckerchiefs figure into his music, they just do. Trust us. Catch him on Friday, December 3 at the Cantos Music Foundation.

If pensive prairie fare isn’t in the cards, though, try the eternally pleasant Nix Dicksons on for size, also playing on December 3 at Broken City. Like the best pop-indie, the Dicksons’ sound concerns itself with economical melodies geared at triggering those pesky serotonin receptors (bonus points, too, when the band whips out the harmonica). Or, there’s the big-bigger-biggest bass of San Francisco’s Babylon System — the dubstep-trance project of DJs Roommate and No Thing — which should keep the Marquee Room on edge until early hours. San Fran’s Bogl and usual-suspect locals Slim Pickins and Piranha Piranha round out the bill.

It doesn’t slow down on Saturday, December 4. The Ship & Anchor hosts surf-pop favourites Lovebullies — which, with its campy organs and sly vocal stylings, recalls the best girl groups of times past. (Note: the band isn’t a girl group. But still) Oddly paired with the Bullies is Radial GinJo, whose haunted, violin-driven folk veers between enthralling and unsettling.

Now, if the Lovebullies’ name aptly describes its sound, Skratch Bastid — which plays at the HiFi, also on December 4 — sure doesn’t. If you’re expecting hip hop (or scratching, really), you’ll be disappointed. But if party-fied electro jams are your thing, Halifax’s finest isn’t to be missed. Or, for a quieter time, catch the gripping indie-folk of Bahamas — otherwise known as Afie Jurvanen, who supported his excellent debut, Pink Strat, with Weakerthan Jason Tait — which rolls into the Marquee Room with Doug Paisley, an excellent songwriter in his own right.

Finally, head to Broken City on Thursday, December 9 for the quirky new wave of Key to the City, the ethereal garage of The Latter Days and the sometimes muscular, sometimes mathy delights of Nushi. And if you don’t go to support the local musicians, go to support alt-theatre: It’s a fundraiser for Theatre Encounter, something Fast Forward Weekly editor Drew Anderson calls “the weirdest and most challenging theatre troupe in town.” But don’t listen to him. Go for Key to the City.