Dani Mari at Starr Garden

The Community Cultural Exchange, a South Street area arts and music collective, held its first annual craft exchange this week at Starr Garden (6th and Lombard). There were a few Philadelphia crafts, a table from the now-defunct South Street institution the Curiosity Shoppe, a table of Philadelphia short story books, and even a tarot reader. Also there to entertain the crowd: an amateur soccer league, some pick-up basketball games, and music.

The acts included the ever-hilarious Sexcop (sample lyric: "pretty girls want to be assassins... so they don't have to wait tables"), some covers and originals by Stephan Tsapatoris, and a kinda awful mid-90s-rock sounding band. The highlight was a Philadelphia-based singer Dani Mari, who performed some of her own sweetly textured compositions, armed only with an acoustic guitar. There are echoes of Mazzy Star and folk-country, but the voice is original, the beats off-kilter, and the changes well considered. She just released a new album, Impulsive, and was giving away three-song samplers from the pressing that included "Vampire" (there's a video on youtube) and a good exemplar of her work, "The Fall" (listen on her myspace page). The album is available on iTunes.

She'd be great in a coffee shop, catch her at one of these upcoming Philadelphia shows (from myspace.com/danimarirock:

8/31 The Note (West Chester)

9/17 Blinkin Lincoln

9/25 Hootenanny 2 (Plymouth Meeting)

10/16 Triumph Brewery

10/25 Connie's Ric Rac

Video of Dani Mari with a child dancing