Dear Scotland

A very special Christmas video, featuring a very Scottish Santa:

Like many expat Scots, I find myself talking about Scotland a lot. And aside from the standard conversations about golf, whisky or Braveheart the subject of Scottish music frequently arises. In the past, when band names alone were not enough to impress certain people, I would end up making them a mixtape or cd.

After Austin, Vic is taking a few days off in San Francisco this week but he still had time to see Twin Atlantic at Slims on Friday night and recommend them as his pick of the Scottish bands playing outside the UK this week. Vic will be back on Radio 1 on Wednesday night.

With the chaos of SXSW over for another year, most of the Scottish bands are heading home now but the Codeine Velvet Club were on a 6am flight to Seattle yesterday to start a mini west coast tour with Metric. Vic has more on CVC and all the details of Scotland on Tour this week:

This week is almost certainly the biggest week of the year for Scottish international gigs. 14 Scottish bands are heading to the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas and Vic will be there too. Here is his preview together with a listing of more than 80 Scottish gigs around the world this week:

Stonehaven’s Copy Haho are heading out on their first European tour this week in support of Los Campesinos!. Radio 1′s Vic Galloway tells us more about Copy Haho alongside his listing of every Scottish band playing outside the UK this week.

The Cinematics continue their European tour this week with dates in the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary. Radio Scotland’s Vic Galloway has more on Dingwall’s finest and all the Scottish gigs abroad this week:

As he mentioned in our interview on Friday, The Agitator will be in France this week. Today, Vic Galloway tells us what he thinks about The Agitator alongside the only listing of every Scottish gig outside the UK this week.

Did you know that Santa was a fan of Dear Scotland? Apparently he also likes a bit of Scottish music too. In this brand new animation, Swatrick Payze shows us what Santa gets up to between deliveries on his netbook-internet-laptop.