We interrupt your regularly scheduled 2012 election-season rage tweets with a special report: the 22nd installment of Picked to Click is here!

This is my first year behind Picked to Click, and I'll already say I'd much rather steer this band wagon (get it?) than a PedalPub. Regardless of how you'd rate this current crop of bands, we are certainly in a golden age for voter participation. With the input of 146 Twin Cities club employees, label owners, writers, and scene citizens, we have a weighted cheat sheet for hundreds of performers — and the 10 freshest of the bunch — vigorously keeping this music scene kicking.

Since I just moved back to Minnesota earlier this year, I've noticed Twin Citians often forget how good we have it. So many major metropolitan centers are nowhere close to being as hair-trigger opinionated as we are about our local scene. It's impressive that something as outwardly benign as a yearly survey of the region's new and underappreciated acts can be so reviled by some, but we've always been a little different here. Coming to it with fresh eyes, I take Picked to Click as a bit of nerdy, statistical fun, not an outright industry forecast.

This year, the votes clustered the top four artists within a 12-point range, which made for an exciting bit of spreadsheet-gazing as the ballots poured in. Voters who numbered their picks gave their first-place act five points, the second-placers got four, and so forth. The non-ordered ballots gave each nominated act three points. The ballots that nominated Y.N. Rich Kids in all five slots, or said "Reed, let's get a beer" earned points in my heart, but didn't change the ultimate outcome. —Reed Fischer