Best of the Bay 2026 Editors’ Pick: Slumberland Records

San Francisco is known for expanding sonic tropes. Mike Schulman’s one-man operation Slumberland Records has built up a 21st-century mini-empire of an imprint that involves him working with his friends and represents the Bay Area now with its fog-pop fixation and indie-jangle twang, advertising to the world the types of bands you can see on a Wednesday night at any independent venue in the Tenderloin, The Mish, or North Beach/Chinatown. Slumberland s Mike Schulman. Photo via skepwax.com Listen, Fog City remains a real fickle cross-pollination of a metropolis when it comes to the music that it represents. Like its weather patterns, the Bay Area is flush with microclimates—bass-heavy hip-hop from the East Bay, chillaxed or very intense electronic music flowing from the Western Addition down to the slower Haight—and so much history surrounding the Grateful Dead s mysticism that it has made Haight-Ashbury a rite of passage for Deadheads worldwide, where that monetized fascination has