We're happy to be finally closing the book on 2009 and wanted to take a moment to congratulate the winners of our Best Emerging Artist of 2009.

First, the Readers Poll where San Francisco's Orchestra of Antlers (in the picture) reached the top spot in a heated race with Oakland's Grand Lake. Both bands made major waves in the Bay Area music scene throughout 2009 and since the bands were only 2% apart in the total number of votes, we decided to split the banner up top to recognize everyone's hard work. You can catch Orchestra of Antlers at the Retox Lounge on January 30 and Grand Lake on February 2nd at Thee Parkside as part of SF Winterfest. In third place was Bay Area Hip Hop artists Le Vice who played the West Beach Music & Arts Festival last year along side Ben Harper and Ozomatli. Thier debut release is due in March and they play El Rio on March 11th. See the full Top 10 of our Readers Poll here.

The top winner in our overall Best Emerging Artist of 2009 was San Francisco's Girls. The band seemed to blow up in the second half of the year and their debut release Album, was widely reviewed and talked about on music sites throughout the country. Girls will be playing the Great American Music Hall on February 14th. The second spot went to another band with a lot of buzz last year, Oakland's Man/Miracle. Their LP The Shape of Things quickly sold through the first pressing and is expected to be re-released this year on Third Culture Records. Man/Miracle are playing a FREE show tonight at The Speakeasy [604 56th St., Oakland] and at Bottom of the Hill with Rogue Wave on February 24th. The third spot went to a a staple in the Bay Area music scene, Or, the Whale. This year saw them recording for Daytrotter and their self titled second release made a couple "Best Of" lists for 2009. Or, the Whale's next local show is in March at The Independent. You can see the full list of nominees and their standings here.

A big thanks goes out to all of the readers that voted, The Deli staff that helped compile and vote on the nominees an the local bloggers, engineers and musicians who acted as jurors to help deliberate over a years worth of fantastic Bay Area music! Our jurors this year were: John Flores [owner of Studio SQ] Christian Cunningham [The Bay Bridged], Nate Seltenrich [East Bay Express], Anna Gazdowicz [Stranger Dance] , John Vanderslice [musician and owner of Tiny Telephone], Mark Taylor [KQED], Ted Leibowitz [Bagel Radio] and Peter Arko [Ears of the Beholder].

The Deli SF is looking forward to lots of amazing music from Bay Area artists in 2010!

-Nicole Leigh