I don’t harbor too many regrets about missing a set everyone else proclaims as epic, particularly in the biggest of venues, but reliable reports of the last Radiohead and Death Cab shows (and Sufjan a ways back) as being of each band’s highest standard have been leaving me feeling a bit burned. The only festival set I can recall regretting missing in the last decade is Beck’s 2006 appearance at Sasquatch where he staged an elaborate puppet show, the day after I decided to go home sopping wet from a massive hailstorm. Second chances are few and far between but Beck’s final placement on Monday’s mainstage may have me keeping this regret should I have to leave early. The internal debate is still raging about staying strong through Monday no matter what, so I thought I’d dig into some bands who are scheduled for that day and share a few band’s who’ll be keeping my energy and interest above water.

Don’t Talk to the Cops [www] 3:30pm at the Maine Stage

Holding it down on the Maine stage in the late afternoon is Seattle’s Don’t Talk to the Cops, a hip hop throwdown laced with shit-talking and goofy hooks of b-boy agitator DJ BlesOne. Are you trying to break out of that hands-in-pocket BS that Seattle has a bad rep for? Sasquatch is definitely the place and there is no better example than Bles and Emecks to look to for a few moves.

Awesome Tapes from Africa [www] 4:40pm at the Banana Shack

Band names become more un-googable by the week, but cleverness will only get you so far when nobody can find your music. Awesome Tapes from Africa on the other hand is exactly what the name implies, an actual DJ playing tapes from Africa that he’s collected and blogged over the years. Here the hitch isn’t the name but the medium as Brooklyn’s Brian Shimkovitz highlights music that’s mostly pre-mp3, only issued locally on tape and so by it’s very nature is ungoogleable. I’ve no idea what to expect, and the very notion of the project playing something I’ve never heard before and will not be likely to ever hear again has me deeply interested.

Feist [www] 5:30pm on the Sasquatch Mainstage

With “1, 2, 3, 4…” Leslie Feist had the unfortunate luck penning a cute song, and an even cuter group dance, that Apple’s massive ad budget made impossible to escape. Inundated I made no effort to engage with 2007′s The Reminder. The ambitious arrangements of 2011′s Metals stood out immediately though and shook me out of my prejudice. (I’m a sucker for String sections and Saxophones, so sue me.) We’ll just have to see whether her delicately orchestrated pop stands out enough live from the mainstage to keep me from an afternoon nap in the grass.

The Cave Singers [www] 6:50pm on the Bigfoot Stage

The Cave Bros are a band I count among Seattle’s finest, but are a group who play rarely enough that I often lose track. 2011′s No Witch snuck under my radar somehow, and so for a while I’d missed the memo that these dudes had stepped off the back porch and into the basement to get crunchy. I’ve seen each new tour bring a injection of energy into their sound, and now in league with the laid back stompers they debuted with in 2006 are electric hellraisers and their own brand of backwoods psych. The recent addition of Blood Brothers/Fleet Fox multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson is sure to enhance the band’s standing as incomparable on all fronts.