Since this weekend marks the "official" start of the holiday shopping season, we've got the annual gift guide with musical suggestions for what to get your loved ones (or yourself). The list includes some excellent 2012 albums from acts that call the Triangle home (and even a book by yours truly), so check it out -- and buy local!

A few years back, Kelly Hogan tried to quit music and it did not go well. By her own admission, she "went insane" very quickly. So she gave up the cold-turkey route and resumed singing, and it's a good thing, too -- her new album, "I Like To Keep Myself in Pain," is a spectacular piece of work. Still, if Hogan really, truly had to do something else...what would it be?

"Something with dogs," she said in a recent interview. "After singing, dogs give me the most joy. I've had dogs live to be a bajillion, where you think they're dead but they're only asleep. So I can work with senior dogs, the ones with cataracts and bad breath. I have two dogs now. I wish I could have 202. They're both shelter rejects, little Boston mixes -- Tennessee Ernie and Eddie Spaghetti. They're like two model kits where a normal person put Ernie together and a drunk did Eddie. He looks like a vampire bat or a chicken, which I think is awesome. I gravitate toward that. So Eddie's my little flower, and Ernie's my little meatloaf. I'd be very content working with dogs, singing to them."

Hogan will be onstage singing to humans, opening for (and then backing up) Neko Case in Raleigh on Saturday. For more about the show and "Pain," see the preview in Friday's paper.