A few Chicago music news bites

• Gapers Block has a review and photos of Friday night's Los Campesinos! and Parenthetical Girls show at Metro.

• Loudlooppress.com highlighted 12 Chicago bands to watch in 2012.

• Canasta are heading off this week on their first tour outside the U.S. To Mongolia. The band is heading to the unlikely tour destination as part of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs' Arts Envoy Program. Thomas Conner of the Sun-Times has the details here.

• Blah Blah Blah released a video for their jangly tune "Soon As I Get Home Tonight" off their 2011 EP Thank You Thank You.

• Long-time Chicago rockers Local H are in the studio recording their first album of original material since 2008, and you can get a taste via some video updates frontman Scott Lucas has been posting to the band's Facebook page.

• Chicago Mixtape published an audio interview with The Damn Choir, who will play the Mixtape's one-year anniversary show along with The Shams Band, Elephant Gun and Architecture on February 11th at Subterranean.