This Friday at Bogart's, the nominees in the "New Artist of the Year" category in this year's Cincinnati Entertainment Awards will perform at Bogart's for CityBeat's first New Music Showcase. Showtime is 8 p.m. and you can get tickets for $7 at the Bogart's box office (or here if you'd like to pay the ticketing fees). Proceeds from the show benefit the Cincinnati USA Music Heritage Foundation. All seven 'New Artist' nominees will be featured in a special music edition of CityBeat out this Wednesday, with profiles of each nominee, including R. Ring, who are unable to perform Friday's showcase. The show will feature sets from Jeremy Pinnell and the 55s, DAAP Girls, Ohio Knife, The Natives, Public and Heavy Hinges. The audience will cast ballots for their favorites; that cumulative score will be weighted by the votes of the CEA committee members. By coincidence, two of the artists performing at Bogart's on Friday — groovy Indie rockers DAAP Girls and tight Hip Hop band The Natives — have brand new music videos out. DAAP Girls — featuring members of The Lions Rampant and Newport Secret Six — are set to release their new album, Tape Songs, on Feb. 23 with a release party scheduled for Over-the-Rhine's The Drinkery. Each song on the album has a woman's name for the title. The band's first music video is for "Kate," which debuted this morning. Check it below.Cincinnati Hip Hop band The Natives' new video is for the track "So Much," off of Coup D'etat, one of two releases (and numerous videos) from the group last year. The Natives had a very active 2012 as a group; in 2013, they'll stay just as busy, though they'll be focusing on completing some of the members' solo projects. Here's the clip for "So Much."Public voting for the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards ends tomorrow at midnight, so have your voice heard and vote right now if you haven't yet. Click here to cast your ballot.The Cincinnati Entertainment Awards ceremony is Sunday, Jan. 27, at Madison Theater in Covington. The full lineup of performers will be announced soon. Click here to get your CEA show tickets.

Right around Thanksgiving time, CityBeat began to receive several queries via email, Twitter and Facebook, all essentially asking, "What the hell happened to the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards?"CityBeat's annual celebration of Greater Cincinnati's best original music had been held for 15 years on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The reasoning was that musicians who tour a lot would hopefully be home for the ceremony and regular weekly giggers might be less likely to have an every-Sunday residency. Also, we thought, perhaps the holiday timing would allow us to nab a few of the city's favorite sons and daughters (Jerry Springer? SJP? Any Lachey we could get our hands on?) as presenters. In the end, the timing of the ceremony never really had much effect. We did have Jerry Springer — via video tape from Chicago — at the very first CEAs (held at the old Sycamore Gardens in Over-the-Rhine), but the video malfunctioned. Maybe it was an omen. We also spent many years attempting to lure the Isley Brothers to perform and be inducted into the CEA Hall of Fame, but the Isleys haven't been "local" in almost half a century, so the Thanksgiving timing was irrelevant (and the Isleys would have cost a fortune to bring to town). We also discovered those hard-touring musicians tour so hard, having an off day the Sunday before Thanksgiving is hardly a given. Last year, for example, Artist of the Year winners Walk the Moon were on the road and unable to attend (though they still created one of the show's better moments by having their mothers accept on their behalf).Having the ceremony in November was also a hassle once CityBeat acquired the MidPoint Music Festival, which occurs annually in late September. The CEAs bumped up a little too close to MPMF, making the organization of the awards a hectic endeavor.So, starting with the 2012 Cincinnati Entertainment Awards, the ceremony will now be held in January. This change allows our staff to fully focus on the CEAs without battling MPMF fatigue. And it creates an easier-to-track window for nomination consideration. In the future, the Album of the Year category's eligibility timeframe will be anything released that year. Previously, the timeframe was approximately October of the previous year to October of the current year. (This year, eligibility will be extended to anything released in 2012, but also includes releases that came out October-December 2011.) The 16th annual Cincinnati Entertainment Awards ceremony will be held at Covington's Madison Theater on Jan. 27. This year's host will be the very funny Ted Clark, who is also making plans to do his popular "live talk show" at the after-party (read more about Ted here). And there will be more live performances at the CEA ceremony than ever before. Ticket info, the lineup of performers and more details will be released soon. (Let's get this out of the way right up front, since the Northern Ky. locale always gets mocked every year — yes, the "2012" "Cincinnati" Entertainment Awards will be held in Covington in 2013. How odd!)Another new wrinkle for the CEAs this year will be a live showcase of the "New Artist of the Year" nominees; the winner of the category (normally decided by the nominating committee) will be largely determined by audience vote at the showcase, which is scheduled for Friday, Jan. 18 at Bogart's. More details to come.The 2012 CEA nominees — determined by a large pool of local music experts, including writers, bloggers, club owners, radio show hosts and others (this year's committee is the largest yet) — will be announced Dec. 12. The ballot will go live at citybeat.com and then it's up to you. Fan voting determines all categories except for the "Critical Achievement" ones — Artist of the Year, Album of the Year — which are voted on by the committee. Stay tuned for many more CEA announcements to come. And visit citybeat.com's CEA page here for a look at past nominees, winners and more.