Without fail, the Houston Press Music Awards sneak up on us. Last year, when the HPMAs returned to the dog days of summer after a one-year Thanksgiving holiday, only a few short months fell between the 2011 trophies and 2012 nomination ballot. This time it's been several months longer, but feels just as short.

Funny thing. While Rocks Off was verifying the nominees these past couple of days we used iTunes a lot, to check release dates and such. Every kind of music you can find on iTunes you can also find live in Houston music venues. We think that says something pretty great about our city.

And a lot of this music is worth saluting, which is where we come in. What you're about to read is 164 nominations across 34 categories, and it still doesn't feel like enough. Sadly, Houston is far too big for even this ballot to include everyone who deserves to be nominated, and our sincere apologies to those folks. So we have to ask... who did we leave off?

The ballot will be live tomorrow; of course we'll let you know when that happens. Congratulations to all this year's nominees.