Thursday
Rock
Girl in a Coma, Miss Derringer
Radio Radio, 1119 E. Prospect St., www.futureshock.net
9 p.m., $5, 21+
A callous queer parody of heterosexual relationships - The Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma" - becomes a band, an all-female trio from San Antonio that strikes a nice balance between Mexican folk (all members are Mexican-Americans), rockabilly and a pinch of garage punk (Joan Jett comes to mind, but maybe because she's become the group's mentor after signing them to her label, Blackheart Records, for their 2007 debut). Miss Derringer lead Liz McGrath seems to be going for a Gwen Stefani look (which I guess was secondhand Madonna), and the band's slick revivalist garage rock seems a little more tepid than their tourmates'.
Math rock
Abner Trio, Rooms, Word Play
Melody Inn, 3826 N. Illinois St., www.melodyindy.com
9 p.m., $5, 21+
Abner Trio lead singer Daniel Paquette, an oracular, preternaturally relaxed sort, is back in town to intone free verse atop fractured, minimal but poppy arrangements. Rooms play a timeless math rock with some of the intensity and sharpness of Television and atmospherics of Slint, to pick a couple forebears. New albums are reportedly on the way from both bands. With Detroit's Word Play.
Saturday
Folk rock
Cameron McGill, David Townsend James, Regan
Indy Hostel, 4903 Winthrop Ave., www.indyhostel.us
7 p.m., $7, all-ages
Does the saying written in black marker on Cameron McGill's guitar ("This machine kills hipsters") say anything about the zeitgeist, suggesting that we've abandoned Woody Guthrie's more politically-engaged work (Guthrie penned "This machine kills fascists" on his own weapon) in order to strive toward authentic expression above all else, as if the clique is a more dangerous institution than the state? Talk (or text) amongst yourselves. If McGill adopts some of the accoutrements of the traveling folk musician (acoustic guitar, harmonica, fedora, scruff), he takes an ironic and self-aware detachment from that persona, reinventing Guthrie years after one of his first disciples, Bobby Zimmerman, fled from Minnesota.
Pop-punk
The Offspring, Dropkick Murphys
The Lawn at White River State Park, 801 W. Washington St.
7 p.m., $32.50 (excluding ticket fees), all-ages
Give the Openers Some: The Pogues may have invented Celtic punk, but the Dropkick Murphys brought it across the seas and into the '90s, merging hardcore guitars and aggressive drums with the oh-so-punk (and sexy) bagpipes. For a while there, it was the Offspring and Green Day punching it out with kid gloves for the title of best pop-punk band that poses no threat and takes absolutely no work to find. It's a long title, tough to fit it on a belt. Green Day has since evolved into songsmiths with a conscience, if kind of an underdeveloped one, but the Offspring remain the same, just plodding along on a metal-punk slog. Welcome back to the mid '90s, young Indianapolis professionals with disposable income; soon you'll find a station on the FM dial playing all the hits of your adolescence, all the better to lull you into less mindful consumption. And that station already exists on the satellite, probably called the Alt-extreme Zone.
Mid-country rock
Ha Ha Tonka, The Broderick, Via Audio
Locals Only, 2449 E. 56th St., www.localsonlyindy.com
8:30 p.m., $5, 21+
Listening (just once so far) to Ha Ha Tonka's new record Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South yields moments of brilliance: group harmonies that evoke Sacred Harp singing; the moment when a blunt, dully percussive, stark passage segues into a full-bodied, full-band riff; when a vocal line follows a guitar line; a sustained organ note bleeding into silence at the end of a song. I'm not convinced by the album as a whole yet - the songs lack a certain invention, and I wanted more sophisticated (or germane) lyrics out of songs titled "Pendergast Machine" and "Thoreau in the Woods" - but this band, which brings some Southern traditional music elements to generic indie rock songcraft, is certainly worth investigating. With The Broderick, a Bloomington-based rock band that edges towards emo and won a contest to perform at Louisville's Forecastle Festival, and the quite pretty, jangly indie-pop band Via Audio.
Sunday
Singer-songwriter
Jonathan Richman, Vic Chesnutt
Radio Radio, 1119 E. Prospect St., www.futureshock.net
8 p.m., $10 advance, $12 door, 21+
A legend of early punk who shared in that movement's anger and whimsy, if not with quite as much distortion, and a woebegone Southerner who chronicles the ins and outs of depression in often baroque, verbose lines share the stage Sunday night for likely one of the finest songwriting showcases the city will see this year. If Richman's "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso" - digressive, ramshackle tunes sung by an adenoidal man-child roaming the streets and sifting through pop culture - are now considered among the best American pop songs of the last half-century, he's never really taken a break, and his work has only become more musically sophisticated while retaining a plain-spokenness and punch line-less humor. Richman reached a new generation by working in comedy, as the acoustic-guitar-carrying troubadour in There's Something About Mary. A curmudgeonly figure with a croak of a voice, Chesnutt was in town recently, playing with fellow Athens, Ga., residents Elf Power. His character sketches satisfy cerebrally as short-short stories, and his tales of addiction and loss hit where it counts.
Tuesday
Art rock
Here We Go Magic, Heavy Hometown
Radio Radio, 1119 E. Prospect St., www.futureshock.net
9 p.m., $7, 21+
Here's what NUVO's Matt Erler had to say about Here We Go Magic's opening set for Grizzly Bear June 9 in Bloomington: "They're good, and one gets the impression that Here We Go Magic could own a show as headliner. Singer Luke Temple can't offer the songwriting that Grizzly Bear songwriters Daniel Rossen or Ed Droste can, and the he doesn't have much to offer in the way of his voice - a mangled, David Byrne-esque yelp that nonetheless works for the band - but his dense, slow-burning, well-built songs were ably executed." Heavy Hometown, a trio with members living in Louisville and Indianapolis, has worked up an excellent full-length that's remarkable more for its atmospherics than songcraft, achieving a dreamy, low-fi texture that recalls early Yo La Tengo or some Pavement throwaways.
