Reunion fever’s going around and Will Call’s got it.

First, one of the great non-grunge bands of the 1990s is back together for the first time in nearly a decade — Swervedriver. With all due respect to My Bloody Valentine and Ride, it was this Creation Records quartet that really blew the lid off the shoegazing movement. These guys were about more than just wall-of-sound guitars and shimmering production; they had amazing, almost orchestral songs and an innovative lyrical style. Two screwed-up record deals in a row led to things fizzling out. But the group is giving it another whirl and will be appearing at the Music Box @ Fonda on May 31. And if the reunited band sounds anything like front man Adam Franklin’s latest solo album, “Bolts of Melody,” it’ll be beautiful. Run, do not walk, to get your tickets Saturday.

If that weren’t enough good news, another great and underappreciated group will be making a comeback — this one after a hiatus of 25 years — Yaz. If you remember the group’s 1982 album “Upstairs at Eric’s,” you know that Yaz was more than just a way-station between keyboardist-programmer Vince Clarke’s departure from Depeche Mode and his launch of Erasure. With Alison Moyet’s bluesy vocals on top of Clarke’s warped synth lines, it was one of the coolest unions of man and machine since Steve Austin. Anyway, with the dance-rock movement they helped spawn in full swing, tickets for their two-night stand at the Orpheum Theatre –  July 10-11 — should go fast, so don’t sleep in too late Saturday when they go on sale.

From the ’90s and ’80s, we go to the ’70s and ’60s (and even ’50s) for another reunion of sorts — this one of some of the great rock ‘n’ roll, soul and R&B artists that put out records on Stax. As hip as Motown in its early days and racially integrated before the country was, the chic Memphis, Tenn.-based label went out of business in 1975 but relaunched recently under the auspices of Concord Records. The campaign’s timed to the 50th anniversary of Stax’s founding and comes complete with a celebratory concert featuring four of the artists from the old roster: Isaac Hayes, Booker T. & the MGs, William Bell and Mable John. They’ll be playing the Nokia Theatre on April 13, and you can get your tickets on (you guessed it) Saturday. This should be a treat. Where else can you expect to hear “Shaft” live?

– Liam Gowing

Yaz photo courtesy of Bill Silva Presents

The guys in Rooney lost more than a videographer when Brandon Schantz died in December. They lost a friend, whose sensibility and skills helped the L.A.-based quintet’s music shine on-screen.

Schantz, who died at age 27 from a rare form of lymphoma, will be saluted at the Roxy on Thursday night, when Rooney is joined by Brett Dennen, Lisa Donnelly and others for a benefit performance. Proceeds from the evening will go toward establishing the Brandon Schantz Memorial Endowment in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Texas.

“Brendan was an incredible friend and a very talented producer,” says Rooney’s manager, Kevin Dobski. “He also had a passion for live music.”

Schantz worked on the band’s videos for the songs “I Should Have Been After You” and “Are You Afraid,” as well as a behind-the-scenes promotional video. “Brandon and I shared office space. After he started doing some things for the band, the guys really liked the way they turned out and just kind of took to him,” Dobski says. “Even after he was diagnosed [in March 2007] and had surgery to remove a tumor [in October], he kept coming to work.”

The show begins at 7 p.m., and tickets are $25.

Photo by Autumn DeWilde

Highlights for Wednesday, March 5

The Duke Spirit, with a possible breakthrough album “Neptune” coming out in the U.S. on April 8, plays the Echo tonight. …  Howlin Rain, joined by the Moon Upstairs, performs at Spaceland. … The Autumns show off their new material at the Knitting Factory. … And a great bill at the Silverlake Lounge includes Hello Dragon, the Black Kites and the Hard to Get (celebrating the release of “This Is the New Business Plan”).

– Kevin Bronson

I nearly threw up in my mouth a little this morning. I opened a package from Warner Brothers, thinking they might just make my day with Ashford & Simpson’s “Hits, Remixes & Rarities.” But upon closer inspection of this double disc, I noticed something. Their signature song (and only No. 1 hit on the R&B charts), “Solid,” is nowhere to be found on either disc.

What kind of sick, twisted world are we living in when a best of A&S comp doesn’t include “Solid?” Would you release Prince’s greatest hits without “Purple Rain”? How about a remix disc by Sade missing “Smooth Operator”? Didn’t think so.

I don’t care what kind of music publishing behind-the-scenes scenario went down here, and I know the offering is subtitled “The Warner Bros. Years,” but Warner Music (via Rhino) got “Solid” the last time they put out a greatest-hits package in 2002. What gives, guys? Next time, do the fans a “solid” and get a decent remix added to the package. That said, we are feelin’ the “Over and Over” remix and the “Found a Cure” mix.

– Charlie Amter

Photo by Rick Rowell / ABC Inc.

The Police, with Elvis Costello and the Imposters, have added a second show at the Hollywood Bowl. With the bill’s May 27 date sold out, the added show will go off on May 28. Tickets ($304.50, $154.50, $99.50 and $54.50) go on sale at 10 a.m. Sunday.

It’ll make for a busy week for veteran rock acts at the Bowl — the Police/Costello on Tuesday and Wednesday, R.E.M. (which does not appear on the Bowl’s calendar but is listed on the band’s tour itinerary) on Thursday (May 29) and the Cure on Saturday (May 31).

–Kevin Bronson

Photo of Sting and Andy Summers in Tokyo by Toru Yamanaka /AFP/Getty Images.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups‘ video for “Little Lover’s So Polite” had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it’s already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera — Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake’s favorite local band. The star of “Walk the Line.” The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It’s just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that’s driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

– Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

Earlimart’s announcement this morning on its MySpace website couldn’t have come as more of a surprise — the band has a new album finished and slated for release on July 1.

“It’s done, in the can and delivered,” front man Aaron Espinoza says of “Hymn & Her,” which will be released on Majordomo (an imprint of Shout! Factory) less than a year after the group’s first album for that imprint, August’s “Mentor Tormentor.” “We just want to be relentless, keep making stuff.”

“Mentor Tormentor” was more than two years in the making, but after touring behind that record, Espinoza got together with principal collaborator Ariana Murray. “I told her, ‘It’s just you and me, we’re going to get an engineer, reserve the studio and record 10 songs.’ … We didn’t want to do the whole wait-three-years-to-make-another-record thing,” he says.

The engineer was versatile multi-instrumentalist Andrew Lynch, who also plays keyboards and brass on the album, the band’s sixth. “He’s a talented dude,” Espinoza says. “We’re lucky to have him.”

No new songs posted yet, but I’ll let you know.

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Another local note: Silversun Pickups debuted their new, Joaquin Phoenix-directed video for “Little Lover’s So Polite” on MTV2. You can check it out here.

Photo of Earlimart’s Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray by Darrin Noble

– Kevin Bronson

My smarty-pal Karen Tongson is not only a first-class scholar and theorist who rocks the classroom at USC, but she also knows how to throw a party, complete with umbrella cocktails and a karaoke machine. Tongson’s part of a new wave of pop-loving academics uncovering alternate histories in the corners where mass culture meets the underground — I’ve seen her wax profound (and hilarious) on topics ranging from queer East L.A. to “straight boy emo” to “Make It Real,” the 1980s hit by Tongan family band the Jets. She and her fellow “Ph Divas” Christine Bacareza Balance and Alexandra Vasquez dish the deep thoughts at my daily read, Oh! Industry, and Karen also maintains Inland Emperor, a chronicle of her explorations of queer suburban identity, which she’ll eventually publish in book form.

The suburbs are the subject this evening, when Karen hosts a listening party at L.A.C.E., co-sponsored by the Popular Music Project at the Norman Lear Center at USC. I’m not sure what to expect, but I’ll bet it enlightens me about what’s really happening in the malls and backyards of Riverside.

And the TV rooms: On her blog, Karen offers some tantalizing clips from the crazy ’80s variety show “Solid Gold” as a preview. Elvis Costello! Expose! So come and wallow in the New Wave.

–Ann Powers

Suburbs: A Listening Party, at L.A.C.E., 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 957-1777. 7 p.m. today. $5.

Mike Conley, the owner of Costa Mesa’s Avalon bar, died in Chicago last Thursday. He was also the frontman of 1980s punk band M.I.A., which caught the ears of Mike Watt and Jello Biafra, who signed the band to his Alternative Tentacles label. Check here for MP3s such as “I Hate Hippies” and a history of the band. Detroit Bar will host a memorial for Conley on Sunday at 6 p.m. To make donations to support Conley’s family, go here.

Crystal Castles has canceled select dates of its tour, including a stop in Los Angeles at the Roxy on Sunday. Turns out lead singer Alice Glass suffered two cracked ribs in a recent car accident and she’s got to mend. She’ll be back at it in time for the band’s SXSW showing. But, for those who want to keep their appointment with noise, Health will still do its bangy, scorchy, melty thing Sunday. Update: Oops, no Health on Sunday after all, according to a Roxy spokesperson. The show has been postponed entirely and rescheduled for later, possibly in June.

– Margaret Wappler

Photo courtesy of mikeconleyfamilyfund.com

Your daily six-degrees-of-Rilo Kiley round-up: Women’s Wear Daily is reporting that guitarist Blake Sennett has finally passed the penultimate indie-dude coming-of-age ritual and is getting hitched to Winona Ryder. Us Weekly is denying the claim. The two are definitely starring in an upcoming film called “Water Pill.” Jenny Lewis is making an album with Elvis Costello and Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes, whom you heard from last week. We just want some CornNuts. BQ.

– August Brown

Photo by New World Pictures

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British ’80s crusty-heroes Crass. He’s toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let’s all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I’ll bring the flask.

– Margaret Wappler