[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them — and, really, wouldn’t we all want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a guy named Rocky O’Reilly?]

Neon Neon, “Stainless Style” (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era’s dancefloor vacuousness comes … an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop — this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. “Stainless Style” is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, “Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It” (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O’Reilly walks a tightrope — to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on “The Never Never”), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. … Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast’s Spaceland residency. … Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, “Here’s to Being Here,” headlines the Troubadour. … At the Roxy, it’s the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. … The Chapin Sisters‘ residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose “Really Real for Forever” (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

– Kevin Bronson

Here’s the video for These New Puritans’ single, “Elvis” (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Stylish, understated (and hard-to-Google) L.A. singer-songwriter AM marks the release of his new duets EP, “Side by Side” (a mix of covers and originals, and the first in a planned series), with a show at Hotel Café on Tuesday. Meiko, Susie Suh, Julianna Raye and Buddy are among the CD collaborators expected to show up for a song or two.

Also on the bill tonight at the Hotel: Canadian Matthew Good, whose latest album, “Hospital Music,” has been nominated for a Juno.

Highlights for Tuesday, March 11

With the whole music world seemingly headed for the South by Southwest Music Festival, a couple of Austin-bound British bands play Eastside club shows: Liverpool trio the Wombats (a slightly court-jesterish version of the Libertines or Arctic Monkeys) play Spaceland, while new Columbia signees the Ting Tings, the hooky electro duo whose “Great DJ” single has already been made greater by Calvin Harris’ remix (hmm), play the Jensen Rec Center.

– Frank Farrar, Kevin Bronson

Photo by Bryony Shearmur

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band’s 50-minute foray saved the evening — even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn’t resist a swipe at Cave’s middle-aged fans — just you wait, Matt Le May, you’ll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I’ve been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can’t imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you’ll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there’s a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I’d already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried — Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album’s title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I’m delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

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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.

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.

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

There’s something more than a little dorky about the whole neo-rockabilly genre. It’s most popular incarnations, psychobilly and horrorbilly (both terms are difficult to type with a straight face) are the silliest by far, amping up and gamely aping trends pioneered nearly 30 years ago by the far-more-innovative Cramps and Meteors. Spider web tattoos, mile-high pompadours and tongue-in-cheek ‘tude are the distinguishing characteristics of current bands such as Nekromantix, Mad Sin and the insufferable Horrorpops, whose borrowed look and sound already seem dated and corny.

Real rockabilly is more of a state of mind than a fashion statement. It’s as basic as the blues, a sweaty, switchblade-wielding, gin-fueled primal yelp that is one of the backbones of modern rock ‘n’ roll. Although rooted in a style that first made the scene more than 50 years ago, it doesn’t have to be a hollow nostalgia trip. That’s why it was such a joy to stumble across one of the best new rockabilly acts on wax, located right here in our own backyard – in the San Fernando Valley, to be exact.

Luis and the Wildfires, a Latino four-piece with a raw sound that harks back to the simple purity of hillbilly rockers like Hayden Thompson and Johnny Carroll, bursts with energy and style without getting in-your-face about it. Sure, they sport pompadours and ’50s threads, and charismatic frontman Luis Arriaga wields his acoustic guitar Elvis-style, but they also play unfiltered, straight-ahead rockabilly music that burns all the way down like a double shot of Kentucky bourbon. Enough so to catch the ear of distinguished R&B label Norton Records, which recently released their debut LP, “Brain Jail,” a jumpin’ collection of tight, catchy numbers that are fun and dangerous simultaneously, a cocktail that is generally lost to the current crop of rockabilly pretenders. First released on CD by cool local rockabilly revival label Wild Records, the vinyl version contains two bonus cuts previously unavailable.

–Jason Gelt

Catch them live tonight at the Westchester Bar and Grill.

Photo: Wild Records

The Magnanimous Collector, aka Jason Gelt, has 2,500 LPs, 45s and 10-inches. In true collector-nerd style, he once calculated that he could spin different records nonstop for more than 65 days. He collects R&B, soul, rockabilly, psychedelic, ’60s garage, bubblegum, Jamaican ska, old country, exotica, novelty records, lots and lots of ’70s, ’80s and beyond punk rock, and garage rock. In short, he is open — nay, open-hearted — to everything. For at least one spin, anyway…

Mezzanine Owls might have the most passive-aggressive sound around.

Front man Jack Burnside sings woundedly, tossing around snippets of imagery that could have come from a dog-eared journal, while trading twitchy, fuzzed-out guitar lines with Jonathan Zeitlin. Atop the churning rhythms laid out by bassist Dan Horne and drummer Pauline Mu, the results can be otherworldly. “It’s not like you make a conscious choice — you sing it the way it feels to you,” Burnside says. “Sometimes it becomes its own reality.”

That concept plays out in the song/metaphor “Snow Globe,” an insular three minutes of fury off the L.A. quartet’s new EP. The release, a vinyl 7-incher with a four-song digital download (on a new imprint, Jaxart, spun off the local Rock Insider blog), follows last year’s Owls debut, “Slingshot Echoes.” Both were recorded in Athens, Ga., with Andy LeMaster (the man behind Now It’s Overhead who also has collaborated with Bright Eyes and Azure Ray, among others). “We tried to be true to what we sound like live,” Burnside says.

The Owls’ local shows have proven enough of a hoot to win them fans among the shoegaze-pop followers of bands such as the Jesus and Mary Chain and Ride, as well as a fan or two closer to home. Burnside’s mother weighed in after a recent show: “She said we sounded apocalyptic,” he says. “How cool is that?”

||| Live: Mezzanine Owls play the Echo tonight with Eagle & Talon, Frankel and the Mae Shi.

||| Download: “Snow Globe.”

Photo by Timothy Norris

Other highlights for tonight, Feb. 28

The Walkmen and the Delta Spirit perform as part of the indie rock series at the Orange County Performing Artscenter’s Samueli Theatre. … Taken by Trees (ex-Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman) plays the Roxy. … British Sea Power winds up its two-night L.A. stand with a show at Spaceland. … The Vacation finishes up its residency at the Viper Room, with Run Run Run also playing .. And Tulsa, along with What Made Milwaukee Famous, plays the Silverlake Lounge.

– Kevin Bronson

Human Giant, MTV’s sketch comedy troupe, are Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel. A couple years ago, when these guys were just messing around in Brooklyn, they released some viral videos that got sent to seemingly everyone who’s ever illegally downloaded blog-band-of-the-moment. One video showed Ansari bumming out Manhattanites with embarrassingly bad songs blasting from a boombox; another video took a Pitchfork-perfect shot at the pretentious, hierarchical thinking of many indie rockers.

Their smart but laidback work has caught on: Human Giant’s second season on MTV debuts March 11, and the trio sold out their three-night stand in L.A. at the Upright Citizens Brigade. They’ve performed, collectively or solo, at music fests around the country, including Bonnaroo, SXSW and Coachella. I talked to them while they were in Telluride, Colo., for the city’s comedy festival.
– Margaret Wappler

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A Cursive Memory are four kids from the San Pedro area who are having a boatload of fun. That’s the best way to describe “Changes,” their album that was released today on Vagrant. Reminds me of the O.C. band Hellogoodbye. The band’s album release show is tonight at Chain Reaction. Their video for “Everything” shows what happens when they mix it up in Tinseltown. Watch it here.

Highlights for Tuesday, Feb. 19

My immediate impression of “Alone Feels Like a Hotel Room,” new from the Kris Special, is that the L.A. trio has a tank full of Americana and the pedal to the metal. Anne Pointer’s vocals sound like a slightly less syrupy Jenny Lewis, and this record (which has producer Raymond Richards’ fingerprints on it) has some killer lap and pedal steel. Cool stuff. The record release show is tonight at the Echo (with the Harpeth Trace also playing) …. Everest leads a nice trio of local bands for Radio Free Silver Lake’s show at Boardner’s in Hollywood. … In the bigger rooms, the Hives and the Donnas rock the Wiltern; and Keren Ann, Dean & Britta and Sara Lov are at the El Rey.

– Kevin Bronson