If you’re unfamiliar with the notion of the exquisite corpse, it’s a drawing game based on collective effort.

Britney Spears may just be a genius.

Some say the Black Lips don’t take mantras too seriously.

Listening to Devendra Banhart’s new album is sort of like reading an epic in a language that you don’t understand.

Conor Oberst has always been a man about mythology. Not only has he played the figurative deceiver with stories of drowned brothers, endless detox stints, and the parallels between mental degeneration and time travel, he’s also been granted the unique position of rewriting American tradition in his own image.

Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino are the quintessential “cutesy” dance-pop duo. They smile broad, innocent smiles when on stage. They swap knowing looks when pounding out their cooperatively written songs about things looking up and credos of “yeah yeah.” And they create music videos about homicidal dance parties reaching maximum dance fervor in an ecstasy of severed body parts.

Hearing the voice of self-proclaimed “un-DJ” Girl
Talk (real name: Gregg Gillis) discuss his views on the legitimacy
of music sampling as a higher art form by using Ying Yang
Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song)” overlapped on
top of a peppy techno beat may make one skeptical, and even more so
when the song segues into the Verve’s “Bittersweet
Symphony” seconds later.

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, The Blood
Brothers
Thursday, Nov. 30
Henry Fonda Theater
If you’d like to picture the Blood Brothers and …And You
Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead show, think of a sedimentary
layer containing all sorts of fossilized human bones and odd-sized
uranium blow-up dolls.

Plus/Minus Tonight 9 p.m. Spaceland, $8
Plus/Minus doesn’t like fast food. They won’t touch
the stuff as though it represented some homogenized evil.
As the mathematically polemic band journeys west to Los Angeles,
it seems the only thing it s members are desperately jonesing for
is another dose of mom-and-pop cuisine to satisfy their travel
sickness.