SNL + Dave Grohl + Hardcore = Rules.

(If the good folks at NBC’s legal department decide to be “the man” and take this video down, you can find it at The Audio Perv)

Brooklyn trio School of Seven Bells are a part of a nu-dreampop movement that is slowly snaking its way through indie rock again.  These guys make like Chapterhouse but far more seductive.  School of Seven Bells play Emo’s in Austin Thursday night along with indie rock favorites The Walkmen and Blitezen Trapper.

The Minus Five.  This is what R.E.M. sideman/Young Fresh Fellows frontman Scott McCaughey likes to do for fun, balls-out goofball garage rock along with fellow R.e.M. alumni Peter Buck and Bill Rieflin.  The Minus Five make a double bill with Steve Wynn V, the new solo vehicle for the former Dream Syndicate frontman, and both are playing at the Continental Club in Austin Thursday night.

Them Crooked Vultures might be the most hotly anticipated supergroup in years (discounted the horribly underwhelming Chickenfoot).  The band features Queens of the Stone Ager Josh Homme on guitar & vox, Led Zeppelin multi-instrumentalist on bass and backing vox and Foo Fighter/Nirvana highlight Dave Grohl on the drums.  This band is shit-fucking hot and really the number one reason to make an Austin roadtrip this weekend.  You can see them at ACL (more on that later) or you can catch them in a small club at Stubb’s in Austin Thursday night.

I just don’t get Pearl Jam.  I never really have.  I kinda like some of Ten but that’s pretty much it.  Sounded like commerce to me then.  Now…well, it just sounds boring.  But I know so many folks whose opinions I value who totally love PJ and apparently they are still so much the live draw that they are headlining this year’s Austin City Limits Festival in Zilker Park Friday through Sunday.  Other notables onstage include Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Kings of Leon, Thievery Corporation, Mos Def, Lily Allen, The Decemberists, Flogging Molly, Dave Matthews Band, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, The Raveonettes, Them Crooked Vultures, Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, The Dead Weather, The B-52′s, Passion Pit, Girl Talk, Clutch, The Arctic Monkeys and so many, many others.  Full line-up at http://www.aclfestival.com/default.aspx

Koldus Plaza at Texas A&M University plays host to live indie rock at lunchtime courtesy of the Lunchbox Series.  This week’s installment features The Always Already.

Get an insane amount of modern metal on one stage without leaving the city limits AND help out a good cause at the same time.  Friday night the Stafford in Bryan plays host to Beat The Hell Outta Breast Cancer benefit show featuring Within Chaos, Zero & Falling, A Theory On Conquest, Primal, Die Among Heroes, Convicted of Treason, Hellen Keller Fist Fight and Painfilled Silent.

The Raveonettes strip down their greaser indie pop to its essentials, banging out their updated ’60s girl pop.  The Raveonettes play The Parish in Austin Friday night and the ACL festival.

The overwrought daisy-English prog of The Decemberists will ring out the rafters of House of Blues in Houston Friday night and at ACL.  Opening Friday is Seattle piano pop chanteuse Laura Veirs & The Hall of Flames.

Beach House have a lazy, languid and druggy take on ’60s adult and French pop.  The trio open for indie rock sensation du jour Grizzly Bear at Emo’s in Austin Friday night.  Both bands also play ACL.

Too many electronica artists consider performing live as taking a few decks and effects and tweaking knobs while their records play.  Thievery Corporation basically turns their sets into gigantic be-ins.  Be in on it too when they play Stubb’s in Austin Friday night, Tuesday at House of blues in Houston and later at ACL.

Philadelphia hip-hop legends The Roots come up offa Jimmy Fallon’s set and bring their live hip-hop on the road to The Corinthian in Houston along with once very gifted and now sorta marginal MC Common.

Don’t even front.  In 1991 you know this shit ripped.  Now…well, Moby can still bring it live even if his albums aren’t quite as exciting.  Moby will rock Warehouse Live in Houston Saturday night.

The Arctic Monkeys.  Yawn.  Remember when these dudes were hot shit way back in the olden days of 2005?  That’s like before Christ in teh Internetz timeline.  The blogosphere giveth and the blogosphere taketh away.  The Arctic Monkeys play House of Blues in Houston Saturday and also at ACL.

Glen Campbell is on a roll these days, with the critical acclaim of last year’s Rick Rubin-produced album Meet Glen Campbell which pretty much did for him what Rubin has done consistently for legends like Johnny Cash and Donovan: make them relavent to modern audiences.  Glen and company play the Stafford Centre in Houston Saturday night and you better believe he’ll play “Galveston”.

It’s your last chance to catch local power punk rock outfit The Hangouts before the head off on tour.  Along for the ride are local indie rockers The Ex-Optimists and Austin post-punk space pop band Vast Massive Satellite.

Cutesy electronica gimmick-turned-serious band Ghostland Observatory play Stubb’s in Austin Sunday night and at ACL.

Every good artist has one awesome album in them.  Sometimes you labor for it, sometimes it just kinda falls out when you’re holed up in a cabin somewhere snowbound in a Midwest winter.  And that’s how it happened for Bon Iver when he got chick-induced angst in a jar with his For emma, Forever Ago album last year.  Bon Iver performs those songs and others at Paramount Theater in Austin Sunday night and at ACL.

Yeah, I got nothing good to say so I won’t even bother.  Rob Thomas and One Republic play Verizon Wireless Theatre in Houston Sunday night.

Old school skater thrash courtesy of Havok graces this week’s Metal Monday at The Stafford in Bryan, along with Hatchet.

Scottish indie rockers Snow Patrol went from quiet sweater-clad twee indie pop a la Belle & Sebastian to chest-beating indie rock several years back to, sadly, bloated and overwrought with last year’s A Thousand Suns.  Tis sad, because I think their previous two albums were pretty awesome for commercial alt-rock.  Snow Patrol play Warehouse Live in Houston Monday night and Stubb’s in Austin Tuesday night.  The Plain White T’s open so you can show up late.

Tennessee quartet Kings of Leon started out interestingly enough as a bizarre fusion of southern rock, AC/DC and Nuggets-era garage rock, but then somehow discovered The Strokes and took more than a handful of pointers from tourmates U2 and very quickly shed the twang for chime and someone took the marbles from Caleb Followill’s mouth and then, lo and behold, you get Top Ten hits like “Use Somebody”.  I liked Kings of Leon 1.0 much better.  I am definitely in the minority though.  KoL play Toyota Center in Houston Tuesday night.

I nearly splooged in my shorts when I read the rumour last summer that Seattle indie rock band Sunny Day Real Estate were reforming with their original members and intended to tour, performing only music from their hugely influential first two albums.  Now that tour is a reality and SDRE make their way through Texas this week, making a stop in Houston Tuesday night at Warehouse Live and Wednesday night in Austin at La Zona Rosa (where yers truly will probably weep openly when they dig into “Sometimes”, the closing track on 1994′s Diary).

When SDRE fell off the map and began to explore prog rock Seattle trio Pedro the Lion took up the mantle of tortured quasi-Christian indie rock.  Eventually the band broke up as Pedro frontman David Bazan took to the stage solo.  His most recent album Curse Your Branches has Bazan rocking with a band again and beginning to seriously question his spirituality.  Bazan and crew play The Mohawk in Austin Wednesday with Say Hi opening.  It’s a Seattle fest.

The Sounds.  An unholy combination of Blondie pluck and vapid 2000′s ghostwriter pop-rock let loose in Hot Topic’s closet.  They play House of Blues in Houston Wednesday night.

Alright closet Juggalos.  Steal yer mom’s make-up, grab the Faygo and get your ass to Warehouse Live in Houston Wednesday night and party down with Insane Clown Posse.

’90s modern rock has-beens Seven Mary Three play the Scout Bar in Clear Lake Wednesday night.