Indie Rock

MUSIC The gauzy New Jersey group Real Estate revives '90s indie rock with a modern, hazy spin. With the excellent dub-noise act Sun Araw. Fonda Theatre, 6126 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fri. $20. fondatheatre.com.

A blunderbuss is an early shotgun. You could put anything inside its horn-like muzzle - broken glass, nails, rocks, metal scraps - though a lead ball was preferred. The makeshift ammo would spray a short but lethal distance. American revolutionaries and explorers favored blunderbusses, as did buccaneers. "A romantic bust/ A blunder turned/ Explosive blunderbuss," Jack White sings on "Blunderbuss," the haunting title track from his stunning first solo album. "Blunderbuss" premiered at No. 1 upon its April release.

I was already formulating an apology to Indie Rock Tennis co-founder Bryan Chenault as I arrived at West Hollywood's Plummer Park a good 15 minutes late. I needn't have worried. "Perfect," he said, as I stepped onto the court. "You're the first one here."

Indie rock isn't just about alienation and experimentation. It can be lovable, too. And the band Beulah inhabits the warmer, tuneful side of the combative genre, more pure pop than confrontation. The San Francisco sextet maintained indie rock's inherent toughness at Spaceland on Tuesday, but with a commitment to chiming melodies and droll humor that inched toward light '60s pop music, blissfully colliding the worlds of Pavement and Burt Bacharach.

San Francisco's Imperial Teen and funkmaster bassist Thundercat will be among the artists drawing porkpie-hatted connoisseurs of electronic music, indie rock and a grab-bag of other genres to the 14th annual Eagle Rock Music Festival, Saturday, Oct. 6 from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. More than 70 bands and DJs spread across 11 different themed stages and spaces will converge on Colorado Boulevard between Argus Drive and Eagle Rock Boulevard for the event,...

Rock 'n' roll is to the Kibitz Room at Canter's what onions are to chopped liver. The two have been closely aligned since the little bar opened just off the beloved Fairfax Avenue deli's annex dining room in 1961. Only now, instead of a bunch of hippies and musicians like Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison hanging out there for the cheap booze and meaty sandwiches, you'll find a bunch of hipsters and indie rock musicians hanging out there for the cheap booze and meaty sandwiches. So things have changed, but not that much.

Indie rock is certainly on a roll. With such products of the scene as Bright Eyes and Arcade Fire getting huge media exposure and even selling some records, this alternative to the major-label system has become an increasingly viable, thriving place for bands to develop and prosper. Given that flowering, it was easy to imagine a delegation of prominent indie musicians assembling at the Henry Fonda Theatre on Tuesday to bow down in gratitude before the evening's headliner, Paul Westerberg.

Various artists "NE vs. NC: Nebraska vs. North Carolina" (Redemption) ** 1/2 A RIVALRY is a dangerous thing to start, even for art's sake. After all, what kind of beef could exist between the alternative rock musics of Nebraska and North Carolina -- who can be the most emo? Well, it wasn't a question before, but now it is. The first in a planned series of compilation albums from Beverly Hills' Redemption Records pitting scene against scene, "NE vs. NC: Nebraska vs.

When Luke Jenner heard what would later become his band's underground hit, "House of Jealous Lovers," the 27-year-old lead singer for the Rapture didn't like it. "I hated it for the first year it came out. It didn't sound finished. It didn't feel right to me," Jenner said of the song, a post-punk dance track that throws hand claps, cowbells and samples of a screaming audience into the mix. Released in the U.K.