There are five—FIVE—suggestions for tonight. Who knew Wednesdays were so cool? With Smog’s Bob Callahan, alt-country re-inventors the Sadies, Magik Markers, and more, there’s a little something for everyone.

BILL CALLAHAN (FORMERLY SMOG), SIR RICHARD BISHOP
(Triple Door) In “To Be of Use,” Bill Callahan crooned, “Most of my fantasies are of making someone else come.” I always admired the song’s lonesome, generous nature until I found out he was dating the love of my life, Joanna Newsom. Suddenly, Callahan was actualizing my fantasies as well as his own, and it made me want to sick up all over. I felt like he was my admired college professor, tall and handsome with a deep voice and published work, and he was dating the most beautiful and intelligent girl in my class, thus denying all of us her age the chance to woo her. Every day I’d curse Professor Callahan behind his back; I detested him, but I would trade places with him in an instant. That lucky bastard. Hear me now, Bill Callahan: Someday, somehow, I will take that which you hold most dear. JEFF KIRBY

THE SADIES, CHUCKANUT DRIVE, THE BELTHOLES
(Tractor) Used to be the Sadies were frontrunners in the barely lucrative world of country genre amalgamation. But as the Toronto band near the decade mark, their roots/rockabilly/blues/boogie/whatever has been copped by too many kids who think the term “alt-country” actually means something. Perhaps that’s why brothers Dallas and Travis Good accept the role as genre statesmen on their latest studio album, New Seasons, on which they rein in their trademark yip ‘n’ howl romps to focus on their songwriting craft. The subdued, tempered result sounds like a Jayhawks record for the most part, but the band’s vigor is still plenty apparent on psych-country numbers like “A Simple Aspiration,” which means the band’s reputation for hootin’, hollerin’, guitars-blazin’ concerts should still be intact. SAM MACHKOVECH

FILM SCHOOL, THE HUGS, EULOGIES
(Crocodile) Film School are the perfect companions for your nostalgia trip to the early ’90s, when bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Slowdive made every day feel rainy and every heart feel broken. The California band builds on that shoegaze sound, twisting guitar lines ever more tightly around each other, embracing the cool/desperate dichotomy, and reveling in the glorious darkness of it all. It sounds old and new at the same time. Lead singer Greg Bertens picked up a new bassist (Lorelei Plotczyk), guitarist (Dave Dupuis), and drummer (erstwhile Seattleite James Smith) for the new album, Hideout, and the result is majestic, atmospheric, and downright beautiful. And it certainly is fun to glance backward now and then to that heady time when feeling bad felt oh so good. CHRIS McCANN

FUJIYA & MIYAGI, DIRTY ON PURPOSE, PROJECT JENNY, PROJECT JAN
(Neumo’s) Fujiya & Miyagi are actually three pale Brits—Steve Lewis, David Best, and Matt Hainsby—with a knack for taut Krautrockin’ grooves, coolly whispered vocals (“We were just pretending to be Japanese”), and moments of inexplicable but infectious white-boy funk. Their third album, 2006’s Transparent Things, is full of deadly creepers, songs that begin as mellow nods then quietly grow into irresistibly propulsive jams—before you know it, you’re busting all the stiff, lame moves that the phrase “white-boy funk” invokes. Dirty on Purpose are an inoffensive, occasionally grand vanilla rock quartet from Brooklyn with some pretty cute music videos. Project Jenny, Project Jan are in fact two dudes—Sammy Rubin and Jeremy Haines, also from Brooklyn—whose genre-skimming, sample-heavy pop, studied rapping and scatting, and weak electronica is just fucking awful. Arrive late. ERIC GRANDY

MAGIK MARKERS, I’M A GUN
(Sunset) The selling point for Boss, the new LP from East Coast noise nerds Magik Markers, is that it’s their first with actual precomposed songs. Let’s face it, that’s hilarious. After trimming down to a duo, the band forsook the unrelenting sonic violence of their infancy for a crisp postpunk/pop approach that still swarms with the same tensions under a (relatively) conventional surface. Guitarist Elisa Ambrogio’s icy vocals consider desire’s destructive hunger, while drummer/multi-instrumentalist Pete Nolan draws from his cobwebbed solo project Spectre Folk to fill the remaining space with buzz, creak, and hiss. Taking this leap into linear songsmithery could be the boldest step possible for a band so identified with improvisatory sound. Such maverick spirit suggests Magik Markers might be capable of anything. FRED BELDIN