^{"This day and age, you better be able to put on a great live show because it's really one of the ways you're going to make a name for yourself." CLICK FOR MORE PHOTOS.}

Last Friday at the House of Blues, Fitz & the Tantrums brought their soul-inflected indie pop to Boston. Right before the band's encore performance of their hit "Moneygrabber," singer/songwriter Michael "Fitz" Fitzpatrick told the audience that the band likes to get down and party -- literally.

Sound Tribe Sector 9 appeared this past Thursday at the House of Blues. With them came an ever-growing following of individuals with a shared taste in tantalizing guitar riffs, groovy baselines and a dynamic percussion section. What brewed was a fair amount of anticipation as the crowd poured into the 3-level venue to the sounds of the funky hip-hop/electro mashups of the opening act, The Polish Ambassador, who sported a neon blue and yellow jumpsuit and a pair of thick, plastic orange glasses, resembling a Derek Zoolander spin-off.

Guilty pleasures are a pain in my ass. Not necessarily my adoration for said pleasures. They wouldn't be labeled such if I didn't love them. Rather, it's explaining the rationale behind my asinine passions. I probably care too much about American Idol, drench 90 percent of all food I consume in hot sauce, and listen to far too much house and techno to be considered legally sane.

Lessons Learned

I dropped Ecstasy exactly one time. I was 17, in a crab grass-ridden field behind an elementary school, and I believed that I had somehow trapped the universe in the carton of orange juice we were passing around. When the OJ ran out, then, I decided the world would soon follow, and spent the rest of god-awful trip crying pitifully.

I can has clam? You bet.

The 2011 WFNX Clambake is now roughly 48 hours away, and the party on Lansdowne Street and the House of Blues could double up as a Bruins Stanley Cup bash as we await the black and gold's return from Vancouver (Also: parade on Friday?). Either way, both the afternoon outdoor stage and the late-night HOB stage should be off the chain, and to help you plan your Clambake properly, we jacked the set times for Thursday's party.

When DOM hit the WFNX Clambake a fortnight from tomorrow (ahem, June 16), the Worcester post-whatever-pop heroes will have a slew of fresh new jams to blast out onto Lansdowne Street. A bit unexpectedly, Astralwerks is dropping a new Dom EP, Family of Love, on August 9, roughly six months after it polished up and re-released the band’s 2010 breakthrough debut Sun Bronzed Greek Gods

Wishing Well

Mikel Jollett might be the most charming lead singer ever. What kind of she-devil would break up with this guy and leave him stumbling through the streets, drunk and alone? Scratch that. THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT might be the most charming band ever. At the very least, they're the most charismatic alt band I've seen take the stage at the HoB in quite a few months.

If you're headed to see Deftones tonight at the House of Blues, hit up the Landsowne joint on the early side to catch FUNERAL PARTY, a rising Los Angeles dance-punk band -- and pack of crazy motherfuckers -- that we hosted back at our SXSW party in March. It'll be odd to see how Funeral Party's frenetic energy translates to a older metal crowd mostly there to see the 'Tones and Dillinger Escape Plan, but either way, these dudes know how to throw it down.

"I've Seen Enough"

Walking into the COLD WAR KIDS show at the House of Blues last night initially felt a bit like finding oneself privy to an awkward first date -- where neither party knows the other particularly well (some well-meaning friends thought they might hit it off) and they're not quite convinced the whole thing wasn't a big mistake.

Phoenix cover story: Brandon Flowers and the evolution of a pop-star Killer

When Brandon Flower's dropped Flamingo back in September, I consciously took a pass on checking for it. Maybe it was the markedly vanilla single "Crossfire" that beat me into ambivalence thanks to a nearly offensive radio play frequency.

Last month, "On the Download" premiered the first MP3 from Dirty Bombs, a Voltron-esque local supergroup featuring members of Televandals, the Luxury, and Conservative Man. Their collective mechanical roar persists here with "In Every City," a blistering post-millennial rock joyride that opens like an explosion, breaking at once into its electro-disco chorus before bouncing along through seas of fuzzed-out synths and thumps while maintaining a vicious alt-rock edge.

Social Distortion is the ultimate punk rock survivor story. Death, drugs, jail, break-ups, and extended hiatuses ruined SoCal bands like The Germs and Adolescents, but somehow those same trials have made Social D stronger, evident not only in the tightness of Monday’s House of Blues show, but in the approach the group, in particular Mike Ness, has decided to take.

Editor's Note: Not much in the way of photo or video evidence of Friday and Saturday's Black Crowes shows. Apparently security was so tight at the House of Blues over the weekend, the staff were even telling fans up front to stop texting, let alone attempt to take a pic, because it distracted the band. So hey, instead of running a press shot, we'll tip our cap to YouTube user: neosurfer08, who snagged some great video of a Crowes show last month down in Cougartown USA, Orlando, Florida.

The Temper Trap-- Love Lost

Even though we couldn't get any of you interested in a free pair of Temper Trap tickets to last night's show at the House of Blues (for shame, there's a few of us over here who would take a free pair of tickets to a paint-drying exhibition if they were offered 'cause, well, they're free) I made it over there.

There are two things I learned about Broken Social Scene from their Friday night show at the House of Blues. The first is that Kevin Drew is a trouper. The closest thing BSS has to a front-man, Drew admitted to the crowd upon taking the stage that he was suffering from MSG-induced allergic reaction thanks to some bad Asian food he had eaten earlier in the day (he disclosed the culprits, but I'll spare them the negative press).