Perhaps they're not quite Johnny Cash and June Carter, but the husband-and-wife team of Buddy and Julie Miller come as close as anyone active today. He may be the toast of Nashville's intellectual class -- a valued sideman for Emmylou Harris and Victoria Williams, raved about by Steve Earle -- but he also has the ear of country music's commercial heart, having been covered by the Dixie Chicks and Brooks & Dunn. As a solo act he's a critical fave, and so is his wife, Julie, a former Christian-contemporary singer and an equally potent songwriter. She handles most of the writing on their fabulous Buddy and Julie Miller (Hightone), which after a string of celebrated solo albums by each of them marks the first time they've been co-billed. Listening to the disc, you might find it hard to believe that "Forever Has Come to an End" (with harmony vocals by Emmylou) and "Rock Salt and Nails" were written at the end, rather than in the first third, of the 20th century; and their "You Make My Heart Beat Too Fast" is the kind of AC/DC-fied country rock Ryan Adams didn't quite come up with on Gold. Buddy and Julie have the sort of unforced intimacy in their singing that could come only from an unusual partnership, and the happy couple show up for a couple New England stops this weekend. On Saturday, they're at Johnny D's (617-776-2004) in Somerville's Davis Square, with Barrence Whitfield and Hillbilly Voodoo opening. On Sunday they're at the Iron Horse Music Hall (413-584-0610) in Northampton.

Who needs human cloning? In the Petri dish of modern rock, any band achieving even moderate success can be assured of the prompt arrival of at least several carbon copies. Case in point: Hoobastank. They've been friends with Incubus for a long time, and one of them used to roadie for Incubus. They made a record with a guy who produced Incubus and then they toured with Incubus, and one of the nicer things people have said about Hoobastank is that their single is an even better Incubus single than the one Incubus put out this last time around. Hoobastank play Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (401-272-5876) in Providence on Wednesday and the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge next Thursday, January 10.

With the name of his mid-'90s group now also the title of a bazillion-dollar computer-animated children's movie -- we're talking Shrek here -- could the well-respected avant-jazz/fusion guitarist Marc Ribot make a Disney crossover album? Not this millennium: Ribot, best known for his associations with Tom Waits and Elvis Costello, and more recently for his foray into Cuban music, just released one of the few major-label albums, Saints (Atlantic), you're likely to see featuring covers of John Zorn and Albert Ayler. Ribot plays at Johnny D's next Thursday, January 10; at the Narrows Center for the Arts (508-324-1926) in Fall River next Friday, January 11; and at Club Helsinki (413-528-6308) in Great Barrington next Saturday, January 12.