Emerging once again as ground zero for punk-disco queens, scab-noise gutterbugs, and garage-punk revivalists, New York City hasn't been this relevant to indie rock since, well, since the Daydream Nation-era Sonic Youth ruled the downtown roost. Of course, Kim and Thurston are ex-pats now, having relocated to the wilds of Northampton. But they're bringing the new stars of their old stomping grounds to their new home town on Friday for a show at the Calvin Theater (413-584-1444), where the openers are Liars -- children of the grave running rampant over terrain once held dear by ESG, James Chance, and Pussy Galore -- and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, whose frontwoman might be the uncanniest art-punk sex bomb since, uh, Kim Gordon. Then SY travel to Providence, home of the greatest art-disco/sleaze-noise rock scene in the world, where they're joined by the brontosauran bass/drum improv duo Lightning Bolt and incorrigible keyboard terrorists Black Dice at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (401-272-5876) on Saturday.

When SY toured with Nirvana in The Year Punk Broke, the Aussie guys in the Vines were still in knickers -- but they were paying attention, and if their Highly Evolved (Capitol) does nothing but send you racing to the stores for the new Nirvana best-of, they'll have served a noble function. Headlining MTV2's "Handpicked" tour with labelmates the Music, they're at Lupo's on Friday and at the Webster Theatre (860-246-8001) in Hartford on Saturday.

More than a decade after the dreaded grunge implosion, the Pacific Northwest continues to produce some of the most warped musical exports in the nation. Oregon's the Epoxies do one of the wiggiest impressions of an '80s-synthpunk outfit we've heard since the Servotron and Supernova discs of the mid '90s. Their stage garb makes 'em look like the bastard children of the Rezillos and Devo, but their music is more into the bubblegum hooks of one-hit-wonder new wave -- there's at least as much Toni Basil and Kim Wilde as Poly Styrene in Roxy Epoxy's sugar-coated yelp. See them on Tuesday at Flywheel (413-527-9800) in Easthampton; next Friday, November 29, at the Met Café (401-861-2142) in Providence; and next Saturday, November 30 at Start! at the Paradise (617-562-8800) in Boston.

Get Hustle are from the same town -- Portland -- and take their cues from the same early-'80s time frame, but that's about where the similarities end. Like the Birthday Party, the Hustle reduce canonical rock and roll (in this case, Bo Diddley and, uh, Queen) to rubble, then build it back into something far more menacing, fragmented, and dramatic. They're a guitarless and bassless quartet, and their dystopian minimalism thumps ever forward on fractured piano chords and unsettling organ drones, with frontwoman Valentine Hussar bellowing messianic sermons in a Bowie-meets-Bolan croak whose nearest model might be fellow NW avant-horrorglam rockers Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre. Catch Get Hustle on Friday at AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence or on Sunday at the Mass Art Gym (617-879-7000) in Boston.