It’s amazing what bands can get their labels to spend a marketing budget on these days. To promote their new Antics (Matador), college-rock darlings Interpol opened a string of small gallery spaces and retail shops in NYC, LA, London, Paris, and Berlin, where their artsy friends will be churning out promo-only posters, videos, and singles. To make up for the fact that Boston wasn’t on the list, the band are kicking off their tour at Avalon (617-931-2000) on Monday. And they’ll be back in New England to hit Lupo’s at the Strand (401-331-5876) in Providence on November 8.

With Election Day falling so close to Halloween, we’re primed for visitations by all kinds of clowns. The punk-rock-oldies caravan masquerading as the Misfits — Jerry Only’s trio with Black Flag’s Dez Cadena and one of the last surviving Ramones, Marky — play the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester on Saturday as part of MassConcerts’ "Rock and Shock" weekend. Insane Clown Posse show up at the Palladium on Sunday; a concurrent horror-movie festival runs all weekend at the Worcester Centrum (617-931-2000).

Meanwhile, Chris Ballew is back on the campaign trail with Love Everybody, a new album from the Presidents of the United States of America, who have managed to put out an album in each of the past three presidential election years despite not having had a hit since 1995’s "Lump." They’re at the Paradise (617-423-NEXT) in Boston on Friday and the Call (401-751-2255) in Providence on Sunday. Beastie Boys, who recently released their first album since the Clinton administration, will bring their latest dog-and-pony show to the Centrum on Tuesday.

When she was on Matador, the Amsterdam kitsch-techno doyenne Elisabeth Esselink, who records as Solex, assembled quirky snip-and-paste electronic pastiches with a cut-rate sampler. But having relocated to Arena Rock — the label, not the genre — she suddenly sounds like a clockwork Liz Phair. On "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk like an Egyptian," she doesn’t quite achieve the Bangles-and-Sebastian mix she’s looking for, but she succeeds by bringing her playful touch to the brassy funk and introspective rock tracks on The Laughing Stock of Indie Rock — a title that might be her dig at herself or at her old label. Solex plays T.T. the Bear’s Place in Cambridge on Saturday and the Big Easy (207-871-8817) in Portland on Sunday.

Although Damien Jurado and Richard Buckner come from different universes — Jurado from the Christian emo scene that spawned Pedro the Lion and embraced Jeremy Enigk; Buckner from the maverick Texas singer-songwriter stronghold of Lubbock — they now have more in common than they don’t, matching literary narratives with salt-of-the-earth folk styles. They’re teamed on a tour that hits the Call on Sunday and the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on Tuesday.