On their debut EP, it looked as if the Chinese Stars — the Providence art-punk supergroup featuring Six Finger Satellite’s Rick Pelletier and the good half of Arab on Radar — were going to adhere to AOR’s scratch-acid side of the equation. But their new A Rare Sensation (31G) is a great leap forward, not least because the rhythm section now sounds a lot more like early 6FS, who were mapping out the post-punk/mutant-disco fringes when the Rapture were in elementary school. Now on tour with Moving Units, the Stars play tonight (October 14) at the Call (401-751-2255) in Providence and Tuesday at Axis (617-423-NEXT) in Boston.

Just off Pearl Jam’s leg of the Vote for Change shindig, Death Cab for Cutie pick up Pretty Girls Make Graves for a headlining tour that hits Avalon (617-423-NEXT) in Boston on Tuesday and Lupo’s at the Strand (401-331-LUPO) in Providence next Thursday, October 21. The new Pinback album, Summer in Abbadon (their first for Touch and Go), hit the streets last week; it’s less glitchy than Blue Screen Life but just as delicately intricate. Headlining a tour with Tim Kasher’s the Good Life and Neva Dinova, Pinback are at the Call on Saturday and at the Paradise (617-562-8800) in Boston on Sunday. Texas’s . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead have their second Interscope album, Worlds Apart, in the can; it won’t be out till early next year, but they’ll be previewing it on a tour that hits Pearl Street (413-584-7810) in Northampton tonight (October 14), Toad’s Place (203-624-TOAD) in New Haven on Saturday, and the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge next Thursday (October 21).

If you caught Guy Blakeslee, a/k/a Entrance, opening for Cat Power, you may have found yourself wondering whether he was put there to make Chan Marshall seem less awkward by comparison. Unlike Marshall, Entrance is an extrovert, but his high-voiced, squawking renditions of the blues, which he accompanies on crackling electric guitar and foot-stomped tambourine, are a bitter, acquired taste. His debut album, Wandering Stranger (Fat Possum), is frank and unpretty but austere and occasionally moving: if he’s not the Devendra Banhart of the Delta, he’s close. Entrance plays Wednesday at T.T. the Bear’s Place (617-492-BEAR) in Cambridge and next Friday, October 22, at AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence.

Elsewhere in indieville, Mirah and Tara Jane O’Neill tag-team for a singer-songwriter tour that hits T.T.’s on Sunday and the Iron Horse (413-584-0610) in Northampton on Monday. Former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp brings solo dreams to T.T.’s on Tuesday and the Iron Horse on Wednesday. And you’ll have to travel to catch the new tours by Saturday Looks Good to Me, who play the Green Room (401-351-7665) in Providence on Friday, and Crooked Fingers, who play the Iron Horse next Thursday (October 21) with Elf Power opening.