Matt Pond PA are the kind of comfortable, unobtrusively friendly indie-rock band who can charm you without bothering to write anything in the way of a memorable song, so it’s nice that they’ve finally decided to cover a few. If you dug their OC exclusive "Champagne Supernova," you’ll be happy to know that the band’s new Winter Songs EP has more, including the Pixies’ favorite Neil Young song ("Winterlong"), Richard and Linda Thompson’s "I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight," and Neutral Milk Hotel’s "In the Aeroplane over the Sea." They’re at the Webster Underground (860-525-5553) in Hartford on Wednesday, Cholmondeley’s Café at Brandeis (781-736-2000) in Waltham next Thursday (March 24), and the University of New Hampshire at Durham (603-862-1234) on March 25.

When we wrote about Six Finger Satellite guitarist turned DFA star John Maclean last week, we neglected to mention that 6FS actually trudged on a while longer after he left the band. One member of the post-Maclean line-up was Landed’s Shawn Greenlee, who’s now a doctoral student at Brown and making immensely loud digi-noise on Load Records as Pleasurehorse. He plays Friday at AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence. You can still hear the influence of Six Finger in bands like Providence’s guitar/sampler duo the Internet; in their no-wavish tantrums, paranormal electro-throb, ominous electromagnetic pulses, and speaker-shearing white noise frame yelpy rants about such decidedly pre-modem forms of telecommunication as booty calls and rumor mills. Tonight (March 17) they’re at AS220 with Early Day Miners; Friday they’re at P.A.’s Lounge (617-776-1557) in Somerville; on Saturday, they hit Grandstands (413-584-4830) in Northampton with Amherst’s lo-fi lap-top-indie-pop dude the Government.

It’s boy-band week on Lansdowne Street in Boston, where Nick Lachey’s old 98 Degrees chum Jeff Timmons plays Axis (617-262-2437) on Wednesday and the Backstreet Boys do a sold-out show at Avalon (617-262-2424) next Thursday, March 24. Timmons also plays the Webster Theater in Hartford this Friday. As Jimmy Cliff would no doubt observe, the harder they come, the harder they fall. The reggae legend plays Tuesday at the Somerville Theatre (617-625-4088) and Wednesday at Pearl Street (413-584-7810) in Northampton.