Tomorrow, you may have heard, is our 2009 Best Music Poll Concert on City Hall Plaza, better known to Green Liners as the Government Center T Stop. These bands are playing: The Bravery, the Airborne Toxic Event, Passion Pit, Metric, Gaslight Anthem, and Ra Ra Riot. This is a free concert. The first band is on around 4 pm.

Ummm. . . no you fucking don't.

Shadows Fall: apparently, they're a PC.

As a rule of thumb you can't download anything off MySpace anymore, but over at the MySpace page for Windows, of all things, you can download non-DRM'd freebies from a bunch of "new" acts (their term, not ours), including a new track from Mass thrash gods Shads Fall: "King of Nothing," the first single from their forthcoming album Retribution (out September 15 on their new Warner Bros imprint, Everblack Industries).

The Boston Pops has announced a contest in conjunction with SonicBids to choose an opening band for the Boston Pops/Ben Folds gig in October. Considering the brawl that transpired the last time Ben played with the Pops, we're surprised the opening band isn't a bunch of undercover Blackwater agents playing "Give Peace A Chance."

When I said over in this here article that Boston's club nights are taking over or some such sweeping generalization type-thing to that effect, did I sound like I was joking? Because I was not.

Take tonight for example: There are so many places to get completely crazybrainz, and so little to pay for the pleasure. (That statement does not include tomorrow morning.

The sweetest visitor we ever got at Curry College sleep-away camp was Aaron Krickstein – a relatively significant tennis pro from last century, as well as one of the greatest Jewish athletes ever known. I lost my weed and sexual virginities with a cute older French girl that summer, but otherwise the place was nowhere near as cool as Berklee’s Summer Performance Program

Dead Meadow | September 10 at the Middle East downstairs, Cambridge | $12 | On sale Thursday, July 30, at 10 am | //www.ticketmaster.com

Girl Talk | November 2 at the House of Blues, Boston | $15 | On sale Thursday, July 30, at 10 am | //www.houseofblues.

After realizing they probably knew just as much - if not more - about our changing musical landscape as anyone, Metric released their latest album, Fantasies, themselves. And, of course, it's their most successful album to date, bolstered by massive radio hit "Help, I'm Alive." They're now pretty much the second-most successful band to emerge from the Broken Social Scene collective - doesn't look like anyone's going to knock Feist off the top of that particular mountain anytime soon - and they're playing the WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll show this Saturday at City Hall Plaza. That's a free show; we're not sure if we've mentioned that yet. We talked to James Shaw on the phone from the airport in Toronto.

The Pixies are re-reuniting. This means that if you missed them in '04 or '05, you'll have another chance. The downside, though? If you want to hear your favorites from Surfer Rosa, you'll have to hope for an encore, because on this trip through the US, they'll only be playing Doolittle in its entirety. Also, unless you live in the Northwest, the Bay Area, SoCal, Colorado, Chicago, or the Boston-NY-Washington corridor, you're out of luck.

When I was reading up on Ra Ra Riot in anticipation of this interview, I was surprised to learn they've only been together since 2006. It seems like we've been talking about them forever, yet they were never hyped to the point of oversaturation (like, say, their friends in Vampire Weekend). That's partly a testament to their ability to their ability to build a fanbase, something they began in earnest while still at Syracuse University, but it's also a reflection of just how eventful their brief career has been. They've already experienced more triumph and tragedy than some bands with fifteen-year careers. In 2007, John Pike, founding member, drummer, and one of their key songwriters, drowned off the coast of Buzzard's Bay after a show in Providence. But the band continued on, and is currently riding their quite enjoyable full-length debut album, The Rhumb Line, to greater and greater success. They'll play our Best Music Poll concert at City Hall Plaza in Government Center (it's free!) on August 1 - and, as bassist Mat Santos tells me over the phone while they're hurtling across Nevada, you can add them to the list of indie rock bands with ties to the area who grew up listening to our very own WFNX. Q+A is after the jump.

Each one, teach one: we love WILD LIGHT, but we get the sense from this video that someone from Columbia called them up one day and said, "Hey, you guys need to do one of those contests where fans make their own video for your song!" Well, OK, we get that sense because that's very close to a direct quote from this video.

Three years between releases is nothing if you're, I dunno, Nine Inch Nails, but in indie rock it's a couple of generations. It's been that long since WHEAT released their quietly ambitious disc Hope and Adams -- and more than a decade after Medeiros made them cryptic, out-of-nowhere local faves. But this week they're back with a new one, White Ink, Black Ink; they're celebrating the release of the disc August 1 at Great Scott

We'll have much more (and better) video from CAVE-IN's reunion/EP-release show at Great Scott last weekend, but we threw together a quick edit to whet your appetites. The show -- the band's first in over four years and only scheduled gig thus far -- sold out in four minutes. We heard whispers that they'll be more shows in the fall, likley in November, but nothing's been confirmed yet.

Thanks to the Dew Tour skate championships around the corner at the TD Garden, TAKING BACK SUNDAY showed up to play a free outdoor show on Government Center along with about 15,000 of their closest friends -- which also served as a helpful test run for our own BEST MUSIC POLL CONCERT at the same spot next weekend. Here's what it looked like when they played their hit outside Tommy Menino's place...