POP & HISS

Come Wednesday, Los Angeles’ Silversun Pickups will have scored its first-ever top-10 debut on the U.S. pop charts, according to Billboard. On Friday, the band showed off its gleaming set of new tunes -- a selection of songs that clips from the mid-’90s alt-rock period, full of muted vocals and heavily distorted, fuzz-laden guitars.

Brian Aubert has a tendency to sound as if he’s singing in a pant, preferring, instead, to let his guitar provide the bite. He was lost in the mix in “There’s No Secrets This Year,” dwarfed by an escalating haze of jerky rhythms and lively, fluid guitars. “Panic Switch” is a rather vicious single, its stalking bass and slithering guitars in a constant chase, allowing the hook to lie in the tension.

Creating an atmosphere isn’t a problem for the Silversun Pickups. In fact, the band is at its best when Aubert is buried behind Nikki Monninger’s thick-with-malice bass rather than in front of it. It’s when the Silversun Pickups move beyond the sound of radio heroes the Smashing Pumpkins that they dig up something more mysterious. “Swoon” sees them growing in the right direction.

Fleet and spry

Fleet Foxes singer-guitarist Robin Pecknold noted that the band “doesn’t feel super comfortable at these things,” referencing the large festival gathering Saturday. And honestly, it was hard to imagine that bassist Christian Wargo felt comfortable in his knit hat as the temperatures rose above 90 degrees. Otherwise, the Seattle band, playing its own brand of folk rock with a psychedelic bent, seemed at ease during its set.

“Ragged Wood” had a coda that came out of nowhere, a sudden ‘50s- influenced guitar that placed the band in another era. But there was little that was retro about the performance. One need only have witnessed “Your Protector,” where a flash of a church organ gave way to an echoing rhythm and a near fantastical swirl of harmonies. There was plenty of adventurous music at the three-day event, but little in the first two days had gotten as trippy as this.

‘Science’ channel

“It’s our goal to bring down the sun before we leave the stage,” teased TV on the Radio singer Tunde Adebimpe at the start of his band’s set -- and with the blazing sun especially brutal Saturday, it was a welcome sentiment. The musicians achieved their goal as dusk and their warm, indie gospel washed over the main-stage crowd. Rolling through a whip-smart mix of songs, they leaned heavily on their latest full-length collection, “Dear Science,” shimmying like mid-period Talking Heads through the multi-rhythmic nature of the album. Older nuggets like “Young Liars” quieted the crowd even further.

Angry ‘Skye’

Mastodon is a furious beast on record, never more so than on its latest album, “Crack the Skye,” where the tempos slow to a rich churn of guitar runs and production ambience. But the last thing people in the half-full Mojave tent seemed to want after a long day in soul-sucking heat Saturday was to be beaten into doomy, prog-tinged submission. The new material could make for an evocative journey of a long set, but it’s asking a lot of kids to follow a dirgey song cycle about cosmic wormholes and Russian politics after 12 hours in the sun.

The power of rock

It was obvious that something was askew when Craig Finn and the Hold Steady took the stage of the Mojave tent promptly at their scheduled time Friday. Although the band was as powerful and tight as ever, Finn’s voice was little more than a hoarse rasp, his face red with the strain of singing. The poor guy appeared to be deathly ill.

But as someone who fervently preaches the power of rock and roll, Finn never faltered. As the band blasted its way through live chestnuts such as “Stuck Between Stations,” he seemed to get stronger, much to the delight of the small but supportive crowd. Ending the set with the declaration “Stay positive, Coachella” (referencing the title of the band’s most recent album), Finn and his cohorts’ status as the best bar band in America remains pretty much unchallenged.

Although if anyone could take on the Hold Steady, it would be Akron, Ohio’s Black Keys. While the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney were all but swallowed up by the massive main stage, they filled the desert sky with fuzzed-out, down and dirty blues. “We’re from the Midwest, and too cheap to pay someone to do this stuff for us,” Auerbach deadpanned during a brief lull to tune his guitar. “Actually, we just can’t afford it.”

Guess this recession is for real, y’all.

-- August Brown, Todd Martens and Scott T. Sterling