JAPANTHER, THE PHARMACY, NÜ SENSAE, NAOMI PUNK

Falling under my favorite non-genre, Ramones-core, Brooklyn-based lo-fi noise-punk duo Japanther blend cassette samples with three-chord power punches to create something that's both nostalgic and danceable. Their latest, Beets, Limes, and Rice, delivers the same 1977-style punk they've out-partied audiences with for the past decade. They're performance artists, too, recently curating an installation at the New York Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, and they're known to show up to shows with giant puppets, crowd-surfing clowns, or synchronized swimmers. The last two times I saw Japanther on this particular stage: (1) I moshed harder than I have ever moshed, ended up onstage, and fell over the drummer during a cover of "Boys Don't Cry" and (2) I stood in the back of the room and nodded really hard, watching the entire room move before me, crowd-surfers flying over a disarray of sweat-lathered bodies. Whether you're a back-of-the-room lurker or an onstage rager, Japanther truly are a party.

Adding jarring peaks of angular guitar to the night, the primal, slow-burning sludge-punk of Nü Sensae is punctuated by vocalist Andrea Lukic's feral screams. After five years as a drum-and-bass two-piece, the Vancouver-based punk outfit are now playing with Brody McKnight (Mutators/Sex Negatives) on guitar. The band says the new album with him, now in the final production stages, will be the "same doom and gloom, only louder." In their video for "I'm a Body," Lukic and drummer Daniel Pitout are covered hairline-to-neck in peanut butter and jelly. For a full two minutes, dogs lick it off their faces, and Lukic lip-synchs through the whole thing. Tonight is also the LP release show for Seattle/Olympia garage swamp dwellers Naomi Punk. The Feeling is out April 24 on Couple Skate Records, and if the rest is anything like the first single, "Voodoo Trust," the jangle-grunge and heavy surf anthems should be a bewitching treat. You can also catch Naomi Punk earlier this same day (at 3 pm), playing for Record Store Day at the new Capitol Hill Everyday Music. Black Lodge, 9 pm.