SAD MR. ROBERT ANOTHER COWARD OF LOVE
>>> Friday, Sept. 24
I wrote sometime back that one of my favorite Tacoma love songs was “Commitment Chant” by Alexander and the Optimistics, AKA local artist Sean Alexander. A simple line, repeated over and over atop a chugging beat box, it kind of perfectly summed up the fear and sadness that come with loving someone with all of your being. “Commitment Chant” is hard to find, his other songs impossible to find. I think Alexander likes it that way. Abandoning his old moniker in favor of Sad Mr. Robert Another Coward of Love, Alexander will be offering a rare performance at The New Frontier Friday. His voice is warbly, cracked and soulful; his lyrics are strange and intimate. On stage, I anticipate a beautiful train wreck. — Rev. Adam McKinney
[The New Frontier Lounge, with Humble Cub, Check Please, Tallest Tree, 9 p.m., cover TBA, 301 E. 25th St, Tacoma, 253.572.4020]

WHAT YOU GOT? FEST
>>> Friday and Saturday
More than ever, the power to coordinate and organize youth-centered events is being put in the hands of young go-getters (the Redmond Fire House, WhAAM up in Bellingham, et al.). The Olympia Film Society’s seventh annual What You Got? Festival aims to provide local kids with a 48-hour arts festival of their own — like a “Bumbershoot Jr.,” only with much better bands. The weekend roster isn’t some mixed bag of good artists and crappy ones — there are great performers on deck, including no-fi thrashers Apache Chief, sugary-sweet Kelso quintet Seacats and remarkable Tacoma duo Makeup Monsters (whose relative youth seems underscored by the fact that their sound inspires a nostalgia for millennial rock acts). The festival will host workshops on a range of topics, including video editing, DJing and how to make comic books. The main attractions, however, will be screenings of youth-produced films, and performances by fresh-faced area bands. — Jason Baxter
[The Capitol Theater, Out Numbered, Borderline Obsessive, Hail, Apache Chief, SeaCats, Makeup Monsters, Kings Ransom, The South Sound, Jeff Mikey and the Bouncy House, 8 p.m., $5-$8, 206 Fifth Ave. SE, Olympia, 360.754.6670]

HUNTING HAT
>>> Tuesday, Sept. 28
This show, featuring Hunting Hat, Psychic Handbook, Via and Last Eyes is being advertised as “The Night of the Living Loop.” Not entirely sure what that means. I’m hoping it indicates these bands utilize the loop pedal, which I think is one of the more delightful gadgets to see performed live. Listening to Hunting Hat’s homespun recordings, I can picture the swirling lo-fi hums and whispers being generated by such a device. Seeing Hunting Hat live ought to be odd, considering their recordings evoke the feeling of a found radio station, lost to time, discovered after midnight on a long drive out of town. Voices drift in and out through tin-can telephones, and you’re left with a strangely distant memory of having heard a song, somewhere, sometime. — Rev. AM
[The Den @ urbanXchange, with Psychic Handbook, Via, Last Eyes, cover TBA, 7 p.m., 1932 Pacific Ave., Tacoma]

DEAD AIR FRESHENERS
>>> Thursday, Sept. 30
It’s not easy to labor in purposeful obscurity for more than a decade, cultivating an atmosphere of secrecy and hard-line artistic weirdness, but Olympia’s Dead Air Fresheners have been going strong (and going secretive) for nigh on 13 years now. The creatively-uncontained, nominally-instrumental band (sometimes joined by spoken word performers) is a regular at Oly’s Experimental Music Fest, where their droning, shrieking, aleatoric sounds are warmly received by the attendees’ hard-bitten cochleae.  With their rotating roster of masked improvisers, a Dead Air Fresheners performance is like a Halloween-themed edition of “Guess Who?”, simultaneously piquing the audience’s curiosity and forcing them to forgo any desire to relate to the musicians themselves, asking them instead to focus all their attention on the thrumming, effects-addled vibrations being generated. — JB
[Northern, with Crank Sturgeon, Styrofoam Sanchez, Derek M Johnson, Soup Purse, 8 p.m., all-ages, 321 Fourth Ave., Olympia, northernolympia.org]