On paper, flame-haired 23-year-old Brit Florence Welch seems just one of a dozen would-be divas to wash up on our shores this year. Fortunately for her, and for all of us, Welch’s charms are not best experienced on paper. Rather, they are best experienced in the cozyish 550-capacity Bowery Ballroom on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on a grimly rainy Tuesday in October.

DIY icons Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance of Superchunk dropped by New York City's Housing Works Bookstore Friday for a reading from Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label that Got Big and Stayed Small, a new oral history about their revered 20-year-old label.

Tegan and Sara's new album is all about interpersonal tug-of-wars -- the occasionally opposing forces of remaining true to oneself and another -- but there was no doubt Sunday night that the band and their fans were all pulling in the same direction.

How's this for a great concept: The words of legendary Beat poet Jack Kerouac set to song by a pining indie-pop prince and an alt-Americana forefather. And when Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie, The Postal Service) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo) came together at Los Angeles' El Rey Theatre on Friday night, their performance felt about as organic as the text that inspired it.

An hour into David Gray's show Friday night at Boston's Citi Wang Theatre, there was a nice surprise: Despite the heavy flow of chilled Chardonnay, there hadn't been a single audience call-out for "Babylon," Gray's ubiquitous hit from 2000 that catapulted the British singer/songwriter to international acclaim.