"Kool Thing" was released on Sonic Youth's 1990 album Goo, so its inclusion in the shows conforms nicely to the stereotype that fashion moves in strict 20-year cycles. Some chart-toppers from 1990 include Michael Bolton's "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" and Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby," neither of which we have heard on the runways so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OdSoKfTP1k

The Eternal will be the first album by the band, newly signed to Matador Records, to be released on an indie label since its landmark 1988 LP, Daydream Nation. Guitarist Thurston Moore has said that fans can expect a more "rock-centric" album (not that Rather Ripped and 2004's Sonic Nurse, which actually harkened the glorious distortion of Daydream Nation, weren't totally rocking records). But have no fear, die-hards—Mr. Moore told Billboard last month, "We're still Sonic Youth. I still don't know how to play the guitar." Meanwhile, Urban Outfitters will start carrying bassist Kim Gordon's new clothing line next week. And Sonic Youth is slated to headline day two of the noisy No Fun Fest at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 16. 

Hearing about this we can't help but think of one of Ms. Gordon's earlier sartorial endeavors, X-Girl, the youthful female clothing line that every badass alternachick was rocking back in the mid-'90s. But it seems like Mirror/Dash, which shares its name with an experimental musical project Ms. Gordon does with her husband, Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore, will have a more mature edge. “There’s a need for clothes for cool moms,” Ms. Gordon said.

"There's too many good records here," he said in his thick English accent (although the actual records, those measuring 12-inches across, were downstairs). He was perusing the "C" section, and picked up a disc by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. "I could do some real damage in this shop for sure."

At 36, Mr. Hogan is hardly archaic himself. In fact, the festival he created nearly a decade ago, All Tomorrow's Parties (commonly referred to as ATP), has become one of the most highly anticipated events of the indie music world.

Barry Hogan, the British music promoter, was at Bleecker Street Records last Thursday afternoon partaking in what seems like an archaic ritual: CD shopping.

"There's too many good records here," he said in his thick English accent (although the actual records, those measuring 12-inches across, were downstairs). He was perusing the "C" section, and picked up a disc by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. "I could do some real damage in this shop for sure."

At 36, Mr. Hogan is hardly archaic himself. In fact, the festival he created nearly a decade ago, All Tomorrow's Parties (commonly referred to as ATP), has become one of the most highly anticipated events of the indie music world. This weekend marks its first ever New York installment—although to the dismay of anyone who prefers not to venture above 14^th Street, it's taking place at a woodsy family vacation resort and country club in the Catskills of Monticello, N.Y.

Held on weekends in small, quirky venues, and often curated in part by a particular band or musician (this time, Kevin Shields has the honor), All Tomorrow's Parties—named after the Velvet Underground song—provides a more intimate, perhaps classier, alternative to the standard rock mega-fest that massive outdoor concerts like Coachella, Lollapalooza (the post-2004 version, of course) and New York's own Siren Festival have re-popularized in recent years. Since ATP's inception in 1999, it's hosted acts ranging from classic rock artists like Yoko Ono, Cheap Trick and Love, to contemporary indie stars like Sonic Youth, Modest Mouse, and Belle and Sebastian (who gave Mr. Hogan the idea for ATP in the first place).

This weekend people are flying in from countries as far away as Japan, Australia, England, Spain and Italy, to name a few, and Mr. Hogan said there's a "healthy" New York draw as well. (Not surprisingly, he noted, many of the city's ticket holders seem to be from Brooklyn.) The main attraction is Mr. Shields' My Bloody Valentine, the recently reunited early '90s fuzz-rock band from Ireland, which is making its first U.S. appearance in 16 years. As of Wednesday, all of the roughly 3,000 tickets had sold out.

"We try to make it intimate," said Mr. Hogan of his preference for venues that are a bit off the beaten path, like the tiny seaside resort in the south of England where he sometimes holds the festival, or the deck of The Queen Mary, a legendary ocean liner now permanently docked in Long Beach, Calif. "Nobody wants to be stuck in a field with 50,000 people," he said.

But ATP's success boils down to a single element: nostalgia. Usually, the lineup is more or less a dream set list for people who got into cool music in the '80s and '90s. Between My Bloody Valentine and longtime indie staples like Low, Yo La Tengo and Dinosaur Jr., among various others, this weekend's festival is like a long-lost mix tape made in one's college dorm room. Most exciting, Mr. Hogan often convinces a band to do an entire set of one of its classic albums, a trend that has taken off in its own right since the idea first came to him one night in 2005 when he was sitting around drinking beer and listening to old records. That thought evolved into a concert series called "Don't Look Back" (like the classic Bob Dylan documentary), which has featured everyone from Ennio Morricone to the Stooges to GZA from Wu-Tang Clan, and is typically held in conjunction with ATP. Among the artists joining in the fun this weekend are Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, doing his 1995 solo album Psychic Hearts (at Mr. Hogan's behest, Sonic Youth did an entire tour last year of its 1988 masterpiece, Daydream Nation), and Built to Spill, doing 1997's Perfect From Now On.

"I'm totally intrigued by the idea," said Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch, who is perhaps more excited to see the Meat Puppets perform their 1984 classic, Meat Puppets II, one of his favorite records of all time, "but mostly I'm just flattered that people are actually interested."

So why are people so interested in rehashing the past? And what does it say about, well, new music?

"I think it says that on the one hand, indie rock has now become entrenched for a long enough amount of time for people to be nostalgic for it," said Amy Phillips, senior news editor at Pitchfork Media, which hosted a "Don't Look Back" series at its own festival last summer.

"Something can definitely be said for the fact that the way we consume music now isn't as much of an ‘album' experience as it was when a lot of these records came out. People certainly felt a strong connection to the notion of the album and they want to feel that way again," she added.

"I think people are starving for it," said Syd Butler, the bass player for New York's Les Savy Fav, which has played several of ATP's European incarnations and is also on this weekend's bill. "For me it's [Built to Spill's] Perfect From Now On—the time it came out, the culture of that time. It still has that feeling to me of buying a record and going to see a band live and growing with them. Now, it's like, I listen to people's MySpace pages."

Back in the Village, Mr. Hogan, who's been in town from England with his wife and business partner, Deborah, for the past month making preparations for the festival, was a bit more blunt.

"There are some good bands out there today, but a lot of the new stuff just doesn't inspire me," he said. "We're not trying to promote what's trendy and hip. This is all music we still listen to, things we want to hear. It's like making a mix tape. You're gonna put on what you love and things that are meaningful to you."

Works for us!

ATP New York, Sept. 19-21, Kutsher's Country Resort, Catskills, N.Y., atpfestival.com

Mr. MacKaye and Mr. Moore are scheduled for a conversation/Q&A starting at 3 p.m. to "discuss the parallel worlds of independent music and book publishing," according to the festival's Web site. How, you ask, did it come to be that these two super hip indie rockers will be rubbing elbows with some of the literary greats of our time? Well, one of the festival's organizers is Johnny Temple, who is also the chair of the Brooklyn Borough President's Literary Council and the head of the independent publishing house Akashic Books, and who also also happens to be the bass player of the seminal ‘90s indie rock band Girls Against Boys. Now it all makes sense!

So basically, back in high school our English teachers probably thought we were weird for being so into the all these strange bands with silly names instead of like, Dave Matthews, or whatever all the normal kids were listening to. But thanks to the Brooklyn Book Festival, we can proudly say that the joke's on them!

More coverage here and here.

The kids in Sonic Youth (who, by the way, are all in their late 40s/early 50s) fulfilled their contractual obligations to Geffen with 2006’s Rather Ripped. Recently, they made it clear they’ve been unhappy in the big leagues and wanted to go indie. Guitarist Thurston Moore told the Rock & Roll Daily, that “the last four or five records [Sonic Youth] did were just so compromised by that [major label] situation.” Some folks pegged them to Domino, but nope. Sonic Youth are flying with Matador—home to Yo La Tengo, Cat Power, and The New Pornographers—for their next record, tentatively called The Eternal and due out “sometime in 2009.” Moore and Co. debuted some new material earlier this month in Philly, which may or may not make it on to the new disc.

Proving that it’s always good to stay in touch with old friends (or enemies), the dude who actually posted to Matador’s Matablog to confirm the band’s signing is the same Gerard Cosley who ran Homestead Records back in the 80s and put out early Sonic Youth releases like Bad Moon Rising and the "Death Valley ’69" single.

In other alterna-nation news, Alice in Chains is heading back to the studio this fall to record a new album after a 13-year absence. All the original members will be featured minus, of course, gravel-voiced wonder-junkie Layne Stately who died tragically of an overdose back in 2002. Replacing him will be some guy named William DuVall. Though from the looks of this video, that may not be such a bad thing.

Nevertheless, tomorrow’s final concert will most likely be a bittersweet occasion for the many 20-something Brooklynites who will have to find some other way to spend their summer Sundays. (Swimming, perhaps?)

But good news! the New York Post reports that tomorrow’s Sonic Youth concert may not be the venue’s last.

A pool with actual water where you can also ice skate and rock out to Les Savy Fav? Everybody wins!

Since they blew through South by Southwest this spring, Seattle’s Fleet Foxes have steadily climbed indie rock’s crowded ladder. They played the Bowery Ballroom in March and again in July, stormed the Pitchfork Music Festival later that month, jumped across the pond for England's Isle of Wight festival in August, and sold out their October show at Webster Hall. It's a wonder they found time for a full-page profile in Spin. Surprisingly (or not), the quintent sounds very little like your traditional scraped-on-Pavement indie rock. As evidenced by June's self-titled debut, Fleet Foxes’ are into lazy English folk, fat, shamelessly gorgeous four-part harmonies, and hummable melodies that seem to circle endlessly back on themselves. It’s CSNY all over again.

Now the boys return to New York for an Oct. 4 performance at the opulent Grand Ballroom, a night before their sold-out show at Webster Hall. [Tickets went on sale yesterday]

Whether with backing band the Shrines or BBQ Show, King Khan dishes out a wicked blend of maximum R&B, psychedelic soul, and Nuggets-era garage rock. Just listen to his recent compilation The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines. As for the Khan himself—a Montreal-born son of Indian immigrants—the guy seems to be something of a lunatic, if a lovable one. During a recent conversation with Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox at last month’s Pitchfork Festival, Khan (wearing little more than a g-string and a giant tambourine around his neck) gave his thoughts on sexuality (the “perpetual motion machine that is in my body”), lesbians (“I think lesbians are far more superior. Eventually males will be wiped out because only the sperm will be needed from the male and males will be used as food and fodder and will be freeze-dried”), and mortality (“the way I’d like to die is at a big, grand buffet being eaten by 13 women after being injected with morphine and lots of other crazy things”) Fantastic.

Khan and the BBQ Show tear the roof off the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Nov. 29 and the Bowery Ballroom the night after. [Tickets for both shows went on sale yesterday]

And while we know you’ve probably heard enough about McCarren Park Pool this summer, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Sonic Youth (who may be heading to an independent label) are playing there this Saturday as part of the very last show at the Brooklyn venue ever. You have to pay for this one, though. Yo La Tengo played the final free Pool Party last Sunday. Sonic Youth rocks the official farewell event before Bloomberg turns the whole place into a $50 million recreation center. [Tickets on sale now]

DANCE:

The dance community seems finally to be embracing post-modern notions like sampling, appropriation and bricolage—ideas that have long held sway in literature, music and the visual arts. For The Accursed Items—opening on Wednesday, Sept. 3, at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater—Andrew Dinwiddie “borrowed” material for his choreography from a wide range of sources, including fellow-choreographer Levi Gonzalez, the Wooster Group, a Playboy Playmate named Cara Zavaleta—even Metallica. The Accursed Items is, according to the venue’s Web site, “anchored by J. Robert Lennon's prose poem of the same name, in which the author exposes the history and lingering psychic life of abused, broken and discarded objects.”

As The Times’ Claudia La Rocco notes, Dinwiddie is just one of many choreographers getting respect for disrespecting dance’s traditional focus on authenticity and originality. Still, Dinwiddie asks, “Am I simply stealing other people’s good ideas?” Head to the Ontolgical-Hysteric Theater and decide for yourself. [Tickets on sale now]

In past summers, the pool's concerts, dodgeball competitions and Slip N' Slide activities have been a helpful distraction for the entire North Brooklyn partygoing population from the Sunday scaries (that feeling of doom come Sunday when one reviews the drunken, drug-riddled debauchery of the weekend and starts freaking out about one's pathetic, directionless existence). May hipsters rest in peace everywhere during Sundays to come without the pool. At lease there's still kickball.

Some background: No Wave was a short-lived, experimental music scene in late-'70s Manhattan that grew out of punk and was eventually considered a reaction against New Wave. Classic No Wave bands include Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (several of the original members are dead, so Mr. Moore will be filling in on bass tonight), James Chance and the Contortions, DNA and Mars. Mr. Moore’s and Mr. Coley’s new book documents this weird and gritty slice of Manhattan history. Ben Sisario of The New York Times writes:

The New York Press caught up with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks frontwoman and avant-garde icon Lydia Lunch recently at her home in Bareclona. (Nostalgic confession: In 1996, this reporter’s Sonic Youth-loving high-school self got Ms. Lunch’s autograph via a friend who went to see her perform at Coney Island High, the popular St. Mark’s punk dive that’s now been defunct for 10 years. It said: “Take the Power! Lydia Lunch.”) Here’s what she had to say about the reunion and the book:

She elaborated to The Times:

If you can stomach it, watch this clip of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks above.