Phoenix hits ‘Saturday Night Live’ ahead of Coachella

A week before it’s to headline Night 2 of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Phoenix hit “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend with two songs from its upcoming album, “Bankrupt!”

The French band opened with a blistering rendition of “Entertainment,” the lead single from the new disc, due out April 23; then did the shimmery “Trying to Be Cool.” (Watch both performances below.) Worth keeping your eye on: drummer Thomas Hedlund, who handily provides the muscle these soft-rock smoothies sometimes lack on record.

Phoenix kept busy while in New York, dropping by Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg on Friday night for an invite-only concert to be broadcast Monday on SiriusXM. According to Rolling Stone, the group paired new tunes with older stuff, including “1901” and “Lisztomania” from 2009’s breakout “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” which earned a Grammy Award for alternative album and has sold more than 500,000 copies in the United States.

Coachella-goers can probably expect a similar experience Saturday night, though there’s also the possibility (at least on the Internet) for something grander. Online message boards have been abuzz in the run-up to Coachella -- which runs Friday to Sunday and again April 19-21 at Indio’s Empire Polo Club -- with speculation that Daft Punk may join Phoenix onstage, repeating a trick the two French outfits pulled off at Madison Square Garden in 2010.

This is an idea Pop & Hiss can definitely get behind.

ALSO:

Coachella 2013: Soulful devotion to new sounds

New Selena Gomez single ‘Come & Get It’ appears online

Miranda Lambert is Academy of Country Music Awards’ top winner

Follow Mikael Wood on Twitter: @mikaelwood