BUZZ BANDS

Spirit isn’t dampened

The Duke Spirit hit a bump in the road as it wound its way across the U.S. on its first American tour. Over the weekend, at a stop in Portland, Ore., the band’s van was burglarized and its equipment stolen.

Suffice to say, however, the London-based quintet’s spirit has not been broken. “People are just good-hearted,” says Liela Moss, the blond spitfire whose sultry vocals embellish the band’s taut, fuzzy guitar rock. “Suddenly people are offering us drum kits, guitars, gear, offering to let us stay at their house -- all in the name of rock ‘n’ roll.”

The band, whose debut “Cuts Across the Land” was released in March, regrouped in time to play a gig in Seattle on Monday en route to a date Saturday at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Moss says that she and band mates Luke Ford, Dan Higgins, Toby Butler and Olly Betts won’t let the theft slow the momentum they have been building.

“It’s funny the great reaction I’ve been getting from kids,” Moss says. “I’m the kind who gives it all onstage and when I’m done, I want to just go and hide for a while. But after these shows, kids are approaching me with, ‘Who cuts your hair?’ or ‘What does that lyric mean?’ -- all sorts of questions. It’s all very wonderful.”

Her disposition

figures to get even brighter when the band has its day in the

Coachella sun, even if its main-stage appearance is not without worries. Says Moss: “I’m afraid I have too much clothing that’s colored black.”

Mix of this and that

You hear how the Octopus Project mashes classic instrumentation and otherworldly electronica, and it’s not hard to imagine what the songwriting process is like. “There’s a lot of brainstorming,” says Josh Lambert, guitarist for the Austin, Texas, band. “It’s what happens when you’ve got a band where everybody plays everything.”

So this is the sound of minds at work: rivulets of beeps, whirrs, beats and samples rushing around chunks of guitar, keyboards, strings, horns and drums. It’s tune for thought, exuding a spirit of exploration rather than expectation. “We’re fans of bands trying to do something different, that go out on a limb,” Lambert says. “You could say there’s a samey-ness to a lot of music today.”

The Project’s instrumental excursions, in full bloom on its sophomore album “One Ten Hundred Thousand Million,” earned the group a slot at noon Sunday at Coachella -- not that Lambert or band mates (his wife Yvonne, Toto Miranda and the recently added Brandon Durham) knew they were in the running.

Turns out their fans nominated them in a promotion conducted by the social networking website MySpace. “We were at practice one day and my wife says, ‘You’ll never guess what we just got,’ ” Lambert says. “ ‘I think Coachella just asked us to play.’ ”

How will their post-rock go over in the desert sunshine? “I remember hearing horror stories about the Jesus and Mary Chain playing Lollapalooza at 3 in the afternoon,” Lambert says. “But hopefully we can get people really pumped up.”

Fast forward

It’s not all Coachella. Really. On Sunday, Musexpo 2006 kicks off four days of showcases on the Sunset Strip, with some nice discoveries on each evening’s four-band bill: L.A. teenagers the Dares (Key Club) and Denmark’s Tina Dico (Viper Room) on Sunday; Norway’s Animal Alpha (the Roxy) and Finland’s Redrama (Viper) on Monday; and L.A. acts the Tender Box (Key Club) and the Nikhil Korula Band (Roxy) on Tuesday. Then a quintet of British bands (including the Prototypes) hold forth Wednesday at the Key Club.

Of course, the weekend starts tonight, with the Vacation (who once were called the Sons) playing at the Knitting Factory with a band called the Sun. Don’t be confused.... L.A. rockers Year Future, behind their new release “First World Fever,” perform at the Echo on Friday, while Mighty Six Ninety heads a nice bill at El Cid.... L.A.-based singer-songwriter Kat Parsons, who just released her debut “No Will Power,” headlines a benefit show for pancreatic cancer research at Spaceland on Saturday.

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Recommended downloads

Download “Lion Rip” by the Duke Spirit at 217.154.142.24/duke/media/LION_RIP.mp3

* Download the Octopus Project’s “Music Is Happiness” at www.theoctopusproject.com/mp3s/music.mp3

* Watch the video for Year Future’s “Hidden Hand” at www.yearfuture.net/new_site/audio_video.html