Silversun Pickups are playing Saturday night at Ybor’s hippest new venue, Crowbar. (Or, at least, it was Ybor’s hippest new venue a few months ago. We can’t keep up.) Whether you’re still trying to decide if the show’s worth braving the St. Paddy’s crowd for, or you’ve never even heard of the L.A. noise-pop quartet in the first place, a free MP3 can’t hurt.

In the press, they’re relentlessly compared to Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine, and with pretty good reason. Like the Pumpkins, their moody, melodramatic songs regularly flex their loud-quiet-loud muscle, and like MBV, they also smudge that line at the edge of consciousness, morphing into just-out-of-reach dreamscapes drenched with noise, while gauzy guitars stretch like taffy from riff to riff and hook to hook.

Hey, if you’re gonna sound like someone else, you could sure do worse.

And if you’re too indie to namecheck those old-school alt-rock bands, tell your friends Silversun Pickups are somewhere between Autolux and Joy Zipper. They’ll think you’re cool. (It’s OK — your secret’s safe with us.)

In any case, check ‘em out.

A track by Silversun Pickups, courtesy of SPIN magazine:

Silversun Pickups: “Well Thought Out Twinkles” from “Carnavas” [mp3]