Pavement, Modest Mouse, and LCD Soundsystem will be the headlining acts at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival. Staged over the weekend of July 16-18 at Union Park in Chicago, the outdoor-summer-rock-festival arm of the Pitchfork empire will again showcase an eclectic group of 'fork-endorsed acts.

Also announced as performing, thus far are: St. Vincent, Lightning Bolt, Cass McCombs, Sleigh Bells, and Here We Go Magic, with many, many more acts to be unveiled between now and July.

Name: Magic Kids
From: Memphis, Tennessee
Story: For these young kids, old is the new new
Sound: Beach Boys by way of the Langley Schools Music Project

In 2009, a troupe of Tennessean teenagers named Magic Kids dished up one of the year's best pop-songs. Channeling the Beach Boys by way of the Langley Schools Music Project, "Hey Boy" delivered 135 seconds of pure pop bliss: cascading vocal harmonies, Spector-esque wall-of-sound production, tinkling xylophone, blasting saxophone, and sweeping string parts.

Proving they weren't just one-jam wonders, Magic Kids threw out another couple of killer cuts: the rollicking "Good to Be," which kind of reminds me of Danielson Famile, and the suitably sproingy "Superball," all twee keyboards and sad swipes of violin.

Musically speaking, it's a case of old is the new new: each song is hopelessly, romantically in debt to the Beach Boys, but the familiar chord-changes on display sound gloriously innocent in Magic Kids' hands.

On the back of such sterling songwriting, Magic Kids have just signed to True Panther Sounds, the impossibly hip imprint that's recently nestled into a cosy working relationship with indie behemoth Matador. The two New Yorker labels first started working together on the debut album for '09 breakout darlings Girls.

Coincidentally enough, Magic Kids are currently on the road with Girls (and with retrophonic Chicago rock outfit the Smith Westerns), and will play SXSW in March, before returning to Memphis and rolling tape on their debut album.

• 10 Bands to Watch at SXSW 2010
• Listen: Magic Kids, "Hey Boy"

Kids Play the Darnedest Shows:
February 8: Columbia, MO - The Blue Note
February 10: Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater
February 12: Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
February 14: San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall
February 16: Los Angeles, CA - The Echo
February 17: Phoenix, AZ - Trunk Space
February 19: Norman, OK - Opolis

The Year: 1966
The Album: The 13th Floor Elevators, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
Who It Influenced: Television, Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, the Butthole Surfers, Black Lips

Anti- Records —home of old renegades like Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Os Mutantes&mdash announced last week they'd be releasing Roky Erickson's first album of new material in 15 years. Due out April 20, True Love Cast Out All Evil finds Erickson working with members of Okkervil River, and finds one of the legendary voices of underground music back.

The world was first introduced to a teenaged Erickson in 1966, with the mighty single "You're Gonna Miss Me." A minor hit for The 13th Floor Elevators in its day, the song had impossible staying-power: going on to become one of the most legendary and influential songs in the annals of alternative music. Though Erickson's band, The 13th Floor Elevators, invented the term 'psychedelic rock' and put it into practice by taking copious amounts of psychedelic drugs, they weren't couched in cockeyed flower-power rhetoric.

Instead, lead by the urgent, insistent tremors of Erickson's singing —a wail that would influence everyone from Janis Joplin to Iggy Pop— the Elevators played a striding, swirling, reverberated take on jug-band blues that still stands up nearing 50 years on.

• Full review: The 13th Floor Elevators, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators

You asked for it, now here they are. Noisy New Yorker pop duo Sleigh Bells are finally taking their act beyond the five boroughs. Currently in the studio working on their debut LP, Sleigh Bells are finally capitalizing on all their good, good buzz —the kind that made them one of my 10 Bands to Watch in 2010— and heading on tour.

First, they'll spend six Eastern seaboard shows supporting dancefloor-crushing Diplo/Switch collaboration Major Lazer, then crash the Coachella party, before, finally, heading out on the road with Yeasayer for a month.

Ring Them Bells:
March 28: Atlanta, GA - Masquerade
March 30: Carborro, NC - Cat's Cradle
March 31: Baltimore, MD - Bourbon Street
April 2: New Hyde Park, NY - Starlite Ballroom
April 4: Boston, MA - Middle East
April 6: Columbus, OH - BoMa
April 16: Indio, CA - Coachella
April 17: San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore Auditorium
April 19: Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
April 20: Seattle, WA - Neumos
April 21: Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom
April 23: Salt Lake City, UT - In the Venue
April 24: Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre
April 25: Omaha, NE - Waiting Room
April 26: St. Louis, MO - Gargoyle Club
April 27: Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
April 28: Madison, WI - Majestic Theatre
April 29: Chicago, IL - Metro
April 30: Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop
May 1: Toronto, Ontario - Lee's Palace
May 2: Montreal, Quebec - La Sala Rossa
May 3: Boston, MA - Paradise
May 4: New York, NY - Webster Hall
May 5: Philadelphia, PA - The Trocadero

Photo © Rob Loud