Back to School Bash featuring Black Tie Dynasty, Sorta, The Happy Bullets and more

Spune Productions has organized another endurance-testing showcase that ensures you should spend the day in Denton. But you'll have plenty of time during bad sets to enjoy the city's non-musical attractions: Lance Yocom was kind enough to book three hours of lousy metal from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., which will give you plenty of time to go to Recycled Books and Records and have a leisurely dinner before catching top-tier acts such as Sorta, Doug Burr and The Happy Bullets. If you like Black Tie Dynasty's slick, derivative new-wave, I'm not gonna explain why you shouldn't.

Get there early for Electric Mountain Rotten Apple Gang's opening set if you like mandolins and make sure to catch Warren Jackson Hearne. Hearne's folky, traditional arrangements--featuring Justin Collins on banjo and Paul Slavens on accordion--belong in a dark, rogue-filled European tavern in some parallel history.

Tendril (4 p.m.), Blood on the Moors (5 p.m.) and Saboteur (6 p.m.) will provide an excuse to leave. But make sure you're back in time for the Paper South from Austin, which claims members of American Analog Set and Winslow. Their atmospheric rock with ringing, echoing guitars gradually builds and settles in waves as the drums pick up from soft snare rolls to loud full-kit bashing. Unlike many bands that do this, the Paper South structure what sounds deceptively like the natural progression of an unfocused jam into tight pop-song frameworks.