Minus the Bear, Helio Sequence, The Vipers

What's your favorite two-piece act? The White Stripes? Death From Above 1979? Donny and Marie? After this show, it might be the Portland duo Helio Sequence: singer/guitarist/harmonica player Brandon Summers and drummer/keyboardist Benjamin Weikel. On the pair's 2004 album, Love and Distance, main man Summers revealed he'd gotten over his obsession with My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, which characterized the group's two previous discs—sure, there was still the occasional wobbly, delay-pedaled six-string, but most of those walls of noise got torn down in favor of an airy, quasi-psychedelic junction of squishy electronics, Weikel's elastic thwaps, and lots of gentle, whooshy melodies. Helio Sequence's live shows hardly lack punch—when Summers puts harmonica to mouth, the resulting jams strangely recall late-era Stone Roses. But the pair's predominant vibe is that of a Sgt. Pepper's-ized Postal Service.