Will the kids call it Lollapagaga?

Perry Farrell's long-running alternative music festival Lollapalooza announced Wednesday morning which bands would rock Chicago's Grant Park Aug. 6-8. Headliners ranged from alt-pop rockers Green Day to top 40 dance phenom Lady Gaga.

Other acts include Soundgarden (who will reunite for the first time since 1997), Arcade Fire, Devo, Cypress Hill, The Strokes, Wolfmother, Gogol Bordello, Drive By Truckers, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Phoenix, Social Distortion, Jimmy Cliff, Spoon, The New Pornographers, The xx, AFI, Erykah Badu, Metric, Blitzen Trapper, Grizzly Bear, Minus the Bear,Yeasayer, and dozens more.

The three-day traveling festival originated in 1991 and had a strong run through '97. In 2003 Farrell resurrected the tour for an additional year. In 2004 there was no concert or tour, but in '05 Farrell and his partners settled in on hosting a two-day festival in Chicago's Grant Park. The popularity of the Chicago event turned Lollapalooza into a three-day affair in 2006, which it has maintained ever since. 

Much like our local Coachella and Tennesse's Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza often draws the biggest names in alternative and pop music -- sometimes some of the same artists play all three festivals. Jay-Z, for example, will headline both Coachella and Bonnaroo. 

Individual tickets for Lollapalooza have sold out, but three-day passes are still available for $215.

The L.A. musical landscape is thick with options over the rapidly approaching Halloween weekend.

Beat-crazy dance aficionados can choose between the 12th annual Monster Massive at the L.A. Sports Arena and the expanded two-day HARD Haunted Mansion event at the Shrine. Indie rockers can check out stalwarts Built to Spill at the Echoplex and/or new heroes the Dirty Projectors at the Jensen Rec Center.

Public radio powerhouse KCRW has entered the Halloween party fray with “Masquerade,” a costume ball and dance party at the Park Plaza Hotel in downtown L.A. that now boasts Bay area legend DJ Shadow as the headliner.

DJ Shadow joins a lineup that already includes Swedish indie urban rock outfit Little Dragon alongside such local acts as mod folkie Sea Wolf and sunshine-poppers Edward Sharpe and  the Magnetic Zeros. A who’s who of KCRW DJs, including Liza Richardson, Jason Bentley and Garth Trinidad, will spin at the event too.

Tickets are available at KCRW.tix.com

-- Scott T. Sterling

Photo: DJ Shadow performing at the Mayan Theater. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times.

Even in Los Angeles, it’s a rare week when music fans are treated to the grandeur of Thom Yorke and Fever Ray. So it was easy to miss Tuesday's low-key album release party for the L.A. rhythm rebel band Fool’s Gold at the Masonic Temple at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. But for the crowd of taste makers and mavens that made it, the show was a quick look at one of the most promising new acts currently emerging from this city.

Delving into the moodier side of their recently released debut full-length on the IAMSOUND label, the percussive, pan-ethnic soul of songs such as “Nadine” created a dreamy atmosphere in the ornate setting. Ending with a celebratory take on “Ha Dvash,” the band members kept the song going as they filed from the stage and back into the room with the bar, where the party continued.

It was a fitting warm-up as the band prepares to embark on a nationwide tour with another buzzed-about L.A. band, modern hippie heroes Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros.

Fool's Gold perform with Metronomy and Destructo at the Roxy, 9009 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood on Friday, Oct. 9. Doors are at 9 p.m.

-- Scott T. Sterling

Alex Ebert could easily double as some kind of indie-rock messiah. Fronting his new band, the 11- or 12-member strong Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Ebert appears onstage shirtless and barefoot, strands of shoulder-length hair tied back in a faux crown as he conducts his smiling, face-painted ensemble like a giddy choir director.

At those moments, he is no longer Alex Ebert, hard-partying lead singer of the dance-rock band Ima Robot; he becomes Edward Sharpe, his boyhood alter ego, and his band is his family. His agenda, as 1960s as it sounds, is little more than love and honesty.

"I'm a naked dude," says Ebert, 30. "I've been humbled to the floor."

What he's built is one of the more unusual musical acts to emerge from Los Angeles in some time. From their start as an unwieldy recording project for Ebert's songs, the Zeros -- who release a new EP digitally today in advance of their debut album, due out July 14 -- have become standard-bearers for the folk-rock revival.

Their big, open-hearted anthems evoke a different (but perhaps no less turbulent) era when cynicism and irony didn't course through pop music like countermelodies. And the band's aesthetic, no matter how organic its evolution, screams throwback -- right down to touring in a converted school bus with the band's name in script on the side and a driver named Cornfed.

"That bus is like stepping into a hippie wet dream," drummer Josh Collazo jokes.