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More About

• Deathray Davies
• The Strokes

With all of the recent drooling over nouveau/retro straight-up rock outfits like the Strokes and the Stripes, you'd think someone would have noticed the Deathray Davies by now. This Dallas-based garage-pop band, which appears at the Bluebird Theater on Friday, August 16, with Superdrag, is the brainchild of former Bedwetter John Dulfino and has all the prerequisites: the effortless, addictive hooks, the jingling pop/rock guitar, the cheeky lyrics. Missing is the oh-so-smug self-congratulatory sheen of those aforementioned bands, as well as the self-conscious irony: "Look! We're totally playing old rock!" (In fact, the Davies' latest album, The Day of Ray, opens with "Is This On?" -- which a cynical listener might read as a takeoff on the Strokes' own opener, "Is This It?") Dulfino's sense of humor is never far away, as evidenced by songs such as "Don't Point at the Stoners" and "Her First Party," a hilarious screed against teenage insecurity thinly disguised as sullenness: "Everyone here sucks/She says to me/I laugh cause I take things/Seriously." This is fun stuff -- seriously.