BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE AND FRIGHTENED RABBIT

Style: Heart-on-the-sleeve indie rock by two prime acts from the genre’s peak period.

Backstory: If you had to recommend one band that best represented Toronto’s fertile rock scene in the early aughts and onward, it’d have to be Broken Social Scene — simply for the fact that musicians from several acts, including Feist, Metric and Stars, have been in the lineup at one point or another. Broken Social Scene’s fluid sonic palette, spanning from baroque pop to sparse singer-songwriter fare to cinematic anthemic rock, benefited from the ever-changing lineup of creatives, with co-founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning offering some consistency and guidance. Frightened Rabbit scared up a lot of buzz with its magnificent 2008 album, “The Midnight Organ Fight,” swelling alt-rock with heart-ripping lyrics inspired by frontman Scott Hutchison’s bitter breakup. A major label deal with Atlantic Records was the silver lining for his anguish, although the anxiety on subsequent albums hasn’t let up.

Why you should go: Just a couple of years ago, this double bill would have been a swift sellout at the Riverside Theater, but indie rock’s not as “in” in 2017, so this show’s been delegated to the smaller Pabst Theater. That’s a benefit for fans, especially since Broken Social Scene hasn’t toured the country in six years, and both bands have superb, sweeping new albums.

Time and place: 8 p.m. Wednesday, Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St. Price: $32.50 at the box office, the Riverside Theater box office (116 W. Wisconsin Ave.), (414) 286-3663 and pabsttheater.org. — Piet Levy, plevy@journalsentinel.com