Pussy Riot: Rebels with a cause, and a big sound

What do you call a band that doesn’t tour, has never put out an album, has no set number of members and apparently rarely rehearses? You could call it Pussy Riot, since these Russian dissidents have all the above credentials — or the lack thereof.

This hasn’t stopped the media, and these women, from calling Pussy Riot a “band.” And it hasn’t stopped the group from becoming the most-buzzed-about attraction set to appear at Amnesty International’s big human-rights concert at Barclays Center Feb. 5.

The bill features the Flaming Lips, Imagine Dragons and Lauryn Hill, along with the two Pussy Riot members released last month from a Russian penal col- ony on charges of “hooliganism” and “inciting religious hatred.”

It’s not clear if the women — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina — will play or just speak at Barclays. But their “playing” amounts to little more than randomly slamming guitar chords while shouting placard-ready political broadsides.

You can hear the rackety and crude result in a bunch of music videos available on YouTube or in the excellent HBO documentary “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer.”

Even after watching, you’d be hard pressed to know w exactly how to label these bold women: An art project? A dissident political group? A lifestyle? Or even — gasp — a band?

In a way, way they’re all that, that and more. They have the big ideas of conceptual artists, the mission of protesters and the sensibility and force of a band.

They’re also uncommonly, and thrillingly, inclusive. Anyone can be a member of Pussy Riot. A All you have to do is d don a balaclava (the m mask that shields their f faces), and yell for the c cause and you’re in.

In that sense, they’re t the most democratic t thing in modern Russia. T They’re also one of the bravest. If they can’t really play or sing, what could be more gloriously or purely punk than that?

jfarber@nydailynews.com