Over and Under

One big show, one smaller “I think this is one of the best songs ever written about the plastics industry,” U. S. Girls’ Meghan Remy says in a You- Tube clip, launching into a cover of Fiver’s “Rage of Plastics.” The choice of song, featured on her new album “In a Poem Unlimited,” is a telling one for Remy, an artist’s artist with nary a commercial concern in the world. That said, her latest does flirt with pop. Sauntering in on a drumpad and synth, “Rosebud” has that cheap- fog- machine crackle that’s become vogue in recent years, and like so many songs here (“Velvet 4 Sale,” “M. A. H.”), forms an irresistible conga line between cultural discourse and dance party. See what all of that means when Remy comes to the Larimer Lounge on March 21. Tickets: $ 12-$ 14 via tickefly. com. It sounds cutesy, but Darlingside isn’t overly precious about its work. Its name plays on the suffix - cide, as in “fratricide” or “pesticide,” and echoes the advice of writer Arthur Quiller- Couch: Kill your darlings. The Boston fourpiece has come away with a dazzling catalog of quaint chamber pop. The band flits from Crosby, Stills and Nash (“Horses”) to Blind Melon (“Whippoorwill”) like sliding out of one silk robe and into another. But don’t mistake its songs for feather- light fodder. “Someday a shooting star is gonna shoot me down / Burn these high rises back into a ghost town,” goes “Singularity.” The end never felt so comforting. Catch the band at the Bluebird Theater on March 17. Tickets: $ 20 via axs. com.