ShowPaper Intramural Film Festival Nov. 21, Vaudeville Park, 26 Bushwick Ave. (at Devoe St.), Brooklyn, no phone; 8, $5 A one-day experimental film festival at a Williamsburg art fort could go e

KIM DEAL HAS spent more time in New York lately than some people who actually live here.While she calls Dayton, Ohio, home, Deal has been in town with The Breeders, for her role in The Long Count at BAM and now shes around for a threenight series of shows from the band that made her famous, Pixies.The group, made up of Charles Thompson (AKA Black Francis or Frank Black)

IT STARTED WITH nothing at all,” says Cold Cave’s Wesley Eisold, of the origins of his dark synth-pop group. It sounds simple enough, but the former American Nightmare and Some Girls vocalist/screamer has since piled on thick layers of dreamy melodies, crushing noise and lyrics about death and dying.

“Two questions in, and it’s already utterly banal.” We’re off to a bad start. Ian McCulloch is late to the interview, his first in the U.S. for Echo and the Bunnymen’s forthcoming 11th album, The Fountain. He looks a touch disheveled, unshaven with a pair of sunglasses on, as he shakes my hand and sits down in a table in the Chelsea office, walls lined with Aerosmith gold records and a smell emanating from a bowl of cat food sitting next to us.

RAPIDLY NEARING A critical mass of “important” bands, it’s odd that New York City has churned out so many bland jams in recent years. Sure, many are excited with the onslaught of cutesy guitar and drum duos, Animal Collective clones and masturbatory noise acts designed to appear experimental, but those of us on the outside have been waiting for a battle document to counteract what really amounts to a puzzling local complacency. Good thing DJ /rupture (aka Jace Clayton) and Matt Shadetek are stepping up.With their globetrotting Dutty Artz crew and a new mix record entitled Solar Life Raft— released Nov. 11—this Brooklyn-based production duo avoids rockist tendencies by viewing local music through a polycultural lens that’s actually reflective of its population.

AS THEY WALK up to Ninth Street Espresso in the East Village, I recognize them, one by one.Their tattoos, wiry arms and unintentional tansit all smacks of South Florida.You know that feeling when you stare at a girl on the subway because she might have sat behind you in Algebra II? This time, the feeling stays.

Paper Garden Records hosts a sort of P.S. 1-type event at 3rd Ward featuring not only Brooklyn intellirap duo Das Racist, but Boy Crisis, art by Art Battles and, if that doesn’t make you at least interested enough to go, free Colt 45, which is the new free Red Stripe. See how now you are interested in art and music? Predictable.

THE BAND REAL ESTATE isn’t named after anything particular, certainly not after the type of job that guitarist/singer/primary songwriter Martin Courtney has. Or maybe it is. “I work in a real estate office actually,” says Courtney. “I have a real estate license.”

ON A BURNISHED fall day, Ryan Heyner and Josh Kolenik of Small Black sit side-by-side at Williamsburgs Manna restaurant. Both Long Island natives wear punchy sneakers and a heartfelt manner that matches their music.

Alan Cumming won a Tony Award for his iconic performance as the MC in Cabaret. He’s earned a place in the hearts of cult movie lovers for his turn as the geek-turned-billionaire in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, before casting everyone’s favorite indie actors in The Anniversary Party, the film he wrote and directed with Jennifer Jason Leigh. He’s even written a book, Tommy’s Tale. So it should come as no surprise that he’s completing his pop culture to-do list by releasing solo CD, I Bought a Blue Car Today.