BUZZ BANDS

Leaving the Best behind

Six months after the release of a promising second album, the indie rock band Sunday’s Best has lost its drummer. Tom Ackerman, who with Edward Reyes co-wrote the lyrics on “The Californian,” has moved on, saying the band was mired in an “inertial second gear,” but wishing the new lineup -- now including Gabriel Gamboa -- the best. “I thought the potential was there for us to be a Death Cab for Cutie, one of those indie bands that could sell 25,000 records,” Ackerman said. “The only thing standing in our way was our own work ethic.” Ackerman, a former guitarist with Skiploader, has picked up the ax again with his new project, the harder-edged Kite-Eating Tree, which includes the three members of Hyphen.

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Grounds for a hiatus

After almost five years, singer-songwriter Wendie Colter is putting her Third Thursday promotion on hiatus. “It was literally like throwing a party for my friends once a month,” Colter said of the monthly vehicle for the pure pop crowd at Highland Grounds coffeehouse. Tonight’s lineup features, among others, Australian power-pop quartet Starky and East Coast acts Cliff Hillis and Leisure McCorkle. Colter’s swan song will be December’s holiday show. Promoter Paul Rock will fill the monthly slot at the venue.

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Single spotlight

Suspecting that multiple-band showcases generate more confusion than buzz, the folks at BMI are launching “Pick of the Month,” a session that focuses on one band. The picking starts with a free show at 7 p.m. Monday at the Troubadour featuring Postfontaine, whose California rock stylings first surfaced in the mid-1990s when principals Emile Millar and brothers Mick and Thom Flowers founded the Lapdancers.

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Briefly

Underground Poets Railroad, a spoken-word/hip-hop tribute to African American firefighters who died in the Sept. 11 attacks, visits the Knitting Factory Hollywood tonight. The brainchild of producers/directors Kip and Kern Konwiser (the HBO feature “Miss Evers’ Boys” is among their credits), the performances feature the work of several hip-hop luminaries, as well as Southland poets such as Sekou Tha Misfit, Gina Loring, Jerry Quickley and Jaha Zainabu.... Redd Kross’ Steven McDonald got some ink when he added bass lines to the songs on the White Stripes’ “White Blood Cells” and posted the tracks on the Internet. Now he’s showcasing his own Steven McDonald Group, which this week released an EP titled “This Is Not a Rebellion

-- Kevin Bronson