BUZZ BANDS

A hit by any name

Her music has a teeny-bopper’s sensibility, an electro-pop foundation far past its 1980s expiration date and a breathy proclivity for stringing together rhymes like “A-B-C” with “1-2-3.” So why are the hipster nations on both coasts embracing Norwegian pop star Annie, whose debut album “Anniemal” (just out in the U.S.) lit up the Internet like a disco ball? It’s as if bloggers have never met anybody with perfect teeth and a studded jean jacket.

Well, even tastemakers must dance. The artist (full name: Annie Lilia Berge Strand) feeds every guilty pleasure urge on “Anniemal,” from the song “Greatest Hit” (first released in 1999) to “Heartbeat,” which sounds as if it could have been on an Ivy album, to “Chewing Gum,” on which she opines, “I don’t want to settle down / I just want to chew gum.”

Touring with collaborator Tino Kaukolampi, Annie hits L.A. this weekend (without a full band) for a couple DJ sets, and she’ll probably sing too. Included: a stop at the (always bustling) Sunday afternoon shindig on the rooftop of the Standard Hotel downtown and another Tuesday night at Cinespace.

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New case of Mumps

Singer-songwriter Kristian Hoffman has spent the better part of 2005 wrestling with history. “Because every bit of my past has been dug up,” he says, chuckling. “But it is nice that people have taken it seriously enough to make all these nice little packages.”

Hoffman was the songwriting force behind the Mumps, a mid-1970s New York City punk band whose glammy, outrageous style put it somewhere between the New York Dolls and the Ramones. The band, fronted by vocalist Lance Loud (who gained fame on the PBS television series “An American Family” in 1973), now lives on in “Mumps -- How I Saved the World.” The double-disc retrospective, with its lavish packaging, was released this week by Sympathy for the Record Industry after Long Gone John, who runs the label, took on the project after meeting Hoffman over dinner in January.

Listen to the collection and you’ll wonder why the Mumps, with their great hooks and snotty lyrics, never got the record deals given to their contemporaries. Outside of two singles, their only release was the “Fatal Charm” compilation that came out in 1994 on L.A. label Eggbert Records. “We slipped through the cracks, I guess,” Hoffman says. “Although now we seem to be slipping back out of the cracks.”

Tonight at Tangier, a band Hoffman calls “the Quasi-Mumps” -- including originals Hoffman and Paul Rutner, with friends from the L.A. pop scene -- will mark the CD/DVD’s release by performing an all-Mumps set.

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Fast forward

The dark side is back, and we’re not talking about that little movie at your local multiplex. A recent set at Spaceland by She Wants Revenge showed the L.A. quartet worthy of its member’s Killing Joke T-shirt. The band opens for Moving Units on Wednesday at the Fonda Theatre.... And check out Portland’s Lion Fever on Friday at El Cid (opening for the Willowz) and see if vocalist Jennifer Pearl doesn’t remind you of Siouxsie Sioux.