Coachella acts can’t resist Vegas

Thom Yorke slamming down big-ass plastic footballs brimming with Coors Light. Feist elbowing blue hairs out of the way for prime bingo seating at Sam's Town. Pulp's Jarvis Cocker gobbling 'shrooms and totally freaking out at "Mystere" a la Seth Rogen in "Knocked Up."

All of these things are going to happen in April. I am 80 percent positive that I am completely sure of it.

Why? Because it's Coachella time again! Every year, Vegas gets a slew of shows from bands either on their way to or back from the three-day alt-rock buffet. This go-round, the festivities are taking place on consecutive weekends (April 13-15 and 20-22), which could lead to even more gigs here from Coachella performers in the downtime between the outings.

Already a trio of groups, French electro duo Justice, NYC dance punk subverts The Rapture and indie pop darlings The Shins, have announced shows here at The Cosmopolitan, and we expect plenty more.

Here are the Coachella acts I'd most like to see join them in Vegas:

Refused. Coachella's biggest score is a reunion of these combustible Swedes who went up in flames following their watershed 1998 rager, "The Shape of Punk to Come." That title may sound hyperbolic, but the band's assaultive, Molotov cocktail of larynx-bloodying hardcore and socialist polemics set the bar for protest punk so high, that Against Me! couldn't reach it if they were standing on Anti-Flag's shoulders. Crank "New Noise" and smash all your Green Day records to bits.

At The Drive-In: Another incendiary reunion. It's a timely comeback, as the most prominent band to follow in the demise of ATDI, the masturbatory Mars Volta, has grown increasingly insufferable from one navel-gazing album to the next. By comparison, ATDI is a fat-free, post-hardcore tantrum, an adrenaline shot to punk's flat-lining heart. Should they perform on a double bill with Refused, a fault line might very well be opened.

Radiohead: What do these dudes have against Vegas? Don't they know that this is the greatest city in the world? Where else can you get a deep-fried Twinkie for 99 cents at 2 a.m. outside a joint where chicks in headdresses hand out plastic beads to Budweiser-defeated Midwesterners? I rest my case. And yet the only time Radiohead has played here was opening for Tears for Fears nearly 20 years ago. C'mon, Sir Thom, get your 'Head out of your arse. (Get it? Play on words!)

Death Grips: The most awesomely unhinged album of 2011 just may have been "Exmilitary" from this deconstructionist hip-hop firing squad. MC Ride doesn't rhyme so much as channel a street preacher's spittle-spraying, end-of-days vehemence over No Wave noise and algebraic beats.

Death to rap.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.