After a somewhat painful opener by Me in the Zoo, Kelli Scarr took the stage on Thursday night and filled NYC’s Joe’s Pub with her giant whispery voice. She is on tour now showcasing her newest album, “Piece,” which was released on August 10 by the indie-start-up label, "Silence Breaks."

With a short hair bob, bangs covering her eyes, and a ruffled white shirt tucked into a high black skirt, the petite Scarr was barely noticeable as she walked onstage along with her grandiose ensemble of musicians: two electric guitarist, a cellist, a pianist, a drummer, a trumpet player and a keyboardist.

But the moment she opened her lips to sing a gentle hush fell over the crowd. Scarr’s voice is amazingly fresh, spicy and sweet all at the same time. At one moment she is sassy, jamming with an electric guitar like a punk rocker, her leg kicking up suggestively with the music, and the next moment she is somber, even sad, her voice turning into a mournful lover as she sings “Breakup.”

“What I’ve noticed lately is that people of our generation have grown up listening to all different kinds of music,” said Scarr in a pre-concert phone interview, “and that’s how my music has been coming out of me. I think it’s very influenced by my entire musical background which is very diverse.”

She noted that she likes to experiment with different types of music.

Her next album, which she’ll be recording next January up in Woodstock, NY, will feature Scarr on electric guitar. On stage she rocked the audience with a mesmerizing electric guitar jam fest with her accompanying guitarists.

Yet she can still melt her audience with heartwarming songs like “Pure Gold,” a song inspired by her hometown of Folsom, CA, or “Brother” which she sang seated on a stool, acoustic guitar in hand accompanied only by cello and piano.

She closed the performance with “Come Back to Me,” a somber yet upbeat song for which she recently made a music video.

“There is nothing that gives me greater joy as an artist than making a song I love,” Scarr said. “And playing it live is a whole other trip.”

Me in the Zoo plays the songs of Matt Trowbridge, a songwriter and 8th grade English teacher from New Jersey.  Ranging from Nilsson to Petty, the material touches on quirky pop and folky indie genres.  The group is comprised of master drummer and producer Joe Russo, Andrew Southern on bass, and Jon Shaw on guitar and keys.

(x-1) / 2 = 34

Solve for x.

Doesn’t sound like music to you? Well, for Dr. Genius, drummer of Fortress of Attitude, the solution to x was precisely the inspiration for the band’s first song on Saturday night at NYC’s Nerd Rock Festival hosted as part of the annual New York Comic Con at Sullivan Hall. The song is about a mathematician who tries in vain to solve the equation of love. The answer to the band’s pre-song question: 69.

The concert featured four of the freshet Nerd Rock bands as part of a larger annual comic book festival, including Kerby Krackle, H2Awesome, Fortress of Attitude, and Bedlam Rock. The concert MC was Fuse TV’s Steven Smith.

Kerby Krackle, a Seattle-based band best known for their comic book themed material, opened the show with a rocking performance. Lead singer Kyle Stevens turned nerd into sexy as bright stage lights changed colors and flashed on his electric guitar. The music was catchy, even fun, despite the fact that the lyrics referenced comic book shops and Marvel Girls. Although for the audience it seemed, the Marvel Girls were precisely why the music was so good.

Sullivan Hall in fact was packed with nerds: tall nerds with thick black glasses, short nerds holding comic books, fat nerds in costumes, and skinny nerds with pasty skin.

“A nerd is someone who is socially awkward but intelligent,” explained Dr. Genius. “A geek is socially awkward and into something very specific like, computers, and a dork is socially awkward and also not smart.”

Guest rapper Adam Warrock, decked out with a UPenn baseball cap and glasses, enchanted the crowd mid-set with fast paced intelligent lyrics and a catchy style.

Next onstage was H2Awesome, led by fearless singer Charlie LaGreca who walked on stage wearing a space suit looking costume. As the guitarists and drummer revved up the music, he shouted into the microphone: “Are you ready to put yourself on the periodic table of elements with two parts of hydrogen and one part oxygen?”

The crowd raved as the band began to play a catchy tune, “H2Awesome is in the House.” Mid-song LaGreca pulled off his suit to reveal a Mariachi style coat. The lyrics were funny, the music in good taste and the Star Trek references well done.

LaGreca, who asked to be called “Charlemagne,” proudly admitted that he plays Dungeons and Dragons at least every week. Before coming to stage he showed off a large metal lock hanging from his belt buckle.

“I lock up my cock during the show,” he says. When he has a time, he asks a particularly beautiful nerd girl to unlock it for him. On Saturday night, he called up an audience member to read selections from “Twilight” in the middle of a song about the movie.

Throughout the show, live artist drew cartoonish figures off to the side of the stage.

Audience members were treated to special guest Rachel Bloom, who sang “Fuck Me Ray Bradbury,” as part of the H2Awesome set. Her nerdiness is undeniable, but that it seems is the point. She sings about ejaculating on books and rocked the crowd with her no nonsense clear voice. She is in fact singing about science fiction.

The show winded down considerably when H2Awesome left the stage. They were followed by Fortress of Attitude and Bedlam Rock. Although nerd rockers are clearly all smart and tend to have very creative costume ideas, some can still make considerable improvements with their music. At least everyone was having a lot of fun.

Not to be confused with American Idol’s Kristy Lee Cook, Kristy Lee says she’s the real deal. Indeed, she is.

Heart, soul, musician, singer, charisma, and a sense of humor that would put many comedians to shame, Kristy Lee put the electricity in New York City’s Bowery Electric Thursday night.

Her music is mostly bluegrass tinged with whatever is in her Alabama-bred heart: reggae instrumental jamming, classic rock, country, and even a capella segments.

“I like to hear that heart behind something. I’m very sensitive to feelings,” Lee said in an interview backstage after the performance. “I write whatever the hell I feel like writing. I think music is just based on the heart.“

With her heard covered in a du-rag and a sideways baseball cap, Lee does not immediately come off as a touchy-feely sort of musician, even though she performed barefoot and coaxed the audience to come closer to the stage and learn to love one another.

Kristy Lee is all love, but with a tough exterior built from years of experience, heartbreaks, and the real world of Alabama.

This is perhaps best displayed by “Hey Crazy,” a chilling song she played mid set accompanied only by two acoustic guitars. Her voice is sweet and beautiful, the guitars gently strumming behind, but her lyrics, about someone who hurt her, are real: “you fucked with my heart, you fucked with my mind, you fucked with my soul, you fucked with my time.”

The tough words are somehow belied by her contagious smile. The song, she told the audience, makes her feel better every time she sings it.

She immediately transitioned into, “Late At Night,” a song about love that she plays accompanied by two backup singers, a sax, guitars, and drums. This time her smile matched the lyrics—“I had no choice but to fall in love with you”—but she strays far from boring love songs. With each chorus the music grew into an upbeat captivating segment, and just at the climax she held up her hand to quiet the drummer and began anew, softly, innocently, a fresh start with a new stanza, and seemingly also with the possibility of real love.

She closed the performance with a lively country-style song that had the audience stomping and clapping as if they really were southerners in a raucous country inn. Guitar in her lap, Lee plucked it like a banjo, showing her musical versatility and talent, and her ability to be sweet and saucy, playful and poetic all at the same time.

Her message: “people are real, pain is real, life is real. I think it’s time for people to get real.”

I’m a die-heart feminist. That’s why I was surprised by how distasteful the Vanity Theft show was on February 2.

It was not the pro-woman lyrics that bothered me, so much as the constant banging of electric guitars and too-loud drums in a seemingly nonsensical cacophony of angry sound. For a moment I thought I had traveled back in time to seventh grade, when loud rock music was cool just because, and I dreamed of standing on stage and wildly swinging my hair up and down and thumping a microphone between my legs. And for a moment, it was cool. It was exciting. It was girly, outlandish, and hot.

The standing-room only dance and concert space at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory filled almost instantly as the four-girl band opened with “Limb from Limb,” a surprisingly catchy song with somewhat meaningful lyrics.

“You’ll spend your whole life trying to forgive yourself for what you did,” sings lead singer Alicia Grodecki as she threatens the lover who dared to mistreat her.

The song could even be a real hit. It’s unique in that it supports rather than drowns Grodecki’s strong yet authentically real and beautiful voice. Wine in hand, I couldn’t help dancing with the girls, giving my hair a little shake for good measure.

Unfortunately, the concert had little else to offer. With most of the remaining songs like “Train Wreck” differing little from one another in beat, rhythm, and tone, even the all-girl audience seemed slightly bored.

But if you’re ever in the mood to be sixteen again, put on some red lipstick, and rock your brains out, Vanity Theft will be your best friend.

Vanity Theft is currently on tour with girl-band Hunter Valentine. Girl-band “People You Know” opened the NYC concert.