Ben Kweller

About this time in 2006, Ben Kweller — Brooklyn's greatest fake classic rocker not counting the Hold Steady — was shoving tampons up his nose trying to stop the bleeding, one of the more macabre scenes at that year's brutally hot Austin City Limits Festival. This week, when Kweller ventures back into the sweaty confines of Zilker Park (with this side stop at Walter's), he'll bring a first-aid kit and a band that gets the piano-driven bounce, ­driving-wheel riffage and salt-of-the-earthiness that make his rock classic to begin with. "I'm just a penny on the train tracks waiting for my judgment day," he sings on his most recent release, 2006's underappreciated Ben Kweller. The DFW native is so earnest you sometimes want to hasten that day by pledging allegiance to nihilist terrorism, but it's way more fun to just bop along with him.