When the lineup for the third River Roots Live festival was announced, I know I wasn't alone in my reaction: America?!

If you casually watch the Charlie Hunter Trio on stage, something might nag at you. It sounds like there's a bassist, but ... there's no bassist. Just Hunter and his guitar, drummer Simon Lott, and keyboardist Erik Deutsch playing jazz fusion with the direct appeal of rock music.

Some other details might get under your skin. Hunter's hands don't move in quite the same way as a typical guitarist's, and if you look closely, you'll notice that his instrument has seven strings.

Reel Big Fish's new record, Monkeys for Nothin' & the Chimps for Free, features "Another F.U. Song," which begins "Hey kids! It's time to use the 'F' word!" and includes, among its tamer phrases, "with a big rusty pole or a splintery post." You can guess the context in which those words are sung.

But it's a gleeful minute-long screed, not at all bitter. And that's quite a change for the California ska-punk band, which spent most of this millennium on a record label that wanted nothing to do with it.

The second edition of the Penny Ante Book is a beautifully twisted art jam that feels like finding cryptic love letters at the foot of a high-school locker, smudged with the tears and ballpoint-pen teen angst of a Breakfast Club detention. Published by the Penny-Ante Press division of Gifted Children Records, the 288 pages are peppered with rock-and-roll flotsam and jetsam, from an essay about the real Darby Crash by Alice Bag to a tour diary by Smog's Bill Callahan. Other highlights include a short story by Lene Lovich, Bonnie Prince Billy poster artwork by Stacie Willoughby, a collage by Simeon Coxe of Silver Apples, a reflection on the Welsh band Man by Ptolemaic Terrascope founding editor Phil McMullen, and six pages of art by Winston Smith, best known for his subversive cut-and-paste work for the Dead Kennedys.