It's little surprise that the members of Ha Ha Tonka, hailing from the Ozarks, have a natural affinity for bluegrass.

"Anything we do, whether we're trying to cover an R.E.M. song or what have you, comes out sounding Ozark-ian," said frontman Brian Roberts in a phone interview last week. But on Death of a Decade, released in April, that influence on the band's indie rock is front-and-center with Brett Anderson's mandolin.

Roberts said the quartet, which will perform at RIBCO on Friday, aimed for "brighter, more hopeful sounds" on the album. And because Anderson had been playing lots of mandolin, "it just became the starting point for a lot songs. ... It's such a colorful, I daresay happy-sounding, instrument. It definitely has a bright sound about it that I think ... helped capture the type of vibe or mood that we were wanting on the songs."

That description misses the tonal and artistic expansiveness of the album. The mandolin drives opening track "Usual Suspects," and it's indeed an upbeat rocker. But elsewhere, the instrument brings shading or a counterpoint; on "Lonely Fortunes," the mandolin adds balance, emotional complexity, and ambiguity simply through its pregnant tone.

Fishbone's Angelo Moore has taken inspiration from an unlikely source: Britney Spears.

In 2007, the pop singer shaved her head. "She did that because she needed a change," Moore said in a phone interview last week. "She probably did it because she needed to be able to look into the mirror and see a different person. And from there, if she saw that different person, she would probably perform from a different perspective, which would be a fresh and new one.

"So in my particular case, these days, I've been wearing a wig."

Fishbone will be performing at RIBCO on March 12, and to appreciate Moore's wig-wearing ways, it's helpful to consider that the band has been around since 1979 (when Moore was in his early teens), and it hasn't been an easy ride.

When I interviewed Alan Sparhawk in 2007, the singer/songwriter/guitarist touched on the idea of a "golden moment ... when you're sort of just struggling with some instrument and you sort of have just figured it out, and you are just figuring out the first possible ideas and melodies on it; it's really exciting."

He was talking specifically about Low's Drums & Guns, in which the Minnesota trio (featuring Sparhawk, his wife Mimi Parker on drums, and bassist Matt Livingston - who has since left the band) experimented with instruments they weren't comfortable playing.

In an interview last week promoting Retribution Gospel Choir's December 31 performance at RIBCO (supporting the Meat Puppets), that concept re-emerged in slightly different form. He cast it as freedom - but it's critical to understand that it isn't a natural state of being but the result of work and getting rid of ego. "Those are everything," he said. "'There was a moment where I was not in the way.'"

The Moog guitar looks like a standard electric guitar.

But Fareed Haque knows from unpleasant experience that its innards are anything but standard.

"There's an incredible amount of technology inside that instrument," Haque said in a phone interview last week. "I was flying with the instrument, and ... I feel that airline security ... looked at my name - Fareed Haque - and looked at the guitar." He paused here, letting the implication settle. "I don't know they took it apart, but I know that when I got it, it wasn't all put back together. Which presented great difficulties for our performance that evening. It looked okay, and I sat down to play it, and all the guts just kind of fell out on stage."

He related this story with good humor, in part because it's understandable that transportation-security officials would be suspicious of the outwardly benign guitar with the unusual stuff inside.

Haque will be demonstrating that inner weirdness of the Moog guitar on November 27 at RIBCO, when he performs with his new trio MathGames, which also features drummer Greg Fundis and bassist Alex Austin.