The CMJ Music Marathon, which runs tomorrow through Saturday, is the annual gathering of the college radio tribe, drawing thousands of college DJs and aspiring Matador Records interns for a long weekend of concerts, panels, and heated late-night debates. Over the next four nights, it will also dominate New York nightlife. Thousands of performers will take to the stage at more than 50 venues, from tiny Sin-e to cavernous Webster Hall.

With thousands of acts performing over the next four days – few of which you’ve likely heard of, let alone heard – planning a schedule can be confusing. But you’ve got to find some way through the madness. On this page, we’ve selected some our favorites. But any criteria is better than none, so we’ve organized the following thematic tours. Devise your own, and check www.cmj.com/marathon for more bands yet.

The CMJ Maritime Tour

What to expect: whimsical songs, horns and other gale winds, possible motion sickness.

Giant Squid (Oct 13, 8 p.m., Lit Lounge) Life at Sea (Oct 13, 8 p.m., Rare) Shark Quest (Oct 13, 9 p.m., Mercury Lounge) Sea Ray (Oct 13, 11 p.m., Tribeca Rock Club) Crosstide (Oct 14, 10 p.m., Acme Underground) Sponge (Oct 14, 12 a.m., Shanghai Rock Hotel Main Stage) The Sails (Oct 16, 9 p.m., Acme Underground) Victory at Sea (Oct 16, 11:30 p.m., Northsix)

The CMJ Malady Tour

What to expect: Infectious grooves, music sure to make your temperature rise and get your antibody moving.

Malady (Oct 15, 8 p.m., CBs Downstairs) The Fever (Oct 15, 12 a.m., Maxwells) Lion Fever (Oct 16, 8 p.m., Sin-e) The Disease (Oct 16, 9 p.m., Northsix Downstairs) Curl Up and Die (Oct 16, 11 p.m., CBs Downstairs)

The CMJ DOA Tour

What to expect: the loudest and hardest-core acts of the weekend, but given indie rock’s penchant for ironic band names, also some of the most twee.

Murder by Death (Oct 13, 10:45 p.m., Downtime) Death Comet Crew (Oct 13, 11:45 p.m., Northsix) Dead Elvi (Oct 13, 12 a.m., Plaid) Bury Your Dead (Oct 14, 7:30 p.m., CBGB) A Perfect Murder (Oct 14, 8 p.m., CBGB) Death Vessel (Oct 15, 8 p.m., Alphabet Lounge) Death From Above 1979 (Oct 15, 10:45 p.m., CBGB)

… And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead (Oct 15, 1:30 a.m., CBGB)

WHERE TO SEE IT

Acme Underground
9 Great Jones Street 212-677-6963 www.acmeunderground.com

Alphabet Lounge
104 Avenue C 212-780-0202

Avalon
47 W. 20th Street 212-807-7780 www.avalonnewyorkcity.com

Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancey Street 212-533-2111 www.boweryballroom.com

Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery 212-614-0505 www.bowerypoetry.com

Canal Room
285 W. Broadway 212-941-8100 www.canalroom.com

CBGB
315 Bowery 212-982-4052 www.cbgb.com

Coral Room
512 W. 29th Street 212-244-1965 www.coralroomnyc.com

Delancey
168 Delancey Street 212-254-9920

Downtime
251 W. 30th Street 212-695-2747 www.downtimenyc.com

Fez
380 Lafayette Street 212-533-7000 www.feznyc.com

Irving Plaza
17 Irving Place 212-777-6800 www.irvingplaza.com

The Knitting Factory
74 Leonard Street 212-219-3132 www.knittingfactory.com

Lit Lounge
93 2nd Avenue 212-473-3981

Maxwell’s
1039 Washington Street Hoboken

Mercury Lounge
217 East Houston 212-260-4700 www.mercuryloungenyc.com

Northsix
66 N. 6th Street 718-599-5103 www.northsix.com

Pianos
158 Ludlow Street 212-505-3733 www.pianosnyc.com

Plaid
76 E. 13th Street 212-388-1060

Rare
303 Lexington Avenue 212-481-1999

Rothko
116 Suffolk Street

Shanghai Rock Hotel Main Stage
20 W. 39th Street 212-719-9867

Sin-e
150 Attorney Street 212-388-0077 www.sin-e.com

Tribeca Rock Club
16 Warren Street 212-766-1070 www.tribecarockclub.com

Webster Hall
125 E. 11th Street 212-353-1600 www.websterhall.com

WHAT TO SEE

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13

8:45 p.m., Hidden Cameras, Bowery Ballroom
Who needs sexual innuendo when you can just come right out and set songs about golden showers and for-pleasure enemas to choral arrangements? This is the songwriting insight of Joel Gibb of the Canadian “gay church folk music” group the Hidden Cameras. Even those who don’t share Gibb’s fascination with bodily smells and fluids may appreciate his music, which combines the lush pop of Belle & Sebastian with the ironic lyricism of Stephin Merritt.

– M.E.

9:30 p.m., Antony and the Johnsons, Coral Room
Antony is a local art-world treasure, championed by musicians as different as Lou Reed and Devendra Banhart. And deservedly so. His quavering voice is like nothing you’ve ever heard, and his glammy gender-bending piano ballads are the nonfiction version of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” Not to be missed.

– M.E.

10:15 p.m., Les Georges Leningrad, Northsix
This Montreal trio lovingly embraces everything ridiculous about electroclash, post-punk, and performance art, then mad-scientist cooks it together into a devilishly convulsing dance party. Their 2002 debut “Deux Hot Dogs Moutarde Chou” (Alien8) sounded like the Sun City Girls hosting a night at a Berlin disco. Their new “Sur les traces de Black Eskimo” (Alien8) unmasks the band’s restless imp as the love child of Devo’s post-humanity and Serge Gainsbourg’s goofy naughtiness. Onstage the group borrows equally from Julien Beck’s Living Theater and Stereo Total’s retrofuturo fashions, gyrating like a pack of inspired jesters.

– Bret McCabe

12 a.m., The Hold Steady, Delancey
Singer/guitarist Craig Finn turned to barroom rock ‘n’ roll with his new group the Hold Steady and took a roaming tour of America for the group’s 2004 debut. “Almost Killed Me” (Frenchkiss) is a chugging 10-song photo album of killer parties started with positive jams, where two guitars trade lead licks behind memories fond and fickle, with fleeting stops in cities where everyone’s a critic and most people are DJs. Finn takes us on a tremendously well-written and sequenced spin, aligning himself throughout with the characters he alternately skewers and celebrates.

– B.M.

1:30 a.m., Mix Master Mike, Irving Plaza
He is known to some as the beatsmith responsible for the super-disco-breakin’ sonics of the Beastie Boys’s “Hello Nasty.” To others, he is remembered first as a part of the pioneering turntable collective, the Invisibl Skratch Piklz. But in recent years, MMM has forged a solo identity all his own. His latest offering, “Bangzilla” (Immortal), is full of retro scifi-effects and sharp stylistic turns.

-M.E.

THURSDAY , OCTOBER 14

10 p.m., John Cale, Avalon
Lou Reed may have been the face of the Velvet Underground, but Cale was the architect of its signature droney, white-noise sound. His own work has been far more varied, ranging from avant-garde collaborations with the likes of Terry Riley and Brian Eno, to the more accessible – even pop – sound of his new album “HoboSapiens” (Or Music). As long as you don’t come expecting “Sister Ray,” you’ll go away happy.

– M.E.

10 p.m., Heather Duby, Tribeca Rock Club
With a voice both haunted and alluring and a fondness for moody electronic landscapes, Seattle singer/songwriter Heather Duby is a perfect tonic for those of us who carried a torch for Martina Topley-Bird era Tricky. Duby’s production partners Bo Gilliland and Eric Akre know that her fluttery vocal huskiness works best when nuzzled into Spartan arrangements of staccato drum breaks and minimally pulsating melodies. Her November release “Come Across the River” (Sonic Boom) finds her approaching a Cocteau Twins level of ethereal beauty.

– B.M.

10:45 p.m., Grand Buffet, Bowery Poetry Club
The current generation of backpacking white rappers has borrowed equally from Native Tongues’s early 1990s microphone mathematics and American punk’s do-it-yourself gumption, but few bring the skills of the former and the energy of the latter to the live stage. Pittsburgh duo Grand Buffet does – by always going completely over the top. Over bubbly laptop jockeying and a bargain-basement Miamistyle booty bass, the two fellas in Grand Buffet – Lord Grunge and Grape-A-Don – catalog their world in raps about candy bars, baseball cards, superstars, Grace Jones, and a pack of Twix. Like the candy, Grand Buffet is nothing but quick, fattening decadence, but that doesn’t stop the rush from getting the blood moving.

– B.M.

11:15 p.m., The Concretes, Bowery Ballroom
The Concretes have one of the great antonymic band names in all of rock ‘n’ roll: their sound is weightless, ethereal. Too soft to make it over on the same garage-rock boat that ferried fellow countrymen the Hives and Sahara Hotnights, the Concretes finally found an American audience with the Astralwerks release of their eponymous second album last spring. Singer Victoria Bergsman’s sexy-breathy vocals sound remarkably like Hope Sandoval’s, and the music ranges from gauzy Mazzy Star to giddy Raveonettes. Ideal for art-school make out sessions.

– M.E.

12 a.m., Holly Golightly, Mercury Lounge
Like her friend and sometimes collaborator Jack White, Holly Golightly is a garage rock revivalist who has wandered, perhaps irretrievably, into the past. Her new album, “Slowly But Surely” (Damaged Goods), finds her rooting around in the music of the 1950s and 1960s. The backing band sounds like the Animals one minute and a smokey beatnik two-piece the next. Her voice carries hints of Loretta Lynn, Nico Case, and Peggy Lee. Listen in particular for the song “My Love Is,” in which she compares her love, convincingly, to “a mountainside” and “an ocean’s roar.” “My love is a deep blue sea,” she adds – so is her beguiling talent.

– M.E.

12 a.m., Ted Leo/Pharmacists, Knitting Factory
Singer/guitarist Ted Leo is indie-rock’s current resident smarty-pants, the guy who can get away with putting his lyrics where his liberal heart is, slant-rhyme “ossify” with “apostasy” in a cracking falsetto, and wax nostalgic for the Specials at a 1979-punk agitprop pace. He follows up his shimmering 2003 “Hearts of Oak” (Lookout!) with the new and equally solid “Shake the Sheets” (Lookout!). Mod guitars still rule for Leo, and right now nobody hangs sincere intelligence on huge, jittery pop hooks quite as well.

– B.M.

12:30 a.m., Mu, Canal Room
Take one part “Me so horny” broken-English banshee howl and mix it into disco bump and grind and you might get something like Mu’s 2003 stunner of an album “Afro Finger and Gel” (Tigersushi). This Sheffield, England-based husband and wife duo of Mutsumi Kanamori and Maurice Fulton can’t decide if they want to sex you up or dance this mess around, so they ping-pong between the two. The end result is the same: a quickened pulse and sweaty skin.

– B.M.

FRIDAY , OCTOBER 15

6:40 p.m. Cracker, Bowery Ballroom
8 p.m. Camper Van Beethoven, Bowery Ballroom
This is your life, David Lowry. The first four acts at the Bowery Ballroom Friday night all have some connection to Lowry’s two projects, Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker (both of which will perform). With its signature fiddle sound and playful songcraft, Camper Van was an 1980s college rock darling; Cracker was a more successful 1990s commercial act known for its breakout hit “Low.” But it’s Camper Van that is reconstituted and recording again these days, having released a surprisingly good rock opera, “New Roman Times,” in 2002.

– M.E.

9:15 p.m., Vietnam, CBGB
10:45 p.m., Death From Above 1979, CBGB
12:15 p.m., Panthers, CBGB
Vice Records is the Nonesuch of the Lower East Side crowd: a genre-crashing curatorial record label that will release anything you can be made to feel lame for not liking. CBGB’s Friday will play host to three such Vice offerings. Vietnam are slavish-but-capable Velvet Underground imitators; the Panthers play in-your-face “dadaist rock” a la Fugazi; and Death From Above 1979 are megawatt, guitar crunching power-rockers. Between sets, hang in the back and listen to the Vice crowd snicker at what the out-of-towners are wearing.

– M.E.

10 p.m., The Faint, Webster Hall
Given their squealing dance synth, death-rock guitar, and macabre subject matter, there’s little faint about them. This Omaha, Neb., band has always had one of the best live shows around. Now they’ve graduated from smoke machines and strobes to smoke machines and video screens. Bring your mascara and your dancing shoes.

– M.E.

10:20 p.m., Battles, Irving Plaza
A three-guitar-strong quartet specializing in IDM-twitchy instrumental body rock, Battles is an exercise in human derring-do over computerized fakery. Guitarist/keyboardists/laptop manipulators Tyondai Braxton and Ian Williams soundpaint baroque paisleys of guitars and electronic bleeps and pulses, which third guitarist David Konopka offsets with rhythmic chords. Pushing everything forward is the industrial machine-like hitting of drummer John Stanier, who maintains those shifting patterns and triple-time fills usually only found in software. Their band’s three 2004 EPs – “Tras” (Cold Sweat), “EP C” (Monitor), and “B” (Dim Mak) – are mere appetizers for the interlocking surges of their live show.

– B.M.

12 a.m., Dan Melchior’s Broke Review, Rare
This singer/guitarist looks and sounds like a sloshed bloke who just stepped out of a Northern England pub circa 1966. His wet eyes drink in all the sadness in the world and give it back to you in the forlorn poetry of resigned British wit. Give him a guitar and skiffled-up R &B beat, though, and he’ll tear any nightclub apart. Melchior knows only a few musical forms – old country, frazzled blues, 1960s garage rock R&B, and British punk – but with his no-frills approach to basic rock ‘n’ roll he can spin a yarn that keeps your mind riveted and feet stomping.

– B.M.

12 a.m., We Regazzi, Pianos
This Chicago trio harnessed the noisy heart of the Windy City’s 1990s no-wave explosion and thrust it into the service of anxious melodies. It sounded a little brittle on the first two albums, but on this year’s “Wolves With Pretty Lips” (Suicide Squeeze) the now New York-based trio of Farsifa player Collee Burke, drummer Alianna Kalaba, and singer/guitarist Anthony Rolando add much needed flesh to the band’s driving force. Rolando has discovered the fullthroated power of his voice, which too frequently stayed close to an emo whine, and Burke and the considerably volatile Kalaba carve curvy, driving backgrounds for the singer’s fresh, hungry roar.

– B.M.

12:45 a.m., TV on the Radio, Irving Plaza
A year ago you couldn’t get into a TV on the Radio show, so loud was their buzz. You probably won’t get into this one either, but it’s worth a shot. The band’s doo-wop-meets-indie-rock sound has opened up whole new vistas of possibility in underground music and their live show is even more tuneful and chaotic than “Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes” (Touch & Go), their excellent debut album.

– M.E.

1 a.m.,The Fall, Northsix
The Fall’s winter-into-spring 2004 America tour was a triumph of spiteful ego over broken bones. The Fall’s legendarily cranky mouthpiece, Mark E. Smith, was impaired by a broken hip, so he climbed on and offstage with crutches and planted his usually jittery self in a chair behind a table for the entire show. Whatever pain it caused only fueled Smith and the band’s orneriness, of which there’s plenty on its latest album, “The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country on the Click)” (Action Records). By tour’s end the still-wobbly Smith had found a way to project his mobility frustrations into every song, and the 47-year-old curmudgeon was ripping through his 25-year deep well of cantankerous, confrontational rock.

– B.M.

SATURDAY , OCTOBER 16

10 p.m., Mike Doughty, Fez
Doughty is best known as the fitful, fractured voice of the jazzy 1990s art-rock outfit Soul Coughing. In recent years, he has remade himself into a folk singer, performing around New York City with his acoustic guitar, but his solo work maintains the same witty wordplay and instinctive sense of rhythm as his earlier work.

– M.E.

12 a.m., The Prosaics, Sin-e
The Prosaics arrived on the New York music scene in late 2002, about the time another post-punk-inspired act seemed, well, prosaic. The release of their first EP, “Aghast Agape” (Dim Mak), which finds them venturing into Interpol and Chameleons U.K. territory, should earn this talentedbut-familiar-sounding act a second listen.

-M.E.

12:30 a.m., Twilight Singers, Irving Plaza
Greg Dulli may very well be a happy man, but on records the guy is all razor blades and empty bottles. With the Twilight Singers, Dulli continues to mine the beautiful sadness that he did with the Afghan Whigs, but is now freed from the confines of that band to wander into whatever stylistic clash strikes his moody fashion. Last year’s “Blackberry Belle” (One Little Indian) was an album full of last-call looks around the bar and waking up in unfamiliar rooms. The band’s latest, “She Loves You” (One Little Indian), features Dulli-fied covers of a grab-bag of artists from Bjork to John Coltrane, Mary J. Blige to Marvin Gaye.

– B.M.

12:30 a.m., Bumblebeez 81, Knitting Factory
Australia’s Bumblebeez 81 have found a way to combine rap and rock – or the spirit and building blocks of both anyway – without disgracing either. The band’s cut-and-paste aesthetic recalls the Beastie Boys at their most Shad-radical, or what early Pavement might sound like if it was remixed by Timbaland.

– M.E.