Our favorite Texans are back with their spiffy vocal harmonies, polished steel guitar licks, and excellent instrumentals, laced with twisted humor and just-a-hair-short-of-traditional lyrics. With Conrad Deisler and Hank Card on guitars, Tom Pittman on banjo and steel guitar, Boo Resnick on bass, and Korey Simeone on fiddle, the group's sound and sensibility is part bluegrass, part country, part Cajun, and pure irreverence.

Their latest release, Strange Noises in the Dark (Blue Corn), spans a broad spectrum of styles from the tango of the title track (involving the narrator's ex-girlfriend in the apartment next door) to the upbeat ditty "You Can Eat Dog Food" to the more or less straight-forward country of "We Always Fight When We Drink Gin."

The Lizards are currently adding internet stardom to their long list of exploits, thanks to the series of catchy, socially conscious jingles they've been commissioned to write by the Consumers Union, most recently the anti-oil industry ditty, "Exxon Toasts the Planet." They have also released a DVD, Lizards Times Twenty, with live footage from the group's 20th Anniversary show interspersed with other juicy tidbits -- they describe it as "Somewhere in the range of Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind, but with less plot."