On Thursday night, Mew, Copenhagen’s angelic-voiced earnest dream rock trio will pay a visit to Seattle in support of this summer’s lengthily-titled No More Stories Are Told Today . . . [I’m Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I’m Tired Let’s Wash Away]. Despite the dour and long–but still-tweetable–title, the album finds the band a member short, borderline happy, occasionally danceable, and occasionally dabbling in singsong autotune. That said, it’s more of a modest detour from on the spaced out guitar fog, glittery falsettos, and stormy prog rumbling counterpoints that you came to know and love with And the Glass Handed Kites.

At shows, the band provides projected visual accompaniments to help transport the audience into their intergalactic dreams and cosmic mental voyages. Attack dogs chase through the rain, tiny stuffed animals float through woodlands while playing tiny instruments, creepy dolls, or just swirling color saturated screensavers. While I’ve probably done a fine job of making this all sound unsufferably pretentious, it’s actually all that you’d want from an indie rock show with a few bells, a couple whistles, and three affable Danes who are bound to be swarmed with admirers after the encore. 

Want them to warm you up on Thursday night on Neumo’s dime? We have a pair of tickets to give to one of you loyal Sunbreak readers. Tweet a hypnotic and Mew-inspired alternate album title to @thesunbreak. We’ll pick a winner on Wednesday night.

• Mew plays Thursday, December 10, at Neumo’s. Doors open at 8 p.m. and tickets are $14 (ticketswest).

Last spring Phoenix released Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, the feel-good album of the year that felt like a poppy antidote so much of the seriousness and bearded heft overtaking so many iPods. In Seattle, we eagerly scoured tour schedules and festival programs hoping that if they didn’t at least grace us with their presence they’d at least make a stop within roadtripping distance.

All of that waiting was starting to feel futile, but now, at last, it seems that we haven’t been forsaken by the Parisian electro-pop act that infused so many summer days and inspired so many YouTube mixes and re-mixes. They were just waiting for our desperation to reach levels significant enough to draw us into a cavernous venue for a commercial rock station’s holiday party.

Sure, a spot headlining a medium-sized headlining spot would have been ideal, but it’s still feels like a great winter gift that they’ll be in town at all. You’ll find them in the warm-up portion of a startlingly good lineup for the End’s annual Deck the Hall Ball on December 15th at the WaMu Theater (the name survived the bank, apparently).

Moody English alternative rockers Muse headline the event; Jared Leto’s gift to guyliner, 30 Seconds to Mars, gets the second-highest billing. Emily Haines’s live-wire rock act Metric and the poppy preppy guys from Vampire Weekend open the show.

The doors for the event are at the not-at-all rock time of 5 p.m. on a Tuesday; so you should plan to be prompt to guarantee a spot in the front row to hear VW sing about “exotic” beverages and other tracks from their forthcoming release. Tickets are a bit spendy, but the lineup makes it worth pinching a few pennies between now and then to brighten your winter.

• December 15, 4:30 p.m. doors, WaMu Theater, tickets: $44.50 [ticketmaster]. “Friends of the End” can buy tickets on November 12 at 10 a.m., sales to the general public begin on the 14th.