THESE ARE DARK days, indeed, my friends – what with it getting pitch-black outside by 5:30 p.m., the bloodbath in Fallujah, and the Destiny's Child and Golden Girls reunions. I was never a believer in Destiny – or Bea Arthur. And then along comes Chicago singer-songwriter Edith Frost to brighten things up. With a résumé as long as Beyoncé's limbs – Frost has sung with everyone from the Mekons and Songs: Ohia to Jim O'Rourke and Neil Michael Hagerty – the girlish, scattershot 40-year-old is the kind of lady you can share a really genuine, gut-deep giggle with. You know the kind – the sort of low-down chuckle that bubbles up, beyond control, better than hysteria. Share enough of those laughs, and you wanna be best friends forevah, trade kitty stickers, dish new crushes, and throw vegan stitch-and-bitch bashes while plotting the revolution.

Sealing the deal, Frost loves to roller-skate, speaks like she's plucking random words and thoughts out of the sky like feathers or snowflakes, and taps into a generous streak of empathy when we chat on the phone and my most-lame computer chokes and freezes. "God! That sucks! Don't you hate when that happens!?" she blurts, reaching out to touch another sufferer in the junked-up trenches of technology (she once worked as a programmer). And that's what I like about Frost – far from truly frosty, she's just so emotionally there.

After this tour, she hopes to get started on her next album, her first since 2001's Steve Albini-produced Wonder Wonder (Drag City), which she hopes will "just not be too dumb."

"You know how you're always your own harshest critic? I tend to think my stuff is, at worst, trite, or when I'm really hard on myself, I think I sound really high school, just too normal," she breathlessly explains, before unleashing a big sigh. "I dunno. Some songs, I'm happy with it right away, and it doesn't bother me, so I have to change a word here and there and mess up a chord so it sounds less ordinary."

I suspect a vital part of her strategy for subversion hinges on her love of outsider sounds, or, as she calls it, "crazy, novelty, weird-ass music, like incorrect music or just bad music." Yep, she may adore Bay Area singer-songwriters like Jolie Holland and Sonny Smith and revere rockabilly, old-timey blues and pre-western swing jazz, but she really gets her geek on collecting records by ventriloquist dummies, "psychotic mice," and dubious warblers like Lucia Pamela, Mrs. Miller, and Florence Foster Jenkins. "I listen to stuff that makes your jaw drop and makes people leave the apartment!" she exclaims, putting our future friendship on the line. "It clears your brain."

The Advantage can probably relate. The Sacramento Nintendo covers combo, which include Hella's Spencer Seim and Crime in Choir's Carson McWhirter, have a new self-titled album on 5RC of such imprintable classics as "Megaman 2" – and they embrace their novelty status.

"From the very beginning it's been a novelty act of some sort," McWhirter says from Missoula, Mont. "I don't think any of us are worried that people are going to think we're dorky because we're a novelty act. Novelties bring back the memories of things that you maybe wouldn't have carried on."

But get real – you're playing covers of Nintendo ditties; the dork factor is pretty high, no? "I think there's a fine line between dorkiness and coolness," McWhirter says. "Both of them are focused on one thing too much. I think it's disputable which one's which."

The gamers' dream band began as a high school combo in Nevada City and took on a robotic life of their own after Seim decided to help out original adapters Nick Rogers and Forest Harding and fill in for their drum machine.

When Seim and McWhirter are ready to move on, they're sure they'll find new, game players to take on the project, which naturally means staying as true to the music as possible. Ascribe it to all those hours clocked in Blaster Master land.

"It's just weird music that we all kind of got stuck in our heads when we were younger, and now that we know something about music, they make more sense," McWhirter observes. For him, Megaman and Marble Madness bring back the memories. "I tend to like the music of games I owned personally. The game I chose to buy and spent the most time playing by myself, getting your brain into the mode of imagining new adventures and things that don't normally happen."

Perhaps that's the real beauty of novelty music: its ability to seep into the old cranium and press those buttons – for, say, horror or humor – less obviously related to straight-up, vanilla pleasure. Fortunately for the Advantage, the fantasy continues. "Nintendo, at this point, hasn't noticed enough to say anything or doesn't care," the laconic bassist adds. "I don't think we make too much money off it for them to be too concerned."

Move it There's a San Franciscan born – or gone – every minute. And for all those, like Dynasty's Jibz Cameron, who move to New York City, there are others, like the No Doctors, who find their way here. The Chicago No Sides/Freedom From foursome moved here about a month ago, guitarist Elvis, a.k.a. Andrew Morrow, tells me. It was either here or NYC, but the N-Docs thought the scene was more exciting – and the weather less dramatic – in S.F. They open a CD-release party for Burmese – going through their own moving moment as Erase Errata's Bianca and OCS's Patrick Mullins fill in for Mark S. and Mark S. – at the Hemlock Nov. 26 before they quiet down and prepare to record an album. "We're going to play a little bit just to feel out the area and get people seeing what we're doing, and then we're just going to lay low for a while and get some new material together," Elvis says.... The pirate radio station on the move, Pirate Cat Radio, 87.9 FM, throws its first "listener appreciation" party Dec. 3 at 12 Galaxies, with a portion of the funds going to rent, utilities, etc.... Speaking of travel, A.C. Newman – late of Zumpano and nowadays churning out the dirty pop as the leader of the New Pornographers – will be coming through soon, mostly because his girlfriend lives in S.F. In fact, after he plays Slim's Nov. 26 and completes the new New Porn disc, he plans on hopping a plane to live and slack in S.F. for six months, perhaps finishing his solo follow-up to the wonderful The Slow Wonder (Matador) here. Other footloose chums haven't been so lucky, he says, obliquely referring to a Zumpano member in Mexico who "has gone slightly off the deep end." Did he go upcountry? Newman: "My quote is, 'He took the last train to Margaritaville.' "

Edith Frost plays Dec. 2, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $10. (415) 474-0365.

Advantage play Sat/27, 9 p.m., and Sun/28, 8 p.m., Bimbo's 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, S.F. $16. (415) 474-0365.

No Doctors play Fri/26, 10 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, S.F. $6. (415) 923-0923.

Pirate Cat Radio listener appreciation party takes place Dec. 3, 9 p.m., 12 Galaxies, 2565 Mission, S.F. $7. (415) 970-9777.

A.C. Newman plays Fri/26, 9 p.m., Slim's, 333 11th St., S.F. $13. (415) 522-0333.

Fluffy kittens rock. E-mail kimberly@sfbg.com.

Contact Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com.