If you thought that Sixpence None The Richer's "Kiss Me" was condemned to lite-radio purgatory, guess again: it turns out that it was always a punk song waiting for NFG to unlock its potential. They've paired it with a video that feels like a pure celebration - beautiful young people constructing a stage and an outdoor fortress out of old mattresses. New Found Glory plays in the makeshift structure, and sings these lyrics about bearded barley and sparkling silver moons with shocking conviction. Meanwhile, the kids are having their fun, especially one cad who takes to tallying up the girls he smooches in black magic marker on his arm (he gets his comeuppance, of course). Watch for a cameo by Paramore as well; when a party is this good, everybody wants to attend.

Periodically, we'll read articles in the mainstream press complaining about how modern bands have abandoned the tradition of protest music. In the Sixties, we're reminded, popular musicians kicked back at the powers that be; at this crucial moment, their modern counterparts have abandoned ideology for something safer. Well, that may or may not be true - but if it is, don't blame the bands on Fat Wreck Chords. Over the past seven years, Fat Mike's roster has delivered broadside after broadside at the government; while others have flagged, the Fat Wreck Chords bands have sharpened their critiques, focused their disappointment, and redoubled their efforts. Some may find irony in the fact that the bands in this loose affiliation of straightforward punk rockers have, by necessity, become trenchant social critics. We, on the other hand, know that groups like No Use For A Name have always been about questioning authority and speaking truth to power. If their songs seem more pointed these days than they did when the band started back in the late eighties, well, as another punk-poet once told us, the times are a-changin'.

Which isn't to say that No Use For A Name (or NUFAN, as they're often called by underground-rock aficionados) would have been incapable of writing something as articulate and convincing as "Biggest Lie" for their 1994 debut. Even then, Tony Sly was channeling his outrage into stinging rebukes against suburban complacency and thoughtless conformity. But on 2005's incendiary Keep Them Confused, his writing took a turn toward the overtly - and unashamedly - political. "Biggest Lie" (and Feel Good Record Of The Year, the stinging follow-up) picks up where Keep Them Confused left off. Over scalding six-strings and pounding drums, Sly barks out his disgust. "Left freedom bleeding on the roadside", he roars, "we believe the biggest lie." The whole thing feels like a challenge that's impossible to dismiss; words hanging heavy in the air, demanding a response. And at a little under two and a half minutes, it's over in a flash - it's a quick punch to the gut, leaving audiences breathless.

No Use For A Name has long been among the most reliably exciting live bands on the punk circuit. Their shows are cathartic, energizing, raucous, wild, celebratory: everything that makes this sort of music so indispensable. Director Justin Staggs has always been attracted to bands like that - he's shot clips for Against Me!, The Soviettes, and many others - and his vision is a natural match for NUFAN's enthusiasm and energy. Staggs specializes in recontextualizing performance footage: he likes to shoot bands in action in unusual locations or with strange backdrops, and he often juxtaposes concert images with other hallucinatory visuals. For the "Biggest Lie" clip, he strips away the stage altogether, leaving No Use For A Name to float among a blood-red sea of smoke, radio waves, and inverted patriotic signifiers. The punk band performs in front of an upside-down black and white American flag, a national seal bent on flying out of the frame, the Statue of Liberty, barbed wire, radio waves. It's chaotic, dizzying, and oddly moving - the punk band steadying themselves and giving the audience their very best as the fabric of their nation unravels.

Other bands may change their sound or chase easy commercial success, but Pennywise has stood true to their punk principles for more than a decade. Now, in mid-2008, their faith has begun to pay off in spades: for the first time, they've placed an album in the Billboard Top 100, and "The Western World" reached #22 on the Modern Rock charts. Not bad for a bunch of inveterate rebels whose best-known song before the release of Reason To Believe was titled "Fuck Authority".

"The Western World" is no letup: it's a condemnation of tabloid trash and contemporary media, and the members of Pennywise implicate themselves in the American idiocy. In vivid imagery, thuggishly-articulate frontman Jim Lindberg howls at those responsible for the dumbing down of American culture: "This is evolution's rise - the feeding frenzy of the uncivilized", he howls, "the paparazzi parasites and the vultures can't stop feeding." As always, Pennywise stands arm in arm with the national "trash" - the "steroid boys and the video girls" - and announces his intention to keep fighting until there's nothing left worth fighting for. It's bracing, and poetic; it's a punch to the gut; it's an adrenaline mainline; it's punk rock at its purest and best.

The clip for "The Western World", too, is a naked celebration of punk principles. Pennywise specializes in tearing down pretensions - so a fashion show is a perfect setting for their stinging critiques. On the Pennywise runway, the models aren't even real girls: they're androids assembled in a laboratory by male scientists (in a ghastly laboratory lousy with dental implements and suspicious-looking x-rays), and set loose to entertain other wealthy men. The "band" playing the fashion show, too, is made of interchangeably-robotic supermodels, each one sporting a sharp blond bob and a revealing dress. They're male fantasies animated for other men, played out in front of audiences drunk on their own testosterone. Outside the arena, another gang of angry men - the police - turns their nightsticks on the rowdy crowd clamoring to get in.

But sometimes even a fantasy achieves a kind of autonomy of its own. Sprung from the confines of the runway and the research laboratory, a disgusted android-model discovers the members of Pennywise, bound and gagged by gaffer's tape, and imprisoned in a backstage studio. They'd had another "encounter" with the authorities, it seems, and they've been temporarily silenced. In solidarity, the fabricated young woman sets them free - and they take the stage in the place of the manufactured band. As Lindberg takes the microphone and delivers the incendiary chorus, the punk rock kids stream into the auditorium. It's a takeover by the dregs, the condemned, the cast-out - and it feels great.

San Diego powerpop quartet Pensive is well known for their melodic sing-along songs rooted in the California pop-punk scene that spawned Green Day, The Offspring, and San Diego superstars blink-182. Having previously released two EPs, which they describe with tongue-in-cheek charm as "diet punk," Pensive expects to raise a few eyebrows with their new album Artifacts. Although continuing to embrace the naturally infectious tunes that make for a lively, energetic stage performance that is the hallmark of these California boys, Pensive promises that Artifacts will bring to the fore songs with new musical influences that might be unexpected for fans who know the band well.

"Everything we've accomplished has been through hard work and touring, sweating in a van, being out on the floor talking to kids after the shows," says Clint Baker, singer/guitarist/songwriter for Aware/Columbia Records band Riddlin' Kids, as the group prepares to release its sophomore album, Stop the World.

The product of more than two straight years of non-stop roadwork, Stop the World reflects that whirlwind of activity on feverish rockers like the first single and title track, which admits: "I'm walking on broken eggshells/Trying to make some sense of this/Trying to save face with false appearances."

Smoke or Fire is back after a tour of the world, a lineup change and months spent working on their sophomore full-length, This Sinking Ship. The band has always kept their fans alert over the years, but things are more concrete than ever for Smoke or Fire and their sound remains true. Clearly influenced by predecessors like Hot Water Music and Avail, these young upstarts also blend in some additional elements of Americana with their hints of The Replacements and Springsteen.