With its cryptic name, a fearless sound, and darkly dreamy cover artwork, there can be little doubt of the influence of the prog-rock titan The Mars Volta on the instrumental quartet Zechs Marquise. And it should come as little surprise that it's also a family influence.

Zechs Marquise will perform at Mixtapes in East Moline on Monday, and two of its members - brothers Marfred and Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez - are the siblings of The Mars Volta mastermind Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. (Marcel also plays with The Mars Volta.)

The shared genetics and tastes are evident on Zechs Marquise's studio debut, Our Delicate Stranded Nightmare. The music of both The Mars Volta and Zechs Marquise is a shadowy, dense, free-flowing stew flavored with the salsa music of their parents as well as jazz but based mostly on psychedelic and progressive rock. Both bands often float around without anchors.

That's frequently a curse for The Mars Volta, whose albums since De-Loused in the Comatorium have retained the aesthetic of that debut yet have felt airless and closed. It seems like a blessing on the Zechs Marquise record, which has a patience often lacking in The Mars Volta.

The singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche speaks of his audience like a pool of friends and acquaintances -- a blob that's ever-changing.

With each album, he said, "you're gaining someone, and you're losing someone. ... You're going to be reunited with someone you met in the past, and somebody else is going to take some time off and not be a part of what you do, and then also someone brand-new is going to enter the field and be excited about what you do. ... I like that idea."

That speaks to a healthy attitude toward the consequences of his artistic exploration, as well as the fickle taste of the public, but it also reflects the intimate nature of his adventurous, manicured, instrumentally omnivorous pop music, which seems to foster a relationship between artist and audience.

Lerche should be right at home at his Daytrotter.com show on Wednesday at Huckleberry's, with the small venue offering him plenty of opportunity for that give-and-take.

It might be lemons and lemonade and all that, but Rock Island native Lissie Maurus said she's pleased that it's taken her this long to reach this point in her musical career.

Maurus (who performs under the name Lissie) spent half a decade in Los Angeles and, for the most part, made her living from music. But when she comes back to the Quad Cities for a Daytrotter.com show next week headlined by Sondre Lerche (see article here), she'll be supporting her first proper release.

The Digable Planets that perform at RIBCO on November 6 will be different from the casually low-key, jazzy hip-hop group that from 1992 to 1995 made a major splash, with the single "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)," the well-regarded albums Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) and Blowout Comb, one Grammy, and another nomination.

But Doodlebug (also known as Craig Irving and Cee Knowledge) insisted that even without Ladybug (Mary Ann Vieira), he and Buttefly (Ishmael Butler) are authentic Digable Planets.

"We're the ones who created the name Digable Planets and produced all the music and wrote all the music," Doodlebug said in a phone interview last week. "We decided to continue the tradition of Digable Planets. If she doesn't want to do it, that doesn't mean the group has to die. ...

"Ninety percent of everything that came out of her mouth was written by one of us. Why wouldn't it still be Digable Planets?"