YOU KNOW HOW sometimes you hear a song on the radio, while you're pulling out of a big-box store parking lot, without any fun-filled big boxes but instead with boring essentials like mouthwash, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Depends, and you're feeling like a shopping zombie, and 107.7 the Bone is cranked because you were listening to "Kashmir" at the proper stadium-worthy level to get in the "mood" for Robert Plant at the Paramount July 19? That certain number comes blaring out of the speakers, and everything suddenly looks way 1983 once more.

It was '83 when Joan Jett first soothed the ruffled feathers of the poor dove she was dragging into a filthy-fun ménage à trois in "The French Song," and damn if it didn't feel that way again when I heard it recently, played in anticipation of Bastille Day on Little Steven's syndicated Underground Garage show.

Who is this? I wondered. It was too pop to be Girlschool, too rude to be Heart, too punk to be the Breeders. The song just goes on and on, hammering home the French-language chorus as relentlessly as Jett courts her male or female cherry bomb, with what seems like about a dozen guitar breaks. "J'aime faire l'amour sur tout à trois," Jett browbeats her ménage, though judging from the way the band plays off each other, I suspect she's really bellowing at the three other Blackhearts. That's amore! "I know what I am, I am what I am," she chants toward the close, before jamming in that last rhyme with the blunt force of Mariska Hargitay knocking down the door of a sex offender. "Don't think that I'm uncouth, I only speak the truth."

Cloddish, but so excellent and a "gem," as Little Steven put it later, after following the track with the equally ass-kicking "Talk Talk," by Music Machine, and "Rock 'n' Roll Napalm," by the Resistoleros. They're not all from '83, but the three seemed like miraculous, mean little irresistible blasts through the fog, propelled by the power of refusal.

Power rangers The Go! Team's sample-and-distortion-fueled "The Power Is On," off their import debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike (Memphis Industries), is another song that seems destined for gem status. Thunder probably stands for the crushing drums; Lightning, the detuned, ringing guitars and children's television piano; Strike, the cheerleader-tinged girl-gang sing-alongs that are treated like any other instrument in an all-exclamation-points mix.

"It's deliberately distorting – to the point where people send me e-mails saying, 'I think my CD is broken. I got a dodgy copy,' " says leader Ian Parton, who was inspired by dodgy outfits such as My Bloody Valentine.

He had a very specific sonic agenda for Go! Team. "I didn't want just a Bollywood sound – I wanted a Bollywood string sound. I didn't want just piano, but Charlie Brown piano, and guitar, Sonic Youth detuned stuff, and double-dutch chanty vocals and Northern soul-blaring trumpets," the ex-documentary maker explains.

Those varied influences carry over into the makeup of the band, evenly balanced between white men like Parton, and the women: black Londoner MC Ninja, Japanese drummer Chi, and German multi-instrumentalist Silke. "I did want to get girlie-female kind of stuff meets funky-Motown kind of stuff, and I had to have people that kind of worked from different backgrounds in a way. I know I didn't want to be another four-blokes-with-guitars kind of band," he says. "Maybe that's the way music might go in future."

In the Brighton-London combo's past: headlining Glastonbury. And in their cacophonous future: clearing the samples to allow the CD to be released in the States on BMG. "Boring stuff but a bit of heartbreaker, really," says Parton, 31. "The CD might not be same as the one you heard."

Different strokes Yes, it's the worst and perhaps not best of times, and the older, wiser Kathleen Hanna of Le Tigre may be on the other side of the activist spectrum from Parton (who, talking about the recent London bombings, describes Go! Team as "worldly aware" but nonagitprop), though I'd guess they'd probably dig each other's music. "I'm not going to lie," says Hanna, who's about to go for a swim in LA. "It's a depressing time with Sandra Day O'Conner resigning. I'm worried about choice being taken away. Sexism is so naturalized – people just take it as a normal state of affairs."

Like Go! Team, Le Tigre are trying the waters with a major label, and it's been an "interesting experiment" on Universal, thus far, she says – Le Tigre haven't been able to get any MTV or radio airplay. "Some of that is we're women and they've already got Gwen Stefani so we just have to wait till she stops making music or something," Hanna says, adding that they were told that if the trio put their lady faces on the single, DJs just wouldn't play it, and that a woman fronting a band of dudes was more likely to get airplay. "I'm glad to be told it, though," she says, continuing to say that that kind of advice and professional management has made a big difference for the band – now she can concentrate on other projects – she'd love to produce artists like Tami Hart or the Gossip's Beth Ditto.

Still, it's good to know that as we reminisce about one of Bikini Kill's early Bay Area shows at 924 Gilman, Hanna can still tap into that familiar grrrly mixture of excitement and rage: "I can't even express how important those experiences are now, seeing great bands like Nation of Ulysses and Huggy Bear every night on tour. I wish I took it more seriously. I damaged my vocal chords in that band. At the height of our popularity, we were playing places that were too small and making no money, and now I wish I was spending more time enjoying friends and stuff. A lot of times, I was too busy trying to find a snack and dealing with crap like some guy yelling at me about what a sell-out I am."

Go! Team play July 20, 9 p.m., Bimbo's 365 Club, 1025 Columbus, SF. $12-$14. (415) 474-0365. Le Tigre perform with Beck Mon/18, 7:30 p.m., Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, SF. www.ticketmaster.com.

Mean girls? E-mail kimberly.

More amour

Blitzen Trapper Lovely rootsy indie from Portland, Ore., comes a-calling. Wed/13, 8:30 p.m., Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. $6. (415) 647-2888. Also Sat/16, Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. Call for time and price. (510) 444-6174.

Dance Disaster Movement Aggro boogaloo gets the crowd moving and maybe even cogitating, touring alongside San Diego's dark kids Kill Me Tomorrow. Wed/13, 8 p.m., Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. $8. (415) 861-2011. Also Thurs/14, 9:30 p.m., Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. $7. (415) 923-0923.

Diamond Nights The NYC "It" boys impress with aggressive glam on half of Once We Were Diamonds (Kemado/Hollywood). Wed/13, 9 p.m., Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. $8. (415) 861-5016.

Postcoitus Whither Xiu Xiu? The Portland project offers stark synth-pop minimalism with a brief shout-out to "Take My Breath Away." Wed/13, 9 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., SF. $10. (415) 474-0365.

Tinariwen These Tuareg nomads from the Sahara play stripped-down Mali blues reminiscent of the music of Ali Farka Toure. Wed/13, 8 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, SF. $25. (415) 885-0750.

Neins We won't take the Portland foursome's wise-aleck garage rock personally. Sun/17, Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. Call for time and price. (415) 503-0393.

Plimsouls The Paisley Underground pachyderms have re-formed, but are they reformed? Peter Case is the main squeeze of ex-Bay Area music scribe Denise Sullivan. Sun/17, 8 p.m., Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. $15. (415) 861-5016.

Contact Kimberly Chun at kimberly@sfbg.com.