1 A decade since hitting a rough patch and re-forming her band in Austin, Texas, Ohio-bred rock howler Erika Wennerstrom now seems unstoppable with the Heartless Bastards. Their latest record, "Restless Ones" (out Tuesday), plays around with '60s psychedelia and Americana flavor but is otherwise straight-ahead rock 'n' roar, with St. Vincent cohort John Congleton serving as producer and Wennerstrom sounding lost but not wanting to be found.

2 Art-house auteurs Josh and Benny Safdie are determined to drag us firmly out of our comfort zones in "Heaven Knows What," a drug-poisoned love story playing at Lagoon Cinema. Scruffy Harley (Arielle Holmes) vividly hooks up with her treasured Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones) in a fever-dream recollection; the homeless heroin addict can't sense that her trajectory is leading to a crash. The actors and the Safdies do a fantastic job wringing stomach-knotting tension out of the deeply disturbing scenario.

3 With "Solitude Creek," author Jeffery Deaver delivers another meaty and complicated thriller. But this one comes with an unusual twist: a killer who doesn't dispatch people with knives or bullets, but by turning people's fears against them. It takes a keen investigator to learn that the first stampede at a local roadhouse isn't an accident. The cat-and-mouse game that results provides a driving force in this page-turner.

4 In the Jane Martin play "H2O," Hollywood action hero Jake (played with ferocious energy by Peter Christian Hansen) plans to mount and star in a Broadway production of "Hamlet" in a desperate attempt to redeem himself. Enter Deborah (Ashley Rose Montondo), a struggling actor and fundamentalist Christian whom Jake is determined to cast as his Ophelia. These two polar opposites' personality conflict becomes a battle of faith vs. nihilism. Gremlin gives this play an electric production at Minneapolis Theatre Garage. www.gremlin-theatre.com

5 A nice warm-up for Belle and Sebastian's performance Saturday at Rock the Garden would be frontman Stuart Murdoch's feature film debut "God Help the Girl," available on iTunes, Amazon and Google Play. Murdoch weaves his highly autobiographical, romantic indie musical about a trio of friends (including the adorable Emily Browning and that one girl from "Game of Thrones") starting a band in Glasgow. As expected, the film is incredibly twee, but the music (performed by the cast and Belle and Sebastian) is infectiously appealing.