Brian Standeford with The Dutchess and the Duke at CHBP 2009; photo by Daniel Houghton

For hip, live-music-loving Seattleites, Capitol Hill Block Party is the biggest event all year.

This year it's three days instead of two (Friday-Sunday), bigger than ever and expertly balanced on an attendance-drawing credible/mainstream line with headliners MGMT, Atmosphere and The Dead Weather. Some other things to note:

Don't drive.

Every year, vehicle-chained Block Partiers from Everett, Bellevue, and Tacoma flood the already-overcrowded Pike/Pine corridor looking for parking. Finding the neighborhood's streetside opportunities frustratingly scarce, they settle for spots that aren't really spots and get $38 tickets.

Cap Hill streets are already hectic at rush hour, and Block Party is like rush hour times 1 million — plus drunk driving.

Better to bus, bike or cab it. Clear your calendar, make a commitment and strand yourself.

Do bring earplugs.

Do take our advice on what to listen to. Here, find The Seattle Times' Top 10 performer picks, sifted from the 60-plus Block Party acts. Five from me — all local — and five from staff reporter Jonathan Zwickel.

Matson's Top 5

Shabazz Palaces Friday 6 pm Main Stage

Block Party is Shabazz Palaces' second Seattle concert ever, and its in-the-moment mix of Zimbabwean Shona percussion, skeleton sampler hip-hop beats, laptop atmospherics and imagistic poetry shards is not to be missed. Shabazz auteur Ishmael Butler Palaceer Lazaro may or may not wear a turban and Cazal sunglasses on stage, and there's no telling how large or small Tendai Maraire's Shona percussion ensemble will be, but the combination of the two singing and rapping together, hunched over machines, beating a drum and thumbing an mbira is guaranteed to be one of Block Party's more hypnotic sounds.

Truckasauras Sunday 9:15 pm Neumos

With synthesizers on top of synthesizers on top of tables, Seattle-via-Kirkland instrumental conglomerate Truckasauras looks like a garage sale and sounds like electro-hop. Its rhythms seem to physically rip speakers, and Game Boy-assisted melodies go straight to the heart. Daniel Bordon's video projections approximate a "lead singer" from VHS footage of '80s pro wrestlers and action movie stars. Sophomore album "Quarters" is on the way soon.

Flexions Sunday 3:15 pm Neumos

Seattle trio Flexions is all about spiky grooves. Its sound is a kind of blenderized dub-punk made from fractured guitar (Devin Welch), locked-in drumming (Tyler Swan, also of Truckasauras) and deadpan vocals/grounding bass loops (Robin Stein). In practices leading up to Block Party, Swan is rumored to have added digital drum pads to his traditional rock kit.

THEESatisfaction Saturday 6:30 pm Neumos

In the past year and a half, local psychedelic space-rap/jazz girlfriend duo THEESatisfaction went from a nonentity to connecting with thousands of Seattle concertgoers. Its stage show draws one into a basement jam, with Catherine Harris-White and Stasia Irons dancing all over the sofas to chopped-up synth-soul, their floetry playful, serious and anger-tinged.

USF Friday 5 pm Vera Stage

Recently graduated UW student duo USF makes instrumental zone-out suites that sound like dance versions of "The Lion King" soundtrack. It's instrumental computer music arranged in stacked-up loops, with auxiliary digi-drums enlivening the pulse. Sounds sort of like watching time-lapsed sunrises and sunsets.

Zwickel's Top 5

Yeasayer Friday 7:15 pm Main Stage

"Odd Blood," the second release from Brooklyn band Yeasayer, is one of the year's best albums, the sound of a mirror ball bouncing through a neon-lit wormhole to psychedelically revised 1980s. Weird? Yes. Dancable? Definitely. Catchy as Aqua Net? For sure. The band, led by three main dudes with no lack of sonic ambition, is surprisingly able to render its complex compositions live on-stage; their set at Coachella in April was one of the hottest (literally, metaphorically) of the festival. Hopefully Block Party will lose its cool, too.

!!! Saturday 7:30 pm Main Stage

Pronounce it with any three repeated syllables: Chk Chk Chk is most common, but Uh Uh Uh sounds good and Bam Bam Bam works well, too. No matter how you say their name, disco-punk agitators !!! are intent on making Block Party dance. And Block Party better oblige, otherwise it's gonna be a long night. Groove takes precedent with this cross-country ensemble, their stretched-out jams heavy on slinky guitar and clanging percussion. The band is a survivor of the early-'00s dance rock uprising; LCD Soundsystem won the war, but any battle featuring !!! is a helluva time.

Holy F! Friday 9:15 pm Main Stage

Maybe it should be called Capitol Hill Dance Party. Between Yeasayer, !!!, and Holy F!, there's a definite dancefloor imperative at this year's festival. Canadian quartet Holy F! straddles the great jam-band/indie-rock divide — their digitally-enhanced, space-shot climax-rock appeals to the former, while the latter dig anything Pitchfork-approved (their third album, "Latin," released in May, earned a 7.8 rating). Ultimately it's dance music played with guitars and drums; ultimately it will move you to move your body.

The Maldives Sunday 2:45 pm Main Stage

If Ballard has a house band, it must be the Maldives. Here's the antithetical aesthetic of Seattle's orneriest neighborhood — tattoos and cowboy boots, Rainier and whiskey, Merle Haggard and Neil Young, town and country — embodied by nine guys playing like every note might be their last. Ancient Ballard prophecy declares the Maldives the country-rock band to unite the tribes: Fans of pop country, alt-country, and roots country all fall for the Maldives' soulful songwriting and fiddle-/banjo-/lap steel-augmented authenticity. The band debuted a slew of new songs at the Ballard SeafoodFest earlier this month; each one was better than the last.

The Dead Weather Sunday 7:45 pm Main Stage

The band so big they added a third day of Block Party to accommodate it. The Dead Weather is one of the few true rock bands of the world — no hyphenation or specification necessary. Fronted by the volatile Alison Mosshart, drummed by the mercurial Jack White, abetted by two other guys way more talented than their lack of celeb status implies, the Dead Weather will swagger and curse and smoke cigarettes and wail while looking very cool and sounding very loud. Their songs hit like an anvil to the face in the best possible way.