On Oct. 31 Amoeba Hollywood will begin its Halloween celebration at 2 p.m. with DJs, a dog costume contest and more.

From 2-4 p.m, Amoeba DJs DJ Fang Face and DJ Lew Siffer will spin cool scary tunes. And starting at 4 p.m., Amoeba will hold its 2nd Annual Dog Costume Contest. Bring your dog in costume and you can win a grand prize gift basket of dog-friendly treats from Catts & Doggs. Or just come and watch, if you can handle the unbearable amounts of cute. Just look at the photos from last year’s contest. Bat dog! Ramones dog! Can’t handle it.

Amoeba has an exclusive We Are Scientists download, a live version of their hit “After Hours,” as part of its full-album download of College Radio Day – The Album.

While the album (and track) is available on CD ($14.98), only Amoeba.com includes the download of the We Are Scientists track, which comes on the limited edition CD. The entire album download is $9.98 on MP3, and also available on either ALAC or WAV file (that’s fancier fidelity, for non-audiophiles) — as opposed to $11.98 on iTunes in MP3 only, and without that bonus track. The sale is limited, so if you’re thinking about picking it up, do it soon!

The album is a two-disc set featuring songs from The Civil Wars, Umphrey’s McGee, Delta Spirit as well as a score of unsigned artists recorded live at college radio stations around the country. Proceeds from the album go toward the College Radio Defense Fund, putting money toward things like new equipment, repairing existing equipment, supporting promotional events and other much-needed help.

Album Picks:

Tame Impala – Lonerism

LP $19.98

DL $9.98

CD $11.98

Whereas Tame Impala’s awesome first album, Innerspeaker, was all about muscle, on Lonerism the Australian band tends to build its psych-rock songs more deliberately, more delicately. But they still kick ass, and hard. “Be Above It’s” titular refrain is whispered over a tumbling drumbeat until Kevin Parker takes off with a simple, Beatlesesque melody and he and his cohorts supply fuzzed out psychedelic flourishes. Thanks to Parker’s high, nasal voice, those comparisons to John Lennon keep coming, on songs like “Apocalypse Dreams,” where Parker’s vocals and melodies certainly are reminiscent of the Fab Four, but musically they’re no mere worshippers at the psych throne, more interested in squeezing strange, new sounds out of familiar territory and taking their arrangements through multiple tempo changes, broiling them through effects, laying moogs and synths over them and then looping back to the original melody like deja vu. Tame Impala also prove adept and producing the straightforward rock single on “Elephant,” which may draw comparisons to The White Stripes for more than just its title, but whose bass-heavy sound really pulls more from psych originators like Blue Cheer — just hookier. Parker, who produced the first Tame Impala record, as well as the recent, excellent release by Melody’s Echo Chamber, finds perfect sonic kinship in David Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev), who can be known for helping to dramatically change a band’s sound (Sleater-Kinney’s mindblowing The Woods, for instance) but who mostly seems to help Tame Impala sound even fuller, allowing the band’s punchiness to come through in tracks like the pop psychedelic wonder of “Music to Walk Home By,” but thickening it with layers of space-rock sound. The end result is that Lonerism hits hard but leaves a lasting impression, leaving the listener to wrap his or her head around all the wondrous sounds of the record and immediately wanting to track back and listen again.

MellowHype – “Grill”

Here’s the next song from Odd Future’s MellowHype, which will be on their album Numbers, out Oct. 9. The duo’s warped hip-hop is on fine display on “Grill,” as their doubled vocals spell out their name and rap smoke circles around everyone else. Out next week, you can preorder Numbers here.

Trash Talk – “Exile on Broadway”

Speaking of Odd Future, sounds like OFWGKTA associates Trash Talk are trying to become the hardcore Rolling Stones with “Exile on Broadway” and the Exile on Main St. referencing album art for 119, which is out Oct. 9. Lofty goals, but you can’t argue with the quality and ferocity of a track like this. Stream “Exile on Broadway” here, and preorder 119 here.

The subtleties of what goes into creating a Flying Lotus song could be seen when he took the stage at Amoeba Hollywood Oct. 1, the day before his new album, Until the Quiet Comes, was officially released. Fly Lo worked busily over a minimal setup of a couple of laptops and samplers/sequencers. He played bits from the new album, like the bass-heavy “Sultan’s Request,” but kept things moving quickly — much like his albums do — never lingering long on a particular sound or song before flowing it into the next. A large and very appreciative crowd head-bobbed furiously to the music (the beatheads’ equivalent to head banging) as Fly Lo worked the heavier side of his sound spectrum, unlike the mostly chilled-out quality of his latest album. He paused a minute from the beat assault and spinning bits of songs like Schoolboy Q/A$ap Rocky’s “Hands on the Wheel,” Jay-Z/Kanye West’s “Ni**as in Paris,” Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You,” Portishead’s “Machine Gun” and Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic” to welcome the audience and later ask for Transformers 3 on Blu-ray — which he got, and held up with glee, before passing it off quickly to continue hyperactively turning knobs and setting off sequences. Watching Flying Lotus at somewhere like the Hollywood Bowl, it can be easy to dismiss the work he puts into everything. In closer quarters Flying Lotus appears as a virtuoso, animatedly hunching and bouncing over his machines and stroking them like a piano with ease. They don’t call him a beat maestro for nothing. Flying Lotus was joined by fellow artists from his Brainfeeder label Teebs and Jeremiah Jae, the latter of who released one of my favorite hip-hop albums this year, Raw Money Raps. See more photos from the performance and Flying Lotus’ signing session here!