AUSTIN LOUNGE LIZARDS

Employee of the Month (Sugar Hill)

What other group of country pickers can boast of having “more combined degrees than Theodore Kaczynski” and a sense of humor the size of Texas? On their Sugar Hill debut, the Austin Lounge Lizards take a satirical shot at musical icons ranging from Roy Acuff to Leonard Cohen, while also skewering hot-rod music and yuppies (“Hey, Little Minivan”), country-music superstars (“Trailways of Tears”) and even homeless people (“Love in a Refrigerator Box”). Neither can this overeducated group of tinhorn troubadours resist pulling down the pants of the patriotic citizens of their home state, in the Bob Wills-inspired “Stupid Texas Song” (“Our cookoffs are the chiliest, our Waylon is the Williest . . .”).