Singer Daryl Palumbo has some very firm ideas about pop music. For example, The Ramones crooning “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” is outrageous and funny. But The Click 5’s “Just the Girl,” while a good song, is simply too clean.

“ ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ is completely ironic coming from a bunch of 25-year-old men. The Click 5 song is so clean that you miss the irony,” Palumbo explained.

With his band Head Automatica, Palumbo strives to serve you the bubblegum, then make sure it gets you all sticky. In other words, his songs have killer hooks, danceable beats and skewered perspectives.

Head Automatica recently released its second album, “Popaganda,” and is on tour with Taking Back Sunday and Angels and Airwaves. That show arrives Saturday at The Tweeter Center in Mansfield. The concert begins at 6:30 p.m. and also includes the Subways.

Palumbo’s second trip into Head Automatica makes clear that this is no mere side project for the singer who made his name, and continues to play, with the angular post-hard-core band GlassJaw.

“This is the guy from GlassJaw grown up,” Palumbo said of the way reviews size up his work in Head Automatica.

Grown up, sort of. True, the vocals are clean and clear, and the musical arrangements are as crisp as a freshly pressed suit. But there’s no missing the sarcasm dripping from such tunes as “Graduation Day” and “Nowhere Fast.”

Palumbo said he didn’t wade into power pop because the genre needed to be darker. Rather, its inherent darkness enticed him.

“It wasn’t like sarcasm and a sardonic edge were missing. The best power pop is so sarcastic and so ironic, and that’s what I wanted to go for,” he said.

Palumbo said he has long been attracted to this sort of music, mainly because that’s what he grew up listening to around his home.

“When I was singing the melodic parts in GlassJaw songs I wanted to sound like Glenn Tilbrook (of Squeeze). I ended up with this hybrid hard-core, and the contrasts were extreme,” he said.

In 2004, Palumbo removed the cover of that contrast and made his first Head Automatica record, “Decadence,” with Dan “The Automator” Nakamura. The collaboration spun out a dance rock plater that spun heads merely because of who made it.

The band has retooled itself to now include bass player Jarvis Holden, guitarist Craig Bonich, keyboard player Jessie Nelson, and drummer Larry Gorman, also of GlassJaw and holdover from the “Decadence” sessions.

The new and improved Head Automatica takes more cues from the ’70s Britpop era, digging out its inner Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds and Elvis Costello for building blocks. But like those earlier power-pop architects, Head Automatica does not tie itself to a single source.

“You listened to a Dave Edmunds song and you couldn’t tell if he was from Memphis or Wales,” Palumbo said, admiring that sort of artistic masking.

Head Automatica’s music isn’t as rootsy as songs by earlier purveyors of power-pop. But it does stylistically dabble around. There are dashes of reggae, disco and New Wave rock woven into the dark and danceable fare.

And with “Popaganda,” Head Automatica pulled off its delirious machinations in full-length form, as the record holds together surprisingly well for so much froth.

Then again, that’s what separates the sort of dark pop favored by Head Automatica from the truly mindless stuff it mocks so well.

Palumbo said that he will be back touring with GlassJaw in the fall, and a date at The Palladium in Worcester is likely going to be part of the schedule.

Asked whether he would ever bring together his two bands in one show, Palumbo did not hesitate to say no way.

“It’s been proposed, bit it would be too draining,” he said. “The two bands come from two different entities. Those are two different characters who come from two different places in my heart. If I tried to do them both together, I’d shut down immediately.”

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Chuck and Mud’s 18th annual Family Concert in the Park happens tonight at Institute Park in Worcester. The free concert runs from 5:30 to 8 and features the Bluegrass Camp Fire Brigade, an all-star cast of Chuck and Mud’s musical pals.

Members of Counter Attack join Big Gunz, NOGG, Dave Boudreau, One Lane Bridge, Almost Human and Short Bus Romeo in a show happening from noon to 7 p.m. Saturday at the Singletary Rod & Gun Club in Sutton that benefits the Leukemia Foundation. Tickets are $15 and available at the gate. Kids under 12 will be admitted free.

Nine Inch Nails is back for another round of shows behind “With Teeth” and has a concert tomorrow with Bauhaus and Peaches at The Tweeter Center. Sasquatch and the Sickabillys headlines Saturday at The Lucky Dog Music Hall, 89 Green St., Worcester. Badfish, Roots Down Below, Parker House & Theory and others take part in the Garden Grove Festival happening Saturday at The Palladium, 261 Main St., Worcester.

Mark Chestnutt is at Indian Ranch, Route 16, Webster, for a Sunday afternoon concert. The Charms and Super 400 are at Ralph’s Chadwick square Diner, 148 Grove St., Worcester, tomorrow. Craig plays tomorrow at Tammany Hall, 43 Pleasant St., Worcester.

Hothouse is at The Artist Development Complex, 18 Mill St., Worcester, tomorrow. Bret Talbert performs Saturday at The Blue Plate, 661 Main St., Holden. Blue Collar is at JJ’s House of Blues, 395 Grafton St., Worcester, on Saturday.

Averi has been added to the bill for the July 8 concert with Hootie & the Blowfish happening at the Worcester Tornadoes’ Fitton Field ballpark. Celtic band Pendragon was put on the Newport Folk Festival roster for Aug. 5, and rising songwriter star Antje Duvekot landed a spot on the Aug. 6 schedule for the festival. Buckcherry, Wicked Wisdom and The Neighborhoods were added to the Locobazooka lineup unfolding Aug. 13 at the Tweeter Center.

Scott McLennan can be reached at tgmusic1@yahoo.com.