The band will kick off a residency at Spaceland in Los Angeles September 3. The free shows, which are scheduled for each Monday in September, are sponsored by L.A. radio station KCRW.

Gram Rabbit will also make an appearance September 8 at the annual Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven Campout at Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace in California. Other acts scheduled for the three-day event include The Hackinsaw Boys, Magnolia Electric Co., Dusty Rhodes and the River Band, Vermillion Lies and the Watson Twins.

Other stops on GR’s upcoming schedule include DNA Lounge in San Francisco (September 22), the Hotel Congress in Tucson, Ariz. (October 3), Club Fred in Fresno, Calif. (October 6), and The Casbah in San Diego (October 7).

The band will return to Pappy & Harriet’s (or Pappy & Scarriet’s) Pioneertown Palace October 27 to host Grim Rabbit’s third annual Halloween Ball. The holiday extravaganza features an appearance by Brooklyn’s Flaming Fire, along with burlesque dancers, costume contests, palm reading and elaborate decorations.

Self described sex-kitten – uh bunny – no wait, vocalist Jesika von Rabbit told Pollstar she and group co-founder Todd Rutherford are also planning go back to their roots in October to play an acoustic gig or two.

When the pair first got together, they were often a fixture at open mic nights performing Gram Parsons covers. Von Rabbit said they’ll play some Parsons songs and acoustic versions of some Gram Rabbit tracks like “Dirty Horse” and “Devil’s Playground,” as well as some Lee Hazlewood / Nancy Sinatra tunes.

“I love singing her songs,” von Rabbit told Pollstar. “Our voices are very similar in range.”

Gram Rabbit released its debut, Music To Start A Cult To, in 2004. The band’s unique blend of desert/space/rock-tronica quickly gained a loyal following that bears the moniker the Royal Order of Rabbits and includes among its numbers celebrity fans like Scarlett Johansson and John Cusack. In 2005, GR was named Best New Band of the year by L.A. Weekly.

While the band’s fans seem to love the wildly eclectic musical styles of Cult and its follow up, 2006’s Cultivation, von Rabbit said it hasn’t always been as easy to convince people in the music industry.

“I think it’s harder for record labels and those kind of people because they don’t know how to categorize us,” von Rabbit said. “They’re kind of confused about how they’re going to market us.

“[We’ve heard] ‘They’re so schizophrenic with their sound’ or ‘Do they know what they’re doing?’ and ‘They’ve lost direction.’

“But on the other side of the token, it just gives us more range. It gives us more variety for people to like. They may not like one song, but they’ll like another song.”

Von Rabbit said true to the band’s nature, the new album is just as stylistically diverse as the previous two – with a slight difference.

“We just can’t help being that way. And in this day of kids downloading songs and putting them in their iPods, everything’s always on shuffle.

“We kind of think of it as putting on a Gram Rabbit CD is like putting on shuffle. It’s kind of like a compilation CD in a way because we feel the need to always switch it up. Although this new record is a lot more on the electronic side, it’s kind of got a consistent sound throughout it. We tried to plan that out.”

The band is well-known for its very visual live shows. Members have sported everything from rabbit ears (which fans still wear to shows) to eerie carnival masks to motorcycle helmets and have performed with dancers in elaborate rabbit costumes.

Von Rabbit said she’s putting the finishing touches on a new look for the band, and this time out, the goal is to make each performance a complete experience.

“We’re focusing on making our show more of an epic piece of art than before.”

Shows will feature spoken word interludes between songs that tie them together, along with videos of “crazy collagey stuff” the band has created to project on screens behind them.

GR’s current lineup includes von Rabbit and Rutherford, along with new members guitarist Ethan Allen and drummer Brian McLeod.

Von Rabbit said trying to duplicate the sound of the band’s albums live with only four people can sometimes be a challenge, but they always manage.

“It takes a bit of rehearsing to recreate that kind of stuff for the live show, like the song ‘In My Book.’ Todd wrote that song and recorded it, but we’d never played it live as a band. The first time we did was last week.

“It’s kind of difficult, but we get it all worked out. We have all our computer tracks behind us – stuff that’s on the record that we can’t play live because there’s only four of us.

“Whereas some bands might just leave it out, and the song might be simplified, I’d rather have the song sound like it’s supposed to.”

RadioAngel and The RobotBeat, which is due for release November 13, was produced by Allen, who has worked with The 88, Luscious Jackson and Patti Griffin.

The disc features the band’s signature edgy lyrics over funky, danceable beats on tracks like “American Hookers” and the politically charged “The Rest of Us Sleep.”

Von Rabbit said “Sleep” didn’t exactly turn out the way she planned.

“I keep just wanting to write just a fun pop song, and every time I do, something like that comes out. When I did the music for that song I wanted to write something like Justin Timberlake’s ‘Sexy Back.’

“And then it comes time for me to write the lyrics and I think, ‘Well, what am I going to write about?’ I guess I have a hard time writing lyrics like ‘He’s sexy.’ It’s hard for me to make them simple.”