Playing around with gadgets to comprise spare, short songs is much tougher than it seems. I know this because I’ve heard a lot of “arty” people try and, in my brain and my solar plexus, it usually feels like a con job.

But Mica Levi has got a knack for hitting the sweet spot at the intersection of spoof, satire and serious music morphing into pertinent social commentary. A 22-year old English woman, her CD “Jewellry” on Rough Trade takes less than a half-hour to buzz, blip and skronk its way through a dozen songs, which are themselves mini-meta suites, sonic text messages arrayed into fly-by grooves or concepts.

My favorite songs are the most conventional. “Vulture” leads with a easily recognizable rock riff I can’t pin down (Black Sabbath? Yes? Here is a video link; maybe you can come up with it) and “Calculator” does the same with “Tequila,” and yes, I’m sure the ironic titles of both tunes is intentional. But I also love the way all the disparate elements of “Just In Case” channel the same bad-dream vibe of ethereal anxiety — from the subterranean clank to the desperate Indian groove to rare intelligible lyric: “No I won’t have sex ‘cause of STDs.” Other tunes have touchstones to (briefly) cherish: The vocal harmonies on accessible “Golden Phone” (video here) or the dissonant guitar loop on “Wrong.”

I was a little disappointed to discover that Levi was a classically trained musician and composer good enough to write a piece for the London Philharmonic Orchestra 18 months ago — I was hoping for a more exotic experimental savant. But even entropy, or pastiche, or toy stories, or however you want to describe this music, requires scholarship, and hats off to her for being steeped and grounded in all the proper theories and then diddling them with such renegade intuition. On “Jewellry” Levi was helped out by microhouse producer Matthew Herbert and by drummer Marc Pell and keyboardist Raisa Khan. The latter two help make up the trio Micachu and the Shapes (with Levi playing a variety of stringed instruments and other things), who will perform tonight at the Cedar Cultural Center as the musical debut of the Walker Art Center’s 2009-10 performing arts series.

The choice of an opening act is inspired: Dessa, stepping outside the umbrella of her Doomtree clique, debuts a new band — electric guitar, acoustic bass, violin — for her occasionally incandescent raps, vocals and other spoken-word artistry. Here she is prowling the stage, and here spitting a shimmering and concise bio. For a flip side, here she is singing in a vocal trio and reading from her new book on MPR.

Micachu and the Shapes, with opening act Dessa, at the Cedar Cultural Center, tonight at 8, tickets $18 ($15 for Walker members).