If you live in Boston, you probably associate Tufts with lab coats, Dansko clogs and exceedingly academic college students.

Would you associate Tufts with a rock band? What about three?

This Thursday, Tufts’ Crane Room plays host to Porches, Peaer and Gggghosts in what will surely be—for a number of reasons—a magical experience. The first is a dealmaker. This show is free.

It”s likely Gggghosts will fit the bill as Thursday’s openers, significantly as the night’s only locals. Hailing from Medford, Gggghosts’ online presence is almost as sparse as the spooky stuff haunting your parent’s attic. A run through the band’s discography hears a significantly low-fi taste, but still a range within that. The first half of their 2014 Demos hears classic covers like “Mess Around” and “Tequila!,” two tracks painting the band as much in leather jackets and slicked pompadour as they do sitting pretty on a modern day stage. Then comes songs like “Hang Mioku,” whose layered vocals and elasticized guitars evoke a slight 60’s vibe. A quick Google search doesn’t bring up the song at all, but rather headlines about a Korean model known for ejecting cooking oil into her face in 2013. How’s that for meaning?

Peaer follows from Purchase, New York, with a much more monotone disposition. Think Silver Jews and sleepy math rock. Songs like “The Dark Spot” find range, and maybe even a hint of female vocals, against scattered percussion and deep breaths of air. Equally present is one looping guitar, a kind of stringy, circular sound evoking the kiddish feelings of riding a carrousel or a Ferris wheel, or maybe just driving over a big hill.

Many tracks off Peaer’s 2014 the eyes sink into the skull make us want to sit and think. These aren’t songs to make you want to get up and dance, but rather perfectly backdrop a more contemplative state, like landscaping a zen garden or painting your living room the color smog. Not that we’re telling you to do either. Hell, get up and boogie!

Which brings us to our next band. When Porches played Sinclair last July with Hospitality and one loveable Frankie Cosmos, dry-humored frontman Aaron Maine made sure to yell to the crowd “Feel free to boogie!” before launching into up-tempo versions of “Franklin the Flirt”, “Headsgiving” and raging “Skinny Tress.” And boogie they did. The direction Porches took that night maintained a dancier, retro feel than the recordings of the bands noteworthy 2013 release, Slow Dance in the Cosmos. With Porches most recent EP, Ronald Paris, that vibe is still there—and happily so. In just three tracks Maine takes his band in a direction that is both surprising and impeccably fitting. With “Leather,” we hear the sad-boy ballads of Maine’s earlier work, 2011’s subdued Scrap and Love Songs Revisited, but with injections of the Porches evolution. With “Myystic,” comes Gretta Kline’s youthful tenor, and the duo’s fresh—and seriously welcome—take on synthesizers. Old stuff or new, we’re stoked to see this New York outfit play our neighborhood this week. Did we mention the show’s free?