The Students Organizing the Multiple Arts (SOMA) has hosted its fair share of mash-up events, and for the latest event, there will be a new band added to the mix.

SOMA and the Visual Arts Student Alliance (VASA) will hold the third annual Arts Crawl event. This year SOMA has again booked a headlining band for the event that fuses multiple art mediums: The Buddy System.

The Athens, Ga.-based band -- along with a multitude of dancers, painters, sculptors, magicians, singing minstrels, musicians and virtually any type of artist Penn State has to offer -- will mingle during the Arts Crawl.

"It's basically a festival that celebrates student artwork, local bands and performance in general," Erin Stolz, Arts Crawl chairwoman and SOMA treasurer, said. "Along with the artwork there will be different local bands, so it's the viewers getting all these different experiences at once."

Danny Michelson, vice president of SOMA, describes the event as "organized chaos and an explosion of local talent."

"We're going to have these local bands dispersed throughout different buildings, different rooms and different kinds of art," Michelson (junior-film) said. "If there was one event that SOMA did that personifies what we are, Arts Crawl would be it."

Besides SOMA's involvement, VASA also contributes heavily to the event by organizing the displayed student artwork and hands-on activities. Lilly Zuckerman, president of VASA, said the group acts as an overall club for all visual art clubs and can facilitate interaction with the administration from that vantage point. The group has also organized art sales at Webster's Café, 128 S. Allen St. and an Y-art Sale, described as a yard sale that sells used art supplies. The group is also in talks of bringing a speaker to the Palmer Museum of Art.

Zuckerman (junior-ceramics) said the Arts Crawl is the biggest event for the group.

Attendees can expect more than just walking around and looking at artwork. Zuckerman said. There will be art demonstrations and activities, which include designing T-shirts, photo shoots and playing student-designed video games.

There'll also be a movie premiere and a dance party.

Another important segment of the Arts Crawl is a performance by the headlining band. Last year's headliner was the no-drums-just-tap-dancing pop band Tilly and the Wall.

This year's headliner, The Buddy System, is an elite group of pop scientists who fuse synth-pop with colorful animations and cartoons, according to the band's MySpace. The visual aspects of the songs are so important the band releases DVDs with mp3 tracks instead of CDs, guitarist Ryan Lewis said.

"From the beginning the goal of the band has been to marry sound and visuals," Lewis said. "It's definitely intended to all be seen and heard together."

Lewis said the animations are done by two of the band members, Craig Sheldon (synth) and Lauren Gregg (bass), who are also founders of the Kangaroo Alliance, an animation company. Sheldon and Gregg's work can be seen on Yo Gabba Gabba and in the music video for Of Montreal's "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)."

During live shows, the animations are shown while the band performs the songs. Lewis said some people are receptive while others who aren't familiar with the band's work become confused.

"You never really know what's going to come until you start playing and then you can see right away if the audience gets it or is like 'Eh, what is this?' " Lewis said. "Definitely more often than not they get it."

The Arts Crawl will mark the first college show The Buddy System has played outside of Athens, which Lewis said has the band excited.

"We're really looking forward to it. We've been talking to people at the school for, like, a year now about coming to play," he said. "It sounds like it'll be pretty awesome. It's like a huge multi-media event across the whole campus."

Lewis said events, such as Arts Crawl, that meld different art forms are a direct reflection of today's society.

"In this time we live in now with the Internet making information and access as pervasive as it is, I think that melding things together is the new way of living," he said. "You can look at things like the Daily Show melding entertainment and politics and ... there's other bands that do animation or visual stuff with music. To me it all comes from the same place: the opening up of intellectualism and disconnecting things and experimenting and making new stuff out of old things."