In addition to compiling all of the St. Patrick's Day shows happening at Irish pubs around town, we've also put together this list of all of the shows our music critics recommend in Seattle this week. We've got everything from the college radio indie rock heartthrobs of the mid-00s to a dark arts techno power-player sure to put you in a trance to a conspicuously charming tribute to Ella Fitzgerald. For even more options, check out our complete music calendar.

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MONDAY

Emily Wells with Guests
My intro to New York–based songstress Emily Wells came via Dan the Automator, her collaborator on the hiphop- and groove-oriented Pillowfight project, and my appreciation of her talents only grew after hearing her dark, poignant, rather lovely 2012 release Mama. Her solo output has an ambient, experimental sound, with roots in classical music and blues and jazz-flecked influences that come up most clearly in old-soul, low-toned vocals that can also hit high expressive notes. Her multi-instrumental chops include violin (which she’s played since age 4), viola, and cello (bowed and plucked pizzicato style), as well as analog synths and guitar. She also programs her own beats, practices looping and live sampling when she performs, and isn’t traditionally accompanied by a band. She’s on tour in support of the 2016 full-length Promise and its just-released follow-up, the In the Hot EP, of B-sides, remixes, and live arrangements. LEILANI POLK

Thao of the Get Down Stay Down with Johanna Kunin
At once both graceful and raw, the voice of Thao Nguyen draws you in with its beguiling complexity. Since 2005, Thao & the Get Down Stay Down have been gradually edging away from their alt-folk roots to a funkier, more beat-heavy sound. Their fourth album, A Man Alive, was released last March and was well received. But for this handful of tour dates, Nguyen is going solo, and Seattle is her first stop. Johanna Kunin, aka Bright Archer, who provided backing vocals for A Man Alive, will also fill the room with her airy, meditative songs and sinuous piano compositions. AMBER CORTES

TUESDAY

Architects, Stray From The Path, Make Them Suffer
This past August, popular British melodic metal-core band Architects took a crushing blow, as their founding guitarist and songwriter Tom Searle died as the result of a three-year battle with skin cancer. Searle and his twin brother, Dan, started the band back in 2004 and toured the world together while releasing seven albums and playing alongside some of their hardcore heroes. Their most recent album, All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us, was released just four months prior to Tom’s death. Dan continues to honor the life and art of his brother by pushing on and playing the music he wrote alongside him. KEVIN DIERS

Wrabel
Neo-pop artist Wrabel will perform a night of genre fusion and uptempo thoughtful hits, with support from singer-songwriter Molly Kate Kestner, of viral fame for her 2014 song "His Daughter."

WEDNESDAY

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio (DLO3), D'Vonne Lewis' Limited Edition, The Highsteppers
Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio: Definitely old-school Hammond B-3 funk! Rediscover the world through the surprisingly varied palette offered by the grand machine itself, complete with its gently psychedelic rotating Leslie speakers. D’Vonne Lewis’ Limited Edition: A bit more restrained but just as tasty—here’s hoping he brings vibes player Jacques Willis, a welcome touch on a fascinating instrument not heard as often in Seattle jazz as it should be. The Highsteppers: Soul, women out front, men in back, lead guitarist Jane Mabry-Smith, and, they proudly advertise, no samples, no backing tracks, and no electronic drums. I personally have nothing against any of these things, but this is them, they’re entitled, and I will personally testify to all-encompassing sonic phatness. ANDREW HAMLIN

Lake Street Dive with Joey Dosik
Dance-party-ready pop group Lake Street Dive will perform in support of their latest album Side Pony, with Joey Dosik.

THURSDAY

Big Business with Helms Alee
Despite the richness implied by their name, Big Business’s original MO involved a certain kind of musical austerity. Sure, bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis generated an enormous sound with their wall of pawn-shop amps and ballistic drum beats, but this was still just a duo using limited means to craft their bottom-heavy sludge rock. However, subsequent albums found the Biz expanding to a trio, incorporating guitar, and gravitating toward a broader palette of frequencies and timbres. You gotta grow and diversify, after all. Nevertheless, it was exciting to hear Big Business return to their stripped-down assault on last year’s Command Your Weather. Regardless of this economical approach, you can expect the band to be operating firmly in the red tonight. BRIAN COOK

Kangding Ray, IVVY, Collin Strange, LUST STRENGTH
If you like your techno dark and pitiless, yet swathed in meticulous, brainiac textures, Berlin-based producer Kangding Ray (aka David Letellier) will hit your sweet spot. It’s no surprise he’s recorded for Raster-Noton and Stroboscopic Artefacts, two of the planet’s greatest sources of rigorous, hypnotic techno. He’s on tour supporting his new LP, Hyper Opal Mantis, which finds Kangding Ray still punishing the club with intense, uneasy techno missives that shoot adrenaline to all the right places. Former NYC/current Renton resident Collin Strange—who records for the prestigious L.I.E.S. label—specializes in acidic, ballistic techno that should be enlisted by the US military. Reminds me of that brutal strain of Swedish techno that flourished in the late 1990s/early ’00s. What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in sheer relentless power. DAVE SEGAL

Michael Bolton
Grammy winner and lifelong lothario Michael Bolton shares the smooth radio-friendly '80s pop that made him famous over three decades ago.

Shannon & The Clams: Sleep Talk Vinyl Dance Party
Ease into spring, which is still winter because time is a construct, with this high-volume-vinyl DJ party by Shannon and her Clams, who'll be on the decks all night wooing you with '60s and '70s oldies and weirdies, soul, and R&B.

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

Jane Monheit
The conspicuous charm of Jane Monheit’s new tribute to Ella Fitzgerald is that is does not sound conspicuously like Ella Fitzgerald. That’s conspicuously charming. You’ll find plenty of other stuff to love, I’m sure. Willie Nelson earns praise for sounding like he’s singing in his car. Jane Monheit sounds like she took the persona of an opera diva (not a diva diva) and assumed the diva’s point of view, toned it down just a few notches, singing in, let’s say, her bathroom, alone, just her and the sink and the shower and the toilet and maybe some ikebana. Private joy. Private sadness. But a diva, being a diva (even a diva diva), can’t help projecting. Can’t help putting it over. ANDREW HAMLIN

FRIDAY

Adrian Belew Power Trio with Saul Zonana
Adrian Belew is an exceptional axman, although he’s probably more renowned for his vast work as a sideman than his solo catalog. However, the latter is just as worthy of your attention, but not as commanding of mainstream respect as his recordings with (among many others) Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads (he played on the phenomenal Remain in Light), and, most notably, King Crimson. Robert Fripp welcomed him into that band’s cool prog-rock embrace beginning with 1981’s Discipline, and Belew continued to play a major role in King Crimson on eight more albums up to 2003, all the while releasing solo material. While Belew sings and plays many instruments, it’s as a guitarist where he shines, making superior use of a whammy bar and effects pedals, juggling shreds with subtler fretwork, pushing boundaries and remaining relevant because he embraces new techniques. His power trio consists of commanding siblings Julie Slick (bass) and Eric Slick (drums), who’ve been with him since they were fresh out of music school. And, man, do these three ever know how to slay a stage. LEILANI POLK

Chris Botti with Symphony Tacoma
Billboard topper Chris Botti will perform with Symphony Tacoma to create a smooth evening of live jazz and classical standards.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Vita and the Woolf
The 2005 self-titled debut from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is still one of my all-time favorites a dozen years later, still brimming with youthful exuberance and that certain specific mid-’00s-era indie-rock freshness. This is not to say the material that’s followed isn’t good, but you can tell with each new outing how visionary frontman/songwriter Alec Ounsworth is getting older and more contemplative. Brand-new fifth LP The Tourist is a subtle beast yet lovely and remarkable for it, Ounsworth’s vocal melodies and phrasing are the centerpiece, and more studied and sweet than the yelping quality he once favored. You’ll probably hear a few numbers off the CYHSY debut, but expect this to be a Tourist-heavy gig. LEILANI POLK

Fucked Up with Guests
The day I bought Hidden World, Fucked Up’s critically acclaimed 2006 album, I showed up to my college radio station eager to play the new release by the Toronto hardcore band. “You can’t play that on-air,” a fellow DJ yelled. “We’ll get sued out our ass!” Of course I played it, just under the disguise of the FCC friendly name F’ed Up. The record was too good not to. Hidden World was the band’s first step toward experimenting in the shoegaze and post-hardcore realm. You too will be able to relive your first moments with the album, as this West Coast tour is the official 10th anniversary of Hidden World. KEVIN DIERS

Jesca Hoop with Ritchie Young
My first encounter with Jesca Hoop was on a little EP called Kismet I found in a stack of ignored CDs at my college radio station. It was short and intense, with enough winding moonlit passion to power a whole album (which, incidentally, it would do later in 2007). From that moment 10 years ago to last month’s Sub Pop release of her latest, Memories Are Now, Hoop has toured with Shearwater and Andrew Bird, among many other artists, released double digits’ worth of EPs and LPs, and grown in her abilities to maintain a level of sister-wife-survival-guide in a wading pool of folkloric intensities. This new album holds promise for continued growth in the mythic forest realm her music inhabits, with a sense of matured centering, an innate feeling that her work has finally found a stronghold from which to blossom. KIM SELLING

Red Hot Chili Peppers
So I put on The Getaway and… hmm… you know how you can go a decade or so without seeing an old friend (or at least an old acquaintance) and you run into each other and you initially don’t recognize each other? Then you start talking and joshing each other, but it’s still that patina of weird? Yeah. Red Hot Chili Peppers were of my favorite punk-funk nonsense-braggadocio-spouting egalitarians, then wham, “Everybody Knows They’re the Worst Band Ever” (wrong: Skrewdriver!), and so maybe this is post-“Knows”? And the whole album sounds… like the last 20 minutes of a warm, bright winter day where the sun is shooting the gap between two buildings. Fun! Pretty! But, soon, very soon, it will be very cold. Do you have somewhere to go? ANDREW HAMLIN

Research: Loefah
While dubstep’s artistic peak arguably happened 10 years ago, Loefah—aka Peter Livingston—experienced something of a second wind in his career, as his label Swamp 81 became one of the leading lights of the post-dubstep milieu starting in 2009, releasing classics like Addison Groove’s “Footcrab” and Pinch’s “Croydon House.” Considered as one of the true progenitors of dubstep, Loefah became a scene leader alongside Digital Mystikz Coki and Mala, with the three organizing the massively influential and popular DMZ parties. Those, alongside FWD>>, became the two events where many of today’s popular UK producers cut their teeth. Today, in addition to running both the popular Swamp 81 and 81 imprints, Loefah continue to tour the globe and will hit Seattle with a case full of both classic and unreleased dubs from dubstep’s glory days, making this a must-see show for anyone who has never seen him spin his lost classics “Midnight” or “Woman” live. NICK ZURKO

SATURDAY

Big Wild
Drawing inspiration from the unending founts of electronica and hiphop, Big Wild creates a style all his own: heavy on the percussive extras, light on the drop, and all about the afterglow.

Donavon Frankenreiter with Grant-Lee Phillips
With his new album The Heart, singer-songwriter Donavon Frankenreiter has entered his second decade as a solo recording artist, and will be joined by Grant-Lee Phillips.

Global Rhythms: Rahim al Haj
Baghdad-born Rahim AlHaj picked up the oud as a child and transferred his youthful interest into a globally renowned proficiency; he is now considered one of the finest oud players in the world. He was jailed twice in the 1980s for his activism against the Saddam Hussein regime, subsequently moved to Jordan and Syria in the '90s, and, in 2000, relocated with his wife to the US as political refugees. Tonight, the two-time Grammy nominee will perform music from his newest album, Letters from Iraq, which fuses Iraqi and Western classical music with the goal of making "music to make us realize peace." He will play with his string quartet, featuring violinists Rachel Pearson and Victoria Parker, violist Heather Bentley, cellist Rajan Krishnaswami, and doublebassist Stephen Schermer.

Japandroids, Craig Finn & The Uptown Controllers
Vancouver’s Japandroids make a heaving racket for a duo. Against the odds, their first two albums—2009’s Post-Nothing and 2012’s aptly titled Celebration Rock—made the hoary concept of anthemic indie rock sound as vital and passionate as Squirrel Bait’s self-titled EP and Hüsker Dü’s New Day Rising. (Jeez, 1985 kind of ruled for this kind of rock.) Overflowing earnestness of this sort usually rubs me the wrong way, but Japandroids’ non-ironic, abundant gusto somehow doesn’t cloy, as it does with so much emo. Unfortunately, the Japandroids magic has dissipated on the new Near to the Wild Heart of Life. The energy is tempered and the melodies buffed to a sheen, making this album sound like a Cheap Trick/Def Leppard sandwich with too much sugar poured on it. But that may just be what your sweetest dreams are made of. DAVE SEGAL

Matt Carlson, Jeff Witscher, Jason E. Anderson
Thanks to promoter Jason E. Anderson of LIMITS, we have yet another stacked lineup of highbrow electronic abstract expressionism at Seattle’s most acoustically lustrous venue. If you’ve been following the city’s underground scene, you’ll know that Anderson is also a creator of mischievous digital chaos that has roots in Iannis Xenakis and the 1990s-era Mego label’s most outrageous assaults on audio decorum. Jeff Witscher (aka Rene Hell) can hit you with unsettling, Coil-like atmospheres or metallic, insectoid tone dispersions, and diamond-hard pointillism. Any way you slice it, you’ll be stunned. Matt Carlson—keyboardist for great jazztronic psychonauts Golden Retriever—has been one of the country’s most interesting purveyors of fun-house-mirror soundscapes over the last eight years. Every live performance is a disorienting thrill ride that toggles between conservatory discipline and insane-asylum babble. DAVE SEGAL

Nail Polish, Lithics, Casual Hex
It’s good to see the newish Kremwerk-affiliated venue Timbre Room adding more live bills and diversifying into rock—especially if it’s going to bring in acts like Nail Polish. Nail Polish radiate insane no-wave energy and angst that amp you to patriarchy-smashing righteousness. Their chronically cranky rock careens and crunches like long-lost 1980s UK hell-raisers like bIG fLAME and MacKenzies. Scoop up Nail Polish’s two galvanizing releases—Abrupt and Authentic Living—for instant adrenaline boosts. DAVE SEGAL

Tchami with Angelz
Parisian dance music thriller Tchami follows up his successful remix collection with The Prophecy Tour, supported by Angelz.

SUNDAY

The Coathangers, The Birth Defects, VHS
Atlanta psycho-pop trio the Coathangers are three bands in one, which sounds like hyperbole until you dig into their five-album discography, including last year’s swell Nosebleed Weekend on Seattle’s Suicide Squeeze. On stage, the self-described crazy-ass ladies trade instruments and lead vocals, much like Beat Happening before them. Guitarist Julia Kugel brings salty-sweet riot-grrrl attitude, drummer Stephanie Luke brings metal power and fury, and bassist Meredith Franco brings no-wave-meets-new-wave spirit. It’s as if Bikini Kill–era Kathleen Hanna joined forces with members of the Shangri-Las and Girlschool. To add to the party vibes, the Coathangers go by goofy nicknames (Crook Kid, Minnie, Rusty), sprinkle their lyrics with brand names (Nestlé, Adderall), and wear matching girl-gang outfits (white T-shirts, black leather jackets) when the mood strikes. KATHY FENNESSY

Elevator: John Chantler
John Chantler is a well-traveled musician who’s drummed for radical, Mego-affiliated, electro-pop diva Tujiko Noriko, performed with Japanese rock mavericks Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and collaborated with ambient savant/Room40 label boss Lawrence English, among other accomplishments. The Stockholm-based producer is a generator of acute, expansive drones that abound with fascinating, disjunctive activity, which fans of Mille Plateaux’s Clicks & Cuts comps will appreciate. On his outstanding 2016 album for Room40, Which Way to Leave?, Chantler creates bizarrely enchanting minimalist compositions that intrigue with their warped, elemental tonalities and oceanic atmospheres. Don’t miss this rare chance to catch Chantler live. DAVE SEGAL

Meat Puppets, The Modern Era, StaG
Though they started as a hardcore band, the Meat Puppets were looking well ahead of the underground by their second LP. Gosh, I remember curious college types back in 1985 even dug their jams. It’s remarkable over the course of Meat Puppets’ on/off career how close they’ve stuck to their stoned, melodic, yet always sonically varied riff-driven rock—and occasionally country-rock—style. I’ve always viewed the Meat Puppets as something the Grateful Dead shoulda/coulda evolved into by 1983, had the Dead stuck to using only amphetamines, because like the Dead, the Meat Puppets could actually play their instruments and they REALLY liked to jam. MIKE NIPPER

Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app—available now on the App Store and Google Play.