This week officially (for us, anyway) marks the first moment of "festival season," with both Upstream and Downstream parting the waters for spring and summer's biggest events. Sink into these immersive festivals or enjoy one of the many recommended events around town—our critics recommend everything from one of the original mantle-carriers for "woke rap" (Brother Ali), to anthemic rock for divorced dads everywhere (Everclear), to the only Irish rock band to fill a whole stadium and the Amish-hatted folk-rock troubadours to take on that legacy in the next decade (U2 with Mumford & Sons). Click through the show links below for complete show details and music clips, and find even more shows on our music calendar. Only interested in Upstream? Then our exclusive Upstream calendar is for you.

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MONDAY

Gruesome, Violent Hallucinations, Ka’Atun, Oxygen Destroyer
Matt Harvey is one of a rare breed: a death-metal guitarist who is also a singer-songwriter. Throughout his long career in bands like Exhumed and Gravehill, he’s managed to outline a definite style of his own, involving both chugging low-string riffs and melodic flourishes. The songs he writes have a lyrical voice of their own, as well, violent but humorous and self-deprecating. In his latest project, Gruesome, Matt pays tribute to deceased death-metal singer-songwriter Chuck Schuldiner. Gruesome play songs in the style of Schuldiner’s main project, Death, but are not a cover band. Even in the form of extended homage, Harvey’s unique personality rears its gory head. JOSEPH SCHAFER

An Intimate Evening with Lea Michele
Glee star and Broadway belle Lea Michele hosts an intimate evening of pop, cabaret, and showtunes.

Lil Peep
Lil Peep would not exist in the clickbait pantheon of his current form if not for our recurring trend climate. As music, fashion, and art trends cycle heavily in circular time, what you’d hoped would die out 15 years ago is back in full effect. Usually billed as hiphop, but definitely more like if you half passed out next to your toilet and started murmuring the lyrics to a Dashboard Confessional track, Lil Peep’s style of emo-inspired fanny-pack (not even backpack) rap is slow, simple, and has fewer bars than a Salt Lake City suburb. The dude is Aaron Carter for UNIF, an amalgam of pop trends for a new youth movement, the one of privilege, convenience, and easy-target marketing. KIM SELLING

TUESDAY

Aimee Mann with Jonathan Coulton
This event pairs indie powerhouse Aimee Mann with new school troubadour Jonathan Coulton, promising performances of music from both of their latest albums.

The Thurston Moore Group
There are several unassailable truths regarding Thurston Moore: He’s got a nasty habit of making great music. His legacy of willing art-punk to life through Sonic Youth will jog on forever. And he is an unbearable tool. Like many dudes of the holier-than-thou school of rock, Moore has acted for years as the put-upon savior of the genre, which is fair due to his entrenched influence over decades of music, but also bullshit considering how many other talented artists have been churning out hits for just as long and generally take less air out of the room. Since the divorce-heard-round-the-world, Moore has played with black-metal supergroup Twilight, created a one-off with Chelsea Light Moving, and released an album through his own Thurston Moore Group, now on tour. All of this looks like the precursor to an Elvis Costello–like reign: continuing to put out album after album in his wiry, intimately myopic style in exploration of classics that can’t be re-created, but can and will be rehashed. KIM SELLING

WEDNESDAY

Brother Ali with Sa-Roc
For fans of conscious rap and the Twin Cities–based Rhymesayers imprint, this is a serious doubleheader featuring two of the brightest stars from the label’s roster, Brother Ali and Sa-Roc. Born Jason Douglas Newman, Brother Ali has been releasing blistering critiques of social injustice and uplifting raps for the past 17 years. He’s currently touring in support of his sixth album, this year’s All the Beauty in This Whole Life. Ali will be joined by the dexterous lyricist Sa-Roc, who is based in Atlanta and cites Björk and Gil Scott-Heron as influences. Having released 13 (!) albums since 2008 and performing shows around the country, she’s currently touring in support of her MetaMorpheus EP released last fall on Rhymesayers. NICK ZURKO

Forms: Hudson Mohawke
At this point in his decade-plus career, Glasgow’s Hudson Mohawke is a bona-fide star in the world of beats and rap production. Having first caught the ears of the international beat scene with his edits of American R&B artists like Twink, the producer was signed to Warp Records in 2009, which released his utterly bonkers debut album, Butter. HudMo continued to ascend as a producer both through his stadium-ready trap beats he made with Lunice as TNGHT and in producing hits like Kanye’s “Blood on the Leaves” alongside working with Drake, Future, and Pusha T. The former Clipse member is one of several notable guest spots on his 2015 follow-up, Lantern. Since the album’s release, HudMo’s been traveling around the world in support of it with his bigger-than-big beats. NICK ZURKO

Old Crow Medicine Show Performing Blonde On Blonde
Folk revivalist rockers Old Crow Medicine Show will perform, in its entirety, Bob Dylan's seminal classic Blonde On Blonde, for some unknown reason.

THURSDAY

Acid Mothers Temple, Babylon, Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand
What a long, strange trip Acid Mothers Temple’s music is. Year after year, these Japanese astral travelers release chaotic and blissful psychedelic works that subtly tweak their maximalist, distortion-loving approach with each punnily titled album. They also never stop touring, and one of these days they’re going to challenge the Grateful Dead for accruing legions of lysergic devotees… or fry trying. As someone who’s seen AMT many times under various conditions, I can vouch that their music represents one of the most efficient and bombastic ways to exit a mundane mind state. Seattle trio Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand keep ascending the mountain of jazz-rock freedom with a swaggering ruthlessness. RIYL Sonny Sharrock, James Blood Ulmer, and stroking your chin till it catches on fire. DAVE SEGAL

AP & Elevator Present Demdike Stare with Nordra, Chloe Frieda, and Cameron Shafii
Demdike Stare’s initial spate of releases from 2009 to 2012 can be viewed as virtual calling cards sent out to an alternate universe where filmmakers like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, and David Lynch use them to score their chilling and grave cinematic masterpieces. Alas, Demdike Stare’s soundtrack aspirations remain unconsummated so far, but maybe one day. In the meantime, the UK duo have moved on to more dance-floor-wrecking styles on their Test Pressing series of 12s and the latest full-length, Wonderland. Expanding into more extroverted rhythmic machinations while still keeping their atmospheres dank, Demdike Stare have magnificently tweaked their myriad-shades-of-black sonic approach. Their twitchy, truculent beats defy easy grooving, but the mind-boggle factor is high. DAVE SEGAL

Tanya Tagaq
Tanya Tagaq, an Inuk throat singer who uses orchestral arrangements and solo harmonizing to create a unique and disturbing sonic majesty all her own, presents new work from her upcoming album Retribution, and will be joined in her efforts by vocal chameleon Christine Duncan, drummer Jean Martin, and violinist Jesse Zubot.

THURSDAY-SATURDAY

Downstream Music Festival & Art Show
Substation promoter/festival organizer Tim Basaraba created Downstream Music Festival with the intention of supporting local outlier artists without the high ticket costs, big corporate backing, and pay-to-play structure of the Paul Allen–sponsored festival/persistent mold spore Upstream Music Fest. Downstream will host 25 acts and happen concurrently with Upstream, with 100 percent of the door split evenly among its artists. The initial requirement for playing Downstream? An official rejection from Upstream, of course. Downstream’s ads carry the phrase “Paul Allen is afraid of these bands,” and while it’s unlikely the billionaire was directly involved with the Upstream lineup or will hear these bands, this counter-fest was successful in booking weirdo-flag-flying bands like Tit Nun, Witch Ripper, and Ox Hunger. Downstream boasts a wide range of genres, opening with a metal showcase, foraying into noise, experimental, and rock bills, and closing with a hiphop showcase featuring RA Scion. BRITTNIE FULLER

Upstream Music Fest + Summit
Upstream is a three-day music festival and summit set to take place in 25 venues around Pioneer Square. It's Paul Allen’s attempt to mold a PNW-focused South by Southwest type large-scale festival, with programming involving many local emerging talents, more than 300 music artists, and keynote speakers Macklemore, Quincy Jones, and Portia Sabin. Curated by longtime hiphop booker and former talent-buyer at the Crocodile Meli Darby, the vast majority of bands are Seattle-and-NW centric, including Shabazz Palaces, electro-jammers Beat Connection, Iska Dhaaf, glam-rockers Thunderpussy and R&B trio The Flavr Blue. Also on the roster is genre-bending hiphop wunderkind DoNormaal, Grammy-winning jazz-fusion ensemble Snarky Puppy, the sublime soundscapes of Bardo:Basho, Freeway Park, SassyBlack, folk wailer Shelby Earl, Raica, pop-duo SISTERS, So Pitted, The Spider Ferns, Youryoungbody, and punk-rock dreamboats Boyfriends. Check out the full by-date and by-venue schedule, read Stranger reviews, and listen to music clips on our complete Upstream calendar.

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

Spyro Gyra
Jazz fusionists Spyro Gyra, who have performed more than 5000 shows and released 31 albums in the last 40+ years, headline. Fun fact: the band name is a misspelling of a type of green algae, Spirogyra.

FRIDAY

Everclear, Vertical Horizon, Fastball
I recently asked Everclear leader Art Alexakis if he ever feared for his life onstage, and he mused, “Playing outside when it’s raining, wet stage, I don’t enjoy that too much. You’d be amazed how many people get electrocuted every year. Just that. Our fans are pretty mellow.” Showbox Sodo has a roof, at least, and maybe he doesn’t expect much moshin’; then again, many moshers of the 1990s got resigned to lower back pain by now. Vertical Horizon sound a little politer than Everclear, brooding and inverted where the headliners swing for the next county. Finally, Fastball give us country alt-rock. Praise the Lord (and the Faces) on Sunday, but between Thursday night and midnight on Saturday, pass that Jack and holla “Free Bird.” ANDREW HAMLIN

Meklit, Gabriel Teodros, DJ WD4D
Meklit Hadero is a very talented and enchanting Bay Area–based Ethiopian-born singer who in 2010 dropped an excellent solo album, On a Day Like This, and in 2012 dropped an equally excellent hiphop album, Colored People’s Time Machine, with the local rapper and activist Gabriel Teodros. Hadero moves between folk, traditional, indie rock, jazz, and hiphop with the ease that a water spider skips across a sunny pond, and she has a voice that is at once powerful and dreamy. Hadero has also worked with local jazzers Evan Flory-Barnes and D’Vonne Lewis, who happen to be half of the band Industrial Revelation. CHARLES MUDEDE

Screens, Select Level, Patrick Galactic, DJ Eugene Fauntleroy
Wavy West Seattle psych-lounge outfit Screens make bold feel-good music in this building era of anxiety. Coupling electronics from the keyboard of singer Allison Tulloss and effects pads of goofball drummer Doug Port with the un-funk-withable bass of Carlos Tulloss, they kick the trippy vibe into top gear. Elsewhere on the bill, Select Level, the new project from veteran Seattle multi-instrumentalist Andy Sells (who, like the aforementioned Carlos Tulloss, performs in Afrocop) is a jet-propelled, retro-funk adventure with Sells carrying the bass, keys, and vocal duties. Rounding out the night is Eugene Fauntleroy—“our city’s best-dressed DJ,” to quote The Stranger’s Dave Segal—and Patrick Galactic. TODD HAMM

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

Flight to Mars with Thunderpussy
The 15th annual Flight to Mars benefit show features Pearl Jam's Mike McCready and Duff McKagan and friends playing as a tribute to 1970s English heavy rockers UFO, with local party rockers Thunderpussy as the opening act both nights. Proceeds will go to Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America's Camp Oasis, the Jennifer Jaff Care Line for People with IBD, and The Vitalogy Foundation.

SATURDAY

Big Dig Record Show
Twenty of the Northwest's top record dealers will converge and spread every style and genre of vinyl before us, with live sets by local DJs all evening long, as well as a full bar with ID.

Emel Mathlouthi
When you first listen to Emel Mathlouthi, who has been called "the Voice of the Tunisian Revolution" for the strong protest songs she wrote during Arab Spring, you might experience the music as powerful but generally sappy arena pop. Like an Arabic Celine Dion or something. I happen to love that kind of stuff, but if you don't, just give "Kelmti Horra" (my word is free) a few minutes to get going and you'll find yourself floating in the middle of the room. It's the song she sang to inspire Tunisians protesting on the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, and it's incredible. RICH SMITH

Jessy Lanza with Kate NV
If you remember Altered Images’ “I Could Be Happy” or the Belle Stars’ “Sign of the Times” with fondness—and you should—Hamilton, Ontario’s Jessy Lanza has got your number. Not since Annie’s delirious 2004 debut Anniemal has a singer-producer crafted a record as effortlessly buoyant as Lanza’s Oh No. She sighs and whoops over geometric beats, while keeping cuteness at bay. Add her thoughtful lyrics to the mix, and she’s the Carol Kane of the dance floor (or the Cyndi Lauper of the indie scene). Lanza’s tourmate, DIY artist Kate NV (neé Kate Shilonosova), hails from Moscow. On her 2016 debut, Binasu, the Glintshake singer combines a love of Japanese new wave with avant-garde credentials for a deeply inventive, yet enjoyably accessible debut. KATHY FENNESSY

Pleather, Nightspace, DoNormaal, MMMelt
Beloved local experimentalists Pleather are finally releasing their long-awaited tape as a finale for their recent tour, with support from Nightspace (back from NYC), DoNormaal, and MMMelt.

Research ft. Avalon Emerson
If you’re not exhausted from Upstream’s insane profusion of showcases, you may want to shimmy over to Seattle’s foremost underground-dance club and shake what your parents gave ya to Avalon Emerson’s salubrious productions. If she’d only created the vastly inspirational techno anthem “The Frontier,” Emerson would be a star. But she’s done much more than that, and her spacious, melodically sophisticated feel-good techno makes it mandatory that you conserve your dwindling energy for her early-morning set. Four local all-stars offer all-hands-on-deck support. DAVE SEGAL

SUNDAY

Conan, North, He Whose Ox Is Gored, Serial Hawk
In the arms race of heavy music to play slower, lower, and louder, Sunn O))) have already beat out their competitors. But much like a political ideology can veer so far in one direction that it can come full circle to sharing in its opposition’s views, so has Sunn O)))’s sonic extremism taken on a soothing ambience. If you want your big riffs to still have the foreboding crunch of an AT-AT Walker descending upon Hoth as opposed to the static blanketing murk of London’s Great Smog of ’52, then Liverpool’s doom trio Conan will be right up your alley. As their name implies, the band is more barbaric brawn than musical sophistication and nuance, but the visceral thrill of getting your body battered by sound waves is tonight’s primary objective. BRIAN COOK

Joe Goddard with Guests
You know him best for his work in Hot Chip, the nerdy, cheeky indietronic dance group from London; he’s the podgy gent who usually plays keys and sings in a deep, blasé brogue to bandmate/co-leader Alexis Taylor’s high, emotive wails. Goddard lands in Seattle behind his second solo full-length, Electric Lines, which falls into a similar Hot Chip aesthetic, with a heavier emphasis on disco-house untz and grind, shades of UK garage, and a guest spot by SLO, aka England’s Jess Mills, who adds breathy cooing vocals to tracks like slinky set opener “Ordinary Madness” and stealthy, grooving, electro-soul-tinged first single “Music Is the Answer.” LEILANI POLK

KONGOS with Mother Mother
Said it before, will say it again: You should view any major-label rock band in the 2010s with utmost skepticism. Yes, there are some good ones toiling with the corporate behemoths, but not many. Most are direly uninspiring. So what about KONGOS? The four members have the good fortune to be sired by South African rock star John Kongos, who wrote “He’s Gonna Step on You Again,” which Happy Mondays famously resurrected for a baggy-pantsed generation in 1990. KONGOS’ three albums are packed with songs that aspire to fill arenas and get hips shaking while striving to stir big emotions with naive lyrics. None has the quirky charm of dad’s best-known tune in America, but their records do sound expensive. DAVE SEGAL

U2 with Mumford & Sons
Rewind, if you can, to a time when U2 still seemed pure. Forget the record they forced down your iPhone’s throat, forget the hyper-expensive and equally pretentious PopMart tour. Instead, remember the band’s 30-year-old album, The Joshua Tree. A historic success, the Brian Eno–produced LP marked the transition from their origins as an 1980s post-punk group to an arena-filling alternative-rock band of the 1990s. It’s still a great record, even if few listen to the more moody and experimental second side. U2 are touring now, mining nostalgia and playing The Joshua Tree in its entirety. Tickets are steep, but how else will you hear Bono sing “Mothers of the Disappeared”? JOSEPH SCHAFER

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