In between all the summer holidays and festivals are plenty of sun-soaked moments perfect for reveling in some exceptional local music. This week, our music critics have picked everything from NorCal funk created for a new school audience (P-Lo), to the revamped line-up of a legendary glam rock group (Queen with Adam Lambert), to a musical presentation that will (figuratively) take you to another galaxy (2001: A Space Odyssey). Click through the links below for complete details and music clips, or find even more shows on our music calendar.

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TUESDAY

Meatbodies with Wild Powwers
Los Angeles trio Meatbodies are part of the Ty Segall/Mikal Cronin/Oh Sees axis of bands, which gives you a good baseline for what to expect: homespun rock ’n’ roll that’s tuneful, deferent to tradition in a constructive way, and prone to ripping off guitar solos that are both shambolic and showy. Compared to Segall and Oh Sees’ garage-punk rave-ups, though, Meatbodies operate at a deliberate pace—the band has described its sound as “metal on molly.” To that end, the group is touring behind Alice, a loosely conceptual album full of sludgy rockers with psychedelic flourishes. Like those associated acts, Meatbodies play live with vigor and practiced abandon. ANDREW GOSPE

Seattle Symphony presents the Music of John Williams
The Seattle Symphony will perform the work of legendary composer and Hollywood score master John Williams as a part of the summer festival series ZooTunes. The evening's show will feature well-known pieces from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Jaws, and many more.

Tycho, Todd Terje & The Olsens, Jaga Jazzist
On paper, Tycho and Todd Terje are similar enough: They both make dance music, and they both perform it with full bands. After that, the similarities are scarce. Terje got his start making disco edits for DJs, and his original material is sunny and vibrant. His best work, like 2014’s It’s Album Time, radiates enthusiasm for the effect a good dance track can have on a crowd. Tycho splits the difference between post-rock odysseys heavy on the-Edge-circa-1987 guitar work and somnambulant house cuts that come up after Odesza or Flume when you stream Pandora over the dorm’s wi-fi. As far as summer concerts go, this pairing is more incongruous than most. ANDREW GOSPE

TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY

Buster Williams Quartet
Buster Williams is “only” one of the more consistently interesting jazz bassists working, so you can imagine my regrets when he walked out of the all-star Heads of State band (who recorded one must-hear album with him and one without). But he left to throw himself a birthday party in the form of a tour, so I can’t exactly carp. Yes, he worked with Miles Davis, later Herbie Hancock, and a lot of other famous and talented people. Williams got there by never caving in to rote. He’s not flashy; he solos a bit, but not compulsively. But you can never tell what note, what lick, what lexicon he’ll break out next. Even the stuff that sounds like easy-listening make-out sessions has it! (But it probably won’t make it to this stage.) ANDREW HAMLIN

WEDNESDAY

P-Lo, Rexx Life Raj, 40Groove
Quiet as kept for the last few years, the HBK Gang has exemplified young NorCal funk in the modern era. Cofounding the HBK (Heartbreak Kids) while attending high school with Richmond rapper Iamsu, the Filipino American gold-slugged rapper/producer/DJ P-Lo (not to be confused with the PLO) is today known for a slinky, synthy bounce (and slick, gameful rap) that’s unmistakably weaned on the last two decades of the Bay Area’s oft-imitated, go-dumb brilliance. Ratchet highlights abound on Moovie!, P-Lo’s 2015 tape with fellow Heartbreaker Kool John, as well on his latest solo release, More Than Anything. Check the E-40-featuring single “Put Me on Something,” and check this shit as well—I’ve never met a human who hated on 40 who didn’t turn out to be a terrible fucking person. Take that to the bank. Yee. LARRY MIZELL JR.

Ryan Adams
Prolific singer-songwriter Ryan Adams is back in town after a long stint, and will showcase work from his last sixteen studio albums.

!!!, So Pitted, Master Bedroom
Having worked as professional party-starters for more than two decades, the members of !!! have their shtick down tight. From their days as scrappy punks from Sacramento to catching and riding the dance-punk wave all the way to the top with their classic “Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard,” !!! have continued to hone their skills as a live act over the past 10 years. Their shows contain an energy that doesn’t always come through on record, but their latest full-length on Warp Records, Shake the Shudder, sees them flaunting a renewed sense of purpose in their songwriting, promising that their latest stop through town will be an especially electrifying one. NICK ZURKO

THURSDAY

Animal Collective, Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney
The critical vanguard has abandoned Animal Collective in recent years, a surprising development for a band whose brilliance was, as recently as 2010 or so, the subject of plenty of tortured internet debates. (At least among nerdy indie-rock dudes on music blogs, which, hey, guilty.) Luckily for AC fans, it’s the conversation, not the music, that’s changed. The group’s last two full-lengths, Centipede Hz and last year’s Painting With, elicited a collective shrug from music critics, but the group’s hallmarks—charmingly elliptical songwriting, wide-eyed psychedelia, vertiginous vocal harmonies—remain. No longer an “important” band, Animal Collective are just Animal Collective, and that’s more than okay. ANDREW GOSPE

Jonah Parzen-Johnson and Icasiano/Goldston
Chicago-bred, Brooklyn-based saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson deploys circular breathing techniques and an analog synthesizer (which he controls with his feet) to create eerily atmospheric compositions that hover in the intriguing zone among Jon Hassell’s Fourth World Music, Graham Haynes’s 1990s output, and Terry Riley’s Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band All Night Flight, Vol. 1. Parzen-Johnson’s new album on Clean Feed, I Try to Remember Where I Come From, conjures a nocturnal, sacred glow not unlike those ambient passages found on Spiritualized’s first three albums. Despite all that name-dropping, I don’t mean to imply Parzen-Johnson’s work is derivative; it’s actually vital stuff that just happens to trigger thoughts of those important artists. DAVE SEGAL

Transfusions: Archivist, IVVY, PLL, Dr. Troy
Born out of Medical Records owner Dr. Troy’s insatiable love for great, weird techno, the Transfusions sublabel has issued several 12-inch slabs of heat, including releases by Alexander Robotnick, L/F/D/M, Derivatives, and Pye Corner Audio’s Martin Jenkins. Tonight’s headliner, Archivist (Seattle’s Alex Markey), has a new EP on Transfusions titled Chutes and Ladders, and its four tracks transport you to those spiral-eyed zones you want to enter as the psychedelics kick in. This is A+ minimal techno executed with surgical attention to tones and rhythms that facilitate escape from mundanity. Fellow Seattle producers and MOTOR veterans IVVY (Madi Levine) and P L L (ex–Brain Fruit member Chris Davis) also harness the mantric power of swift, pummeling beats and beautifully abrasive timbres for maximal dance-floor freak-outs. DAVE SEGAL

THURSDAY-SUNDAY

Sergio Mendes
Probable father of all Brazilians, Sergio Mendes has been incalculably influential on pop, jazz, and samba genres as a producer, composer, keyboardist, and vocalist. Enjoy his worldly presence as Mendes breaks out his five-decade-spanning album catalog and really throws around his old school Rio swing.

FRIDAY

Brad Paisley with Dustin Lynch, Chase Bryant, and Lindsay Ell
Top40 country hunk Brad Paisley will take over White River for a night of Americana hits and opening support from Dustin Lynch, Chase Bryant, and Lindsay Ell.

IsaacJacuzzi, MO$, Keyoney, Lil Mosey, Chandler Williams
Up-and-coming rapper IsaacJacuzzi will hit the Vera stage at this all-ages show, with live input from MO$, Keyoney, Lil Mosey, and Chandler Williams.

Mall Music Inc: DJ Paypal, DJ Orange Julius, DJ Mastercard, DJ NHKGUY
A lot of footwork is utilitarian—repetitive, high-speed drum-machine and sampler face-offs designed to challenge dancers more than listeners. The DJs on this bill, though, take footwork’s forms and complicate them both musically and conceptually. The first three DJs are part of the Mall Music collective, whose post-everything, Tumblr-ready aesthetic belies a reverence for their craft. At least as impressive is DJ NHK Guy, aka Seattle producer Jesse Lopez. Released in May, his first album, At Your Door, is playful, multifarious dance music, blending samples of Japanese pop, R&B, and rap with club-ready beats. It’s an auspicious debut, and one of the year’s best local albums. ANDREW GOSPE

MOTOR: Collin Gorman Weiland, Samantha Glass, Decoy, Dr. Troy
As part of Dreamweapon, Collin Gorman Weiland helped to promulgate some of this century’s filthiest techno and house tracks. In solo guise, Weiland has found an ideal home in Downwards Records, a UK-based imprint focusing on techno’s grimmest and grittiest tendencies. The music’s stark bleakness sounds and feels so right in 2017. Samantha Glass (aka Wisconsin musician Beau Devereaux) offers a combination of mordant post-rock and the darkly euphonious electronic music of 1970s-era Cluster, with bonus glum muttering to augment the downer vibes. His 2016 album, Preparation for a Spot in the World, inhabits an understatedly infernal world that excises corniness out of goth and horror-film scores. Recording for Seattle’s rising Budget Cuts label, Decoy is yet another local producer adding fresh angles and hues to minimal techno’s streamlined parameters. DAVE SEGAL

FRIDAY-SATURDAY

A Live Presentation of 2001: A Space Odyssey
I started college as an astrophysics major (big twist: I didn’t end college that way), and I spent an absurd amount of time absorbing movies, music, and literature that pertained to astronomy in order to bring a little levity into such daunting subject matter. One of the few things that space nerds stuck in a lab could agree on was that pop culture rarely represents space accurately both as a technical concept and an abstract reality. Therefore, we pivoted to pieces that legitimately reflect the feeling you have when you’re alone, gazing into a telescope as big as your apartment, charting the movement of comets for your absent TA. To date, 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the only films I’ve seen that encapsulates the vertiginous wonder and the encroaching psychosis of a brain struck by space—its expansion, its promise, and its inevitable bleakness. This film is a gift to us all, and a live score by Seattle Symphony and the Seattle Symphony Chorale will only build on its impact as a touchstone for faraway worlds and feelings closer to home. KIM SELLING

SATURDAY

Brit Floyd
The self-proclaimed world's finest Pink Floyd cover act, Brit Floyd, comes back to Seattle to prove their '70s psych-rock worth in their Immersion World Tour 2017.

An Evening with Jessie Reyez
Toronto singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez is known for tackling difficult issues like sexism and misogyny in her music. She'll share new work at this Seattle tour stop.

KEXP Rocks the Dock
This free event kicks off this summer’s Friends of Waterfront Seattle’s Hot Spot events. And if the Northwest weather dial hasn’t switched to “let’s get sweaty” setting yet, this load of lovelies will certainly help push the heat index higher. So who’s on dock? Jenn Champion, who’ll be performing their super fun electronic dance indie-pop; Bread & Butter, a sweet local power-pop group known for always bringing the (ahem) jam; and the Thermals, faves from Portland who will be playing their well-loved take on PacNW pop rock. MIKE NIPPER

Queen with Adam Lambert
This bill is utterly wrong, of course. Sure, Adam Lambert has a great voice, a great face, and a great body. The former American Idol contestant is out and has taken his lumps for it. What Lambert does not have is what RuPaul called the TP, the Total Package. The TP in this case concerns the late Queen vocalist Farrokh Bulsara, who turned himself into Freddie Mercury, dazzled the world, dosed the faithful and anyone else within earshot with excess, and buried his non-Caucasianness deeper than his queerness (on the latter, he’d drop hints with a wink or the aesthetic equivalent—but no one could ask him about family). Mercury hid in plain sight, signified in plain sight, and died from AIDS in shame. Go to this concert if you want spectacle. You’ll get it, but you won’t get history. ANDREW HAMLIN

Search Party
Tacoma-bred garage-rock freaks the Sonics pioneered a lascivious and groovy brand of 1960s rock ’n’ roll that has been copiously emulated since. The raunch-rock trailblazers have remained ever-relevant and musically hard-hitting, with their most recent record, This Is the Sonics, a proper representation of all the rude ’n’ crude garage rock that has been re-created in various revival waves since they helped create it with singles like their spooky-sexy 1964 debut “The Witch.” Although it’s a benefit for all-ages haven Vera Project, the event is outdoors with 40-plus beers on tap for maximum seasonally mandated sunshine-and-booze absorption. Local support comes from shock-devoted rockers Thunderpussy, UK-based dirty-glam revivalists the Struts, and Austin-based fury-rock duo Black Pistol Fire. BRITTNIE FULLER

Streetlight Manifesto, Jenny Owen Youngs, Ogikubo Station
There’s nothing wrong with liking ska. Or is that just what I tell myself to make my enjoyment of third-wave ska less shameful, as I throw on a pair of checkered pants? Skanking out of New Jersey for the past 14 years, Streetlight Manifesto are one of the genre’s heavy hitters, giving life to a scene that’s often considered a passé novelty of the 1990s. Streetlight Manifesto’s last album, 2013’s The Hands That Thieve, broke into the Billboard Top 100, but they have yet to release anything in the last few years, partially due to public conflicts with their record label, Victory Records. KEVIN DIERS

Tangerine's Farewell Show with Fauna Shade and Emma Lee Toyoda
Local indie-pop act Tangerine provide anti-gray solace with their beach-ready, '60s-inspired pop that interlaces sugary female vocals with twangy, bursting flickers of guitar and even more tambourine. Tangerine's songs instantly bloom inside your earspace and stay there. BRITTNIE FULLER

TYPONEXUS Globalist Series: Lubomyr Melnyk
Ukrainian composer/pianist Lubomyr Melnyk can transport you out of your workaday doldrums with just the unparalleled swiftness of his fingers touching ivories. With monomaniacal focus, he turns the piano into a font of refulgent cascades and crystalline clusters of momentous beauty. Wikipedia tells us that Melnyk is the world’s fastest pianist, plinking 19.5 notes per second with each hand, but he also possesses endurance: He holds the record for most notes played in one hour—93,650. The thing is, they’re exceptional notes, some of the best notes your ears will ever receive. Melnyk will be performing amid works by an international array of visual artists in a new series curated by drone musician/artist Garek Jon Druss. Expect an evening of sublime sensory overload. DAVE SEGAL

SUNDAY

The Dead Ships, Ian Crawford & The Famous Last Words, Alec Shaw, Joe August
In the past, LA trio the Dead Ships somehow masked their stripped-down garage-rock components behind big, soulful indie-leaning pop songs. And while it’s noteworthy that frontman Devin McCluskey’s charismatic vocals were strong enough to serve as the focal point in a genre that typically worships a solid guitar hook, it’s also gratifying to hear the band gravitate toward a sound that fully embraces the sum of its parts. On recent tracks like “When I Go Away,” the Dead Ships tap into the vintage howl of the Animals while bolstering the songs with thick, distorted bass lines, booming drum production, and hallucinatory guitar leads. More of this, please. BRIAN COOK

An Evening with Ween
Anyone with a deep love or even a straightforward appreciation for Ween knows that there’s so much more to what the dynamic duo of Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo (aka Gene Ween and Dean Ween) do than mere “comedy rock.” Yes, a chunk of their material is humorous, ironic, or absurdist, and that material—“Bananas and Blow” and “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)” to name two—is fucking great, even as it hopscotches through genres ranging from show tunes to country music to metal to “pop.” But take a listen to White Pepper or The Mollusk or even select cuts off Chocolate and Cheese, and you’ll realize these guys have some righteous psychedelic and alternative-rock chops. They also know how to slay a stage, and anyone who hasn’t seen Ween since they reunited in 2015 after three years apart will likely be getting down in all that brown on this Sunday evening date. LEILANI POLK

Murder by Death, Tiger Army, Tim Barry
Indiana-spawned Murder by Death have been plying their blend of brawny yet poignant indie rock and folk roots for nearly 17 years, giving it gothic dramatic overtones with heavy strains of cello and infusing it with old-timey western appeal while fleshing out the mix with mandolin and banjo. On their most recent outing, 2015’s Big Dark Love, they added horns and extra percussion, too, and experimented with electronics, to great effect. This tour finds the ensemble joined by LA psychobilly group Tiger Army and Virginian howling-raw folk-punk singer-songwriter Tim Barry, a Southern favorite. LEILANI POLK

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