PET SHOP BOYS ARE SO ELECTRIC, DARLING
Talk about durability and reliability. Pet Shop Boys just keep on giving their fans the goods, some 27 years into their casual career. Their new, 12th album, Electric, is expansive, mannered techno crafted by a couple of worshipped UK pop veterans that is better than it has any right to be (most musicians by this point in their careers are running on creative fumes). An upbeat affair in contrast to 2012's Elysium, Electric is about as tantalizing a dance record as you could expect from fiftysomething hit-makers. First single "Love Is a Bourgeois Concept" is the perfect PSB track title, and it encapsulates the album's charms with its witty, self-aware lyrics and understatedly ebullient melody. "It's a blatant fallacy," Neil Tennant deadpans, and only a naïf would argue with the man. Expect a night of frictionless, poised dance music for the carefully flamboyant clubber. Paramount Theatre, 8 pm, $35.75–$55.75, all ages.
HEADHUNTERZ IS GONNA GO "HARDSTYLE" ON YOUR ASS
Dutch DJ/producer Headhunterz has more than 633,000 "likes" on Facebook, the sort of number that usually portends a first-class cheese merchant. A trawl through his productions confirms this. Headhunterz is a proponent of "hardstyle," which sounds like happy hardcore repurposed for the stadium-dubstep generation, with occasional smatterings of mainstream trance's saccharine synth timbres. Making matters worse, he frequently threads into his tracks those hammy, he-man voice-overs often heard in film previews. On the plus side, Headhunterz donated the earnings from his 2012 album Sacrifice to Dance 4 Life, an organization dedicated to informing the public about HIV and AIDS. With Coone, Brennan Heart, and Wheelz. Foundation, 9 pm, $20 adv/$25 DOS, 21+.
LE1F'S INTELLIGENT BLING IS OUT THERE
Le1f (pronounced "leaf," he said, reassuringly) sounds like a music writer's wet dream of a subject: a gay rapper who's stylish as all get-out and can twerk up a storm (he studied ballet and modern dance at Wesleyan). Oh, and he supplied the beat to Das Racist's "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell," for bonus hip cred. It takes bravery to be out in the often-homophobic hiphop realm, and thankfully, Le1f has the lyrical and production skills to make him more than just a curious anomaly. His flow has a molasses-y Sly Stone feel to it, while his music's a flashy strain of bass music accentuated with intricate, kinetic bleepwerk, not too far off from Danny Brown's output. I guess intelligent bling is a thing now. With Antwon and Lakutis. Chop Suey, 9 pm, $10 adv/$12 DOS, 21+.
