Wednesday 7/25

Fiona Apple, Blake Mills

(Paramount) See Stranger Suggests.

Jacques Greene, Justice & Treasure, Sounds in Silence

(Barboza) See Data Breaker.

The xx, Jacques Greene

(Showbox at the Market) The xx's surprising popularity in America probably proves that our big, dumb country is learning to embrace quiet, subtle electronic-pop music with flat male/female vocals on a grander scale than we previously have done. Bravo for us. These Brits sound like Young Marble Giants if that minimal, melodic Welsh post-punk group were aiming for the back row of the 2,000-seat theater instead of the closet of your bedroom. "Angels," the first song from the xx's forthcoming Coexist album, hints at a Sigur Rós–like facility for tingly, dewy guitar tones and whispery grandeur. DAVE SEGAL

Big K.R.I.T., Casey Veggies, Big Sant

(Neumos) Mississippi's Big K.R.I.T. (that's "King Remembered in Time") is only 25 years old, but his (entirely) self-produced Southern rap tunes sound more like the work of early-'90s pioneers of the sound like UGK, 8Ball & MJG, even Outkast at their most Southernplayalistic. Opener Casey Veggies hails from LA and reps a much newer-school swag-rap set, similar to that of personal friends and longtime collaborators Odd Future, but without the skate crew's fuck-everything mentality. Seems like a strange pairing for a bill, but given both rappers' anointed status on blogs—and not just rap ones—it kinda makes sense. Still, the two should have enough hits in their respective catalogs to rock a crowd for an entire evening. MIKE RAMOS See also My Philosophy.

Hundred Waters

(Vera) Gainesville, Florida, quintet Hundred Waters create hushed, delicately constructed orchestral pop for intimate moments, although sometimes their songs will unexpectedly bloom into gloriously triumphant movements. The creations on their 2012 self-titled album are carefully layered epiphany vehicles that gracefully transport you to slightly better places in your mind. Led by the pliable, cool-breezy vocals of Nicole Miglis, they recall a slightly less arch and arty Julia Holter. Some will find Hundred Waters way too precious; others will swoon breathlessly to their gradually unfolding sonic flowers. DAVE SEGAL

Thursday 7/26

Watsky, Dumbfoundead, Breezy Lovejoy Band

(Crocodile) See My Philosophy.

Ramsey Lewis & His Electric Band

(Jazz Alley) Soul-jazz keyboardist Ramsey Lewis has aged incredibly gracefully. I caught his last performance at Jazz Alley in 2011, and he was as fit, lucid, and deft on his instrument as a man half his 76 years. Lately, Lewis has been revisiting his electric period, a very fertile phase in which he produced several albums of spacious, spiritual funk (hear Sun Goddess and Don't It Feel Good for irrefutable proof) and a load of inventively rearranged Beatles songs (check out 1968's Mother Nature's Son for more undeniable evidence). This classy legend always offers sophisticated chops, silky grooves, and melodic grace. DAVE SEGAL

Pierced Arrows, Don't, Primate 5

(Comet) Just like how the guy telling jokes at your house party while wearing a lamp shade on his head is always entertaining—so is the band that plays goofy garage-punk while wearing monkey masks. Make no mistake, though—Primate 5 don't monkey around when it comes to apes. They have a serious song called "Ivan Will Get His Revenge on Tacoma." Old schoolies might remember Ivan from Tacoma's B & I Circus Store. Ivan was the resident gorilla-in-a-cage that lived inside the store until 1994, when local protesters started a Free the Gorilla movement. Ivan then went on to live at the Woodland Park Zoo, and is now, to this day, on permanent loan at the Atlanta Zoo. KELLY O

Friday 7/27

Machinedrum vs. Salva, Cedaa, Jameson Just

(Chop Suey) See Data Breaker.

Ramsey Lewis & His Electric Band

(Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Midday Veil, Particle Being Ensemble, Jupe Jupe, Terminal Fuzz Terror, Veins, Explorateur

(Rat and Raven) We've already spilled plenty of ink about Midday Veil's highly cerebral and beautifully experimental psychedelic live performances. But I want to spill, actually, gush a little bit about Veil singer Emily Pothast. She's a modern-day vocal sorceress. Watching her conjure up feminine angst at a recent show at the Seattle Art Museum—wailing, swaying, and singing, all the while chasing away negative energy with a bundle of burning sage—made me miss the days when I used hide in the little attic above my mom's garage and make dark, ugly oil paintings while listening to PJ Harvey's Rid of Me. Pothast channels that similar vocal power heard on early PJ records. I hope she never loses her inner witch. Tonight, Midday Veil and several other bands cover krautrock classics from legends such as Can, Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Amon Düül II. KELLY O

Magic Trick, La Sera, Foxygen

(Barboza) I just can't get into La Sera. Too gauzy and sweet, and too packaged, and just not happening. I know they have lots of fans, so don't listen to me. When I googled "Magic Trick," I fell down an internet hole for approximately a thousand hours watching magic tricks on YouTube (highly recommended). When I finally recovered and googled "Magic Trick band," the first result was a music blog that said, "From Los Angeles in the USA, Magic Trick encapsulates the audience in patchouli oil burning from a thousand joss-sticks." Which is (a) quite poorly written and (b) the worst hell I can imagine, but hey, who the eff knows? The internet is weird. They're probably SUPER-DUPER-SWELL! I'm sure! And Foxygen? A million points for that name. Aaaaaand we're done here. Go to this show?!? ANNA MINARD

Saturday 7/28

Hoodstock: Glitterbang, Sports, Branden Daniel & the Chics, Hobosexual, and more

(Milky Way House) See Underage.

Shameless: Deepchild, Adlib, Joe Bellingham

(Electric Tea Garden) See Data Breaker.

Ramsey Lewis & His Electric Band

(Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Juicy J, Joey Bada$$, Smoke DZA, Fat Trel

(Neumos) See My Philosophy.

Journey, Pat Benatar, Loverboy

(Gorge) One more reason to resent the seemingly never-ending reign of "Don't Stop Believin'" in American culture: It's the only reason Pat Benatar isn't topping this bill. Without that new standard/forever-impending menace, Journey's perfectly serviceable catalog of middle-of-the-road rock hits and soggy power ballads would've earned the band the slot just above Loverboy (which has only "Working for the Weekend," "Turn Me Loose," and iconic bandanna deployment to offer). But Pat Benatar is a titan. From her early-'80s hard rock hits ("You Better Run," "Heartbreaker," "Hit Me with Your Best Shot") to her prime MTV poppery ("We Belong," "Shadows of the Night," "Love Is a Battlefield"), she carved out prime space in a male-dominated universe through hooks and chops and exceedingly tight leather pants. DAVID SCHMADER

Peaking Lights

(Barboza) Peaking Lights gently bobbed into my consciousness with the release of 2011's psychedelic-dub day-brightener 936 on Not Not Fun Records. On their Facebook page, members Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis claim to live in "epic vibeland," and such whimsical jocularity glimmers in their sound. Peaking Lights flirt with cutesy/sunshiny sweetness—particularly regarding Dunis's blithe intonations and chants—but their delayed, chiming guitars, rubbery bass lines, and loping, hydroponic rhythms ultimately keep the HFCS at bay. The new Lucifer full-length tilts into deeper, more blissful kosmische territory and includes a beautiful, gamelan-like Steve Reich homage in "Moonrise." It's one of the feel-great releases of 2012. DAVE SEGAL

Dum Dum Girls, Craft Spells

(Neptune) Remember that time when you were younger and you tried to film a Star Wars sequel in your parents' backyard and you fell out of the top of a tall Douglas fir and hit six branches on the way down, including one shot directly to your junk? No? Well THAT'S 'CAUSE IT HAPPENED TO ME. Tonight's show, featuring Dum Dum Girls—who deploy dreamy noise pop and quote people like the wonderfully dour Australian rocker Rowland S. Howard—and forlorn bedroom poppers Craft Spells, is a benefit for the National Film Festival for Talented Youth, which champions endeavors like our Star Wars sequel project, only with heaps more talent and probably less falling out of trees. GRANT BRISSEY

DJ 88 State, the Unibroz, Richie Aldente

(High Dive) Earlier this year, the Unibroz made quite an impression when they performed in the EMP's Sound Off! semifinals. The rap crew (with a live drummer and DJ/tambourine player) closed their set with a song called "Krizpy Chicken Saxophone," which was inspired, they said from the stage, by a chicken nugget that was shaped like a saxophone. They even offered a photo of the nugget as evidence, and by the end of the song, they had half the room chanting "crispy chicken saxophone" along with them. So the Unibroz are weird. But they're just young dudes not taking shit too seriously, and there are moments on their latest album, Born Classy, that recall Digital Underground. Sometimes it's good to be goofy. MEGAN SELING

Angry Samoans, 13 Scars, Super Nothing, the Greengoes, Overboard, Chump Change

(El CorazĂłn) Occasionally, rock-and-roll journalists get out from behind their keyboards and show how things should be done, as opposed to just writing about it. In the early '80s, "Metal Mike" Saunders, the rock writer who coined the term "heavy metal" in a 1970 Humble Pie review for Rolling Stone, brought forth a stripped-down skate-punk attack with his own band, Angry Samoans. While never achieving such household-name status as Black Flag, the Samoans came ripping out of the San Fernando Valley with timeless jams like "Lights Out." Now, twentysome years later, they're still at it, as fast, sloppy, and especially angry as ever. KEVIN DIERS

Sunday 7/29

Ramsey Lewis & His Electric Band

(Jazz Alley) See Thursday.

Brothers from Another, Shelton Harris, Dave B.

(Crocodile) See My Philosophy.

Maxi Priest, Rankin Joe, Blue Meadows Band, ZJ Redman, DJ Chuckie

(Neumos) The UK-born reggae crooner Maxi Priest has two moments in the sun. The first happened in the '80s, the second in the '90s. The first is essentially British, the second is American. The first is defined by his cover of Cat Stevens's "Wild World" (in my opinion, Maxi's version is better than the original), the second by his Soul II Soul–inspired "Close to You." The first moment is closer to his Jamaican roots, the second to the black American soul tradition. The smoothness of Priest's delivery has always been the point at which Loose Ends' Carl McIntosh meets Jimmy Cliff. CHARLES MUDEDE

Medic Medic, Bandolier, All in Favor

(Nectar) Unlike so many other bands, which are blinded by delusions of grandeur, Seattle's Medic Medic actually supply a very apt description of their sound on their Facebook page: "It's as if Passion Pit and MGMT had a three-way with a Game Boy." It's so true! And I loved it! Until I got halfway through "Never in a Million Beers," and the twee vocals turned into a shrilling screamo business that I thought died out half a decade ago. When Medic Medic leave out the screaming, in songs like "From Shoulders" and "Shelbyville," their music is actually quite catching. Which is weird for me to say, I know, because I love it when people scream! Just not in this context, apparently. MEGAN SELING

Opera on Tap

(Columbia City Theater) While drunk one night, a singer from Tacoma Opera and one from Seattle Opera had an idea: Why not do Pop Up Opera, with projected "pop-ups" in the style of VH1's more-fun-than-you'd-expect show Pop Up Video? Now it's happening. You'll drink, you'll listen, and you'll learn little tidbits about opera along the way as a pianist accompanies singers in pieces including Madame Butterfly's suicide scene, "I Am Easily Assimilated" from Leonard Bernstein's Candide, "Alabama Song" from Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (also covered by the Doors and Marilyn Manson), and the "Ho jo to ho!" chorus from Wagner's Die WalkĂĽre. And, hey, everyone is invited to sing along. JEN GRAVES

Monday 7/30

Iron Maiden, Coheed and Cambria

(White River) Nothing we say here is going to have any sway on how you feel about quintessential metal band Iron Maiden. Either you're down with "The Trooper" or you're not. So let's take a moment to contemplate Maiden's place in that period of rock history when bands could hammer out bangers deemed too extreme for radio and still somehow fill arenas. It's an era past, replaced by an internet-fueled landscape flooded with so many groups that even a "successful" act like Coheed and Cambria—a prog-lite rock band with a comic-book series based on their lyrics and a Mark Wahlberg–produced film adaptation in the works—doesn't come close to matching their cultural impact. Even your mom would recognize Maiden's mascot "Eddie," and he never had a Hollywood movie deal. BRIAN COOK See also Sound Check.

Tuesday 7/31

Ravi Coltrane Quartet

(Jazz Alley) Ravi Coltrane is the son of two jazz masters of the modern moment, Alice Coltrane and John Coltrane. His mother was a pianist and harpist (she passed away in 2007); his father was a saxophonist (he passed away in 1967 when Ravi was almost 2). His mother made a number of great albums and was known for being deeply spiritual; his father is, of course, a jazz god. Yes, it's strange that Ravi Coltrane picked up the instrument (saxophone) his father dominated and revolutionized. It's also strange (in the ghostly sense) that he sometimes does sound just like his father, particularly on the more strained or stretched notes. Yes, much in Ravi Coltrane's music and mode (which is deeply intellectual) can be attributed to him—his own development, life, and genius—but there does appear to be a gene in the Coltrane family for the mastery of the saxophone. CHARLES MUDEDE