Wednesday 3/6

Morrissey

(Moore) See Stranger Suggests.

Daniel Bachman

(Wall of Sound) See Underage.

Don't Talk to the Cops!, Everybody Weekend, Punishment

(Heartland) See Underage.

Thursday 3/7

Alicia Keys, Miguel

(WaMu Theater) Alicia Keys is beautiful, talented, and, to my ears, boring as hell. But opener Miguel is beautiful, talented, and a veritable one-man thrill ride. Where Frank Ocean comes off cold and brainy, Miguel is pure heat. His voice can easily go anywhere it wants, so the man saves his energy for sex, which he celebrates with every cell in his being (especially those in his brain). The instructional "Use Me" will leave a wet spot under any listener with a pulse, while "Do You (Like Drugs)" seems like a question until the chorus, when Miguel drops "I'm gonna..." in front of the title. Swoon. DAVID SCHMADER

Benoît Pioulard, Tiny Vipers, Ghosts I've Met

(Columbia City Theater) Benoît Pioulard and Tiny Vipers rank as two of the city's preeminent makers of quiet, highest uncommon denominator music. The former (who also plays in Orcas with Rafael Anton Irisarri) sings like a Pacific Northwest David Sylvian—all rich, introspective, and hushed crooning—over spare yet baroque pastoral pop. His new album on Kranky, Hymnal, was inspired by religious iconography and European cathedrals, and it sounds like Pioulard's most vibrant work yet. Seattle mainstay Tiny Vipers (Jesy Fortino) strums stark, timeless folk songs that chill the blood with pitiless loner incisiveness. Her newest song on the web, "Another Day's Sun," is perhaps her most stirring yet. DAVE SEGAL

Distortions: Fungal Abyss, Explorateur, Veins

(Electric Tea Garden) Disclosure: I host the roaming psychedelic-music night Distortions with DJ Explorateur. But even if I had no connection to this show, I'd recommend you go, as Seattle mystics Fungal Abyss rarely play out: They're often too busy handling the heavy responsibility of creating powerful, highbrow metal as Lesbian. Under the apt Fungal Abyss name, these disciplined improvisers forge serpentine jams that swing open the doors of perception, revealing Boschian/DalĂ­esque vistas. Check out "Arc of the Covenant" off their Bardo Abgrund Temple album for optimal proof. DAVE SEGAL

Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside

(Neumos) These are some fantastic female voices coming at you here, with these two "Lead Singer's Name and the Weird Phrases That Aren't Plural Nouns Like Usual" bands. Thao Nguyen, who has made music with Mirah and Andrew Bird and these Get Down Stay Down people, is pretty fuckin' rad. I don't want to go thesaurus no adjectives for y'all—you've already heard of her, she's been singing since she was like 12. More importantly: On the newest TATGDSD album, We the Common, they have a duet with Joanna Newsom, and it is super-sweet and fast-paced and snappy, and I dig it so hard. Seek it out on those interwebs. Sallie Ford's voice is also great, scrappier and smokier, earthier and less ethereally pretty. I am forgiving her band for the suspenders and bow tie, but JUST THIS ONCE, GUYS. This is a good show if you want noisy loveliness, because that is what you're going to get. ANNA MINARD

Tafelmusik's House of Dreams

(Meany Hall) Euromania! This is music, words, and images together: a concert by Toronto's period orchestra Tafelmusik, narrated by an actor and accompanied by video projections. The projections are from actual private rooms across Europe where these pieces of music were originally heard in the 17th and 18th centuries, and where the music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and Marais would have been presided over by paintings by Vermeer, Canaletto, Watteau, and the like. Hear the music, feel the environments, gaze at the paintings. JEN GRAVES

Friday 3/8

Flash: J. Alvarez, Hanssen, Nordic Soul

(Q) See Data Breaker.

Redmond's Got Talent

(Old Fire House) Redmond has got more than just computers and a Claim Jumper restaurant—it's got talented kids and the area's longest-running all-ages space for them to be talented in! The Old Fire House Teen Center is hosting a competition in which tweens 'n' teens (ages 11 to 18) will sing, dance, magic trick, bucket drum, breakdance, monologue, beat box, and baton twirl their way to more than $400 in prizes and the chance to perform at Derby Days this summer. A panel of three celebrity judges (!?) will be rating each act on "originality, poise, creativity, overall impression, and talent." BTW, one of the first YouTube videos that pops up if you internet search this event on the internet is a 2009 youth rendition of "Enter Sandman." EMILY NOKES

Magma Fest: La Luz, Dude York, Detective Agency, Weird Bug

(Black Lodge) You'll come for La Luz and Dude York (I love you, Dude York!), but be sure to get to tonight's show in time for Weird Bug, too. The Seattle duo of Lilly Morlock and David Plell is one part unassuming sweet pop, one part experimental bedroom recordings, and one part (the best part) bursts of vocal spasms. On their Stuck in Beads EP, they sing about David Bowie, they cover ELO, and they're the kind of band you want to invite to your house to bake a cake and play music and have a dance party with. But don't do that, because it's creepy. So just see them at the Black Lodge tonight instead. MEGAN SELING

Helms Alee, Sandrider, Lowmen Markos

(Columbia City Theater) If you're going to open a show for Helms Alee and Sandrider, you had better be ready to fucking BRING IT. It being the storm, the noise, the ear-blasting slaughter capable of drowning 1,000 men with one riff. And Lowmen Markos do! But without being so obvious about it. The instrumental foursome creeps up on you slowly, with songs that stretch out for seven or nine minutes, and stalk you like the prey that you are. Check out their fairly new EP Flames at lowmenmarkos.bandcamp.com. You'll really dig it if you're into bands like Russian Circles or Pelican, or wandering through dark woods alone, during a full moon, on an autumn night. MEGAN SELING

Black Weirdo, the Party: Riz Rollins, THEESatisfaction, Chocolate Chuck, StasTHEEBoss, SassyBlack

(Lo-Fi) Seattle's THEESatisfaction have a new section on their website, updated weekly, called "Black Weirdo of the Week." Here, the ladies of THEESat interview other musicians, plus artists, jewelry- and filmmakers—asking each, "What makes you a black weirdo?" Musician OCnotes starts his response by saying, "I'm black and there's no one like me. I pull off crazy shit." Crazy shit is what the dance floor should look like at this party at Lo-Fi—a night of DJs and dance music, rather than any set by a full band. Keep Seattle weird (and dancing), Stas and Cat! KELLY O

Nacho Picasso, Jarv Dee, Moor Gang, Key Nyata + Keyboard Kid

(Neumos) First name junk food, last name asshole/genius artist—that pretty much sums up Seattle's laid-back antagonist, Nacho Picasso. For the record, I like junk food, and there's certainly something guilty pleasure–ish about Nacho's unhurried, drippy hiphop ride through a stony haunted house. I could stand to hear the word "bitch" less often, or never (tall order, I know), but his depravity is hardly threatening when it's delivered in a lax bratitone amid bongloads of weird wordplay—the uneasy enjoyment of eating frozen pot brownies iced with green cough syrup and cobwebs. EMILY NOKES See also My Philosophy.

Hillstomp, Hobosexual, Country Lips

(Tractor) Members of ramshackle country-music horde Country Lips can often be found roaming the streets and bars of Roosevelt and the University District. Stickers featuring the band's name and farm animals with human-ish bodies smoking and drinking are commonplace in the area. Word on the street is that many in this gaggle—agreeable drinkers themselves—live in the same house, possibly the one pictured on the cover of their long-player Touched by the Country Lips. Thinking man's hard rockers Hobosexual were last seen injecting considerable brawn into some Smashing Pumpkins material while opening for Seattle Rock Orchestra's night dedicated to Billy Corgan et al. Tonight, proceed with abandon and a BAC. GRANT BRISSEY

Saturday 3/9

Magma Fest: Nudes, Walter & Perry, Black Magic Noize, Dil Withers, Korvus Blackbird, Carrion Spring, PSupremo

(Hollow Earth Radio) See Underage.

Emancipator, Little People, Odesza

(Neumos) See Data Breaker.

Holy Balm, the Numbs, Punishment

(Cairo) Coming all the way from Sydney, Australia, Holy Balm play springy disco-house with nonchalant-diva vocals, embellished by a panoply of trashily warped textures (think ancient, cheaply made video games sputtering to noisy deaths) over steadfast 4/4 beats. They resemble the Miracles Club, if that Portland act cared less about glamour and more about strange tones. Speaking of which, the Numbs (Seattle producer Jeff Johnson) has gathered countless bizarre sounds in his various boxes, whose buttons he pushes to make them move in unlikely patterns. It's bracingly post-everything and will make you feel like Earth's axis has shifted. DAVE SEGAL

Carver Audain, Rafael Anton Irisarri

(Chapel Performance Space) There's not a lot of Carver Audain music on the web at the moment, but what can be discerned from a couple of YouTube clips is that he's a rigorous minimalist-drone composer whose instincts for glorious, sonorous tone clusters are unimpeachable. Seattle producer/multi-instrumentalist Rafael Anton Irisarri (the Sight Below, Orcas) knows a thing or five about minimalism, drones, and sonorous tones himself. Under his own name, he wrings exquisitely poignant melodies that come to life like aural Monet paintings. He's a master of intimate grandeur. Both artists' music should sound amazing in the Chapel, Seattle's premier space for the sacred act of appreciating rigorous drones. DAVE SEGAL

Seattle Rock Lottery

(Crocodile) The premise: 25 mega-talented musicians meet at 10 a.m., randomly get split up into bands via a lottery, and then the new groups get 12 hours to come up with a band name and write three to five songs that they'll perform in front of a packed house at the Crocodile that same night. The list of participants is pretty insane: Derek Fudesco of the Murder City Devils and the Cave Singers, Chris Brokaw of Codeine and the New Year, Bill Rieflin (who's worked with everyone from R.E.M. to Ministry), Lesli Wood of the Redwood Plan, Irene Barber of Eighteen Individual Eyes... and so many more. Find out what happens when musicians stop being nice and start getting... oh, wait, no. That's a different show. But this'll be awesome! MEGAN SELING

Sunday 3/10

Sir Michael Rocks

(Neumos) See My Philosophy.

Trust, ERAAS, Nightmare Fortress, Dr. Troy

(Barboza) See Data Breaker.

Vince Staples

(Vera) Long Beach, California's Vince Staples excels at gritty, nihilistic dopeboy raps, which he delivers in a barely interested deadpan that becomes almost disturbing considering the songs' sinister content. Staples talks about lots of guns and drugs—as he puts it, "If you want some positivity, go listen to some Common"—and gives very few fucks. Staples's lyrics often seem bleak, unsettling, or depressing, but when combined with the hazy, futuristic production evident on his album Shyne Coldchain Vol. 1 (which features contributions from Seattle's Key Nyata and Snubnose Frankenstein, son of Jurassic 5 member Akil) and recent Winter in Prague collaboration with Long Beach producer Michael Uzowuru, it's a distinct product of both Staples's environment and the current state of "internet rap" (which is almost the same as "normal rap" by now). MIKE RAMOS See also My Philosophy.

Monday 3/11

Maroon 5, Neon Trees, Owl City

(KeyArena) In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg writes, "Consider 'Here Without You,' by 3 Doors Down, or almost any song by Maroon 5. Those bands are so featureless that critics and listeners created a new music category—Bath Rock—to describe their tepid sounds. Yet whenever they came on the radio, almost no one changed the station." He said this while discussing the initial rejection of OutKast's "Hey Ya!" by radio audiences. It seems an overwhelming number of listeners turned the dial when stations played the song, despite the fact that hit-prediction algorithms had indicated it would be a runaway success. Having sunk a lot of money into promoting the song, the record industry enacted a radio strategy to spoon-feed "Hey Ya!" to the public. By sandwiching the song between bath-rock staples by bands like tonight's headliners and similarly unchallenging compositions, radio DJs successfully embedded it into listeners' subconscious, after which it went on to win a Grammy and top charts worldwide in 2003 and 2004. I made it exactly 29 seconds into a Neon Trees song, and we've already been down the Owl City road in this publication, so let's just never go there again. GRANT BRISSEY

Tuesday 3/12

Wax

(Crocodile) See My Philosophy.

Leo Kottke

(Jazz Alley) Leo Kottke is a phenomenally fluent acoustic guitarist, a more antic John Fahey, you could say, with the bonus of being a hilarious raconteur between songs. Now 67, Kottke can play in folk, jazz, rock, and blues idioms with flamboyant virtuosity. His 1969 LP 6- and 12-String Guitar remains one of the most impressive displays of mercurial playing of those instruments in the history of recordings. Not sure if he's still as fleet of finger these days, but his large, great catalog and eccentric sense of humor should make you err on the side of attending. DAVE SEGAL