Wednesday 4/3

Billy Bragg, Kim Churchill

(Neptune) See Underage.

Rihanna, A$AP Rocky

(KeyArena) Rihanna first played KeyArena in 2006, as part of 106.1 KISS FM's Big Freakin' Deal, where the up-and-coming star—riding high on her Soft Cell–pinching hit "S.O.S."—opened for Pink, the All-American Rejects, and Nick Lachey. Then came "Umbrella," a song so deep and rich and perfect for its time that it did for Rihanna what "Sentimental Journey" did for Doris Day. Now with a dozen number-one hits under her belt, the pop superstar, Razzie-nominated actress, and past victim of Chris Brown returns to KeyArena, where she'll reign over a show that will feasibly be nothing but smash hits, one after another after another (and not one of them in the same league as "Umbrella"). Opening the show: the underground-force-turned-mainstream-hiphop-star A$AP Rocky. DAVID SCHMADER

Bomba Estereo, Theoretics

(Tractor) My ever hearing a note of Bomba Estereo was completely serendipitous. I listen to Bomb the Music Industry! pretty much constantly, just typing "bomb" into my iTunes search field and hitting play. After the final BTMI song, though, is Bomba Estereo's Ponte Bomb EP, and I honestly don't know how it got there, but listening to it after a BTMI run has become a tradition. Their song "Fuego (Pacha Massive Fiyah Remix)" causes my energy level to spike faster than mainlining a bag of Pixy Stix. They also have a bilingual cover of Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam" that sounds like it's blasting from a wall of speakers in a dance club in space. MEGAN SELING

Thursday 4/4

Hana and the Goose, Owl Pussycat, Humble Cub

(Heartland) See Underage.

Daedelus, Two Fresh, Ryan Hemsworth, Samo Sound Boy

(Crocodile) See Data Breaker.

My Goodness, the Comettes

(Triple Door) As much as I really don't like the word "rocktographer" (you know, photographers who shoot rock), I am looking forward to this First Thursday art show at the Triple Door. Twenty local photographers have chosen one image each—their personal best from their archives of live music shots—for an exhibit on the Musicquarium's walls. Audience members vote for best of show, from 5 to 7 p.m. Two local bands—blues-stompers My Goodness and '60s psych-rockers the Comettes—will play at 7:30 on the Triple Door's gorgeous and fancy-pants main stage. It should be a rockin' ("rock-a-riffic!") good time. KELLY O

Haunted Horses, the Numbs, Punishment

(In Arts Northwest) I know I'm late to the party, but I am so smitten with the Numbs right now. I mean, "Freaks Easy" already had my attention, but now that I have the entire People album, it's over. It's all I've been listening to. I love how relentlessly weird it is—each track is an intoxicated journey through warpy landscapes that induce friendly hallucinations: Texture blobs are swaying in time with eight-bit palm trees, latex ogres are mumbling, cartoon songbirds are stuck in a fax machine, everything is whirring and shuffling and perfect. EMILY NOKES

Friday 4/5

KRAKT: Kris Moon, Jay Zoney, Child's Play

(Electric Tea Garden) See Data Breaker.

Key Nyata, Skull & Bones, ILLFIGHTYOU, Cam the Mac

(Crocodile) Key Nyata still has a couple months left at Garfield High School, but this show celebrates the release of his fourth official project, The Shadowed Diamond. Like most of his lyrics, the significance of the title can be easily overlooked, but it carries much meaning. Nyata makes (meaning raps and produces) some of the most forward-thinking and stylistically unique rap music in the city, but he is often overshadowed by those with more established names or more "accessible" sounds. Judging from the first singles "THX GVRDXXN (Let a Ni99a Smoke)" and "BLVCK JVZZ," the "Key Gawd" has improved in every department, and Shadowed Diamond should be impossible to ignore. Gothic goons Skull & Bones (aka Bolo Nef and Caz Greez) and fast-rising Tacoma trio ILLFIGHTYOU are well worth showing up early for. MIKE RAMOS See also My Philosophy.

Kinski, Mark McGuire, Bali Girls

(Sunset) Local aficionados of heavy and heady rock are undoubtedly familiar with Kinski—the long-running Seattle ensemble with the distorted girth to please Sub Pop's old guard and the exploratory urges to jam with Acid Mothers Temple. Tonight, Kinski celebrate the release of their new album on Kill Rock Stars, Cosy Moments. Those intellectual-rock aficionados might not be familiar with the recently resurrected late-'90s caustic-rock trio Bali Girls, though. Like a combo of Steel Pole Bath Tub's snide noise-punk and Caspar Brötzmann Massaker's nightmarish guitar free-for-alls, Bali Girls' sound wasn't an easy pill to swallow back in their active years. But muscle and ingenuity provide a strong Darwinian advantage, which bodes well for Kinski and Bali Girls cranking out another decade's worth of cerebral angst. BRIAN COOK

Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat Dan Singa, Yada Yada Blues Band, Briana Marela

(Comet) Arrington de Dionyso's new Malaikat Dan Singa album, Open the Crown, contains his most powerful batch of tunes yet—yes, even that weird rap cut at the end. An American white guy—even if he is based in Olympia—assimilating Indonesian music and throat singing will always draw suspicious glances from the culture police, but ADD justifies his fusion moves with rhythmic ferocity, massive riffs that make you want to do dangerous things, and sheer technical brilliance. Live, ADD is a demonic whirlwind, and with a grip of new, ripping tracks to lay on you, you're going to want to soak up the strange radiation emanating from his person. DAVE SEGAL

Seattle Rock Orchestra Presents Chamber Rock: Kithkin, Pollens, Curtains for You, Led to Sea

(Columbia City Theater) Tonight we have the honor of experiencing the usually grand Seattle Rock Orchestra in a much more intimate setting. Instead of 60 or 70 musicians paying tribute to a familiar act like the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, or Queen, a small-scale version of the orchestra will be backing local talent as they perform their own originals. Tonight's lineup includes the local, modern-day The Warriors gang Kithkin and the extraordinarily talented "our vocals are our instruments" band Pollens, as well as members of Curtains for You, Led to Sea, and Impossible Bird. The same concept, with a different program, will also be performed tomorrow night, featuring John Van Deusen of the Lonely Forest, Sam Miller of Jenny Invert, and Tea Cozies. MEGAN SELING

YOB, Lesbian, Samothrace

(Highline) Now this is a heavy-metal show that deserves to be held at an enlightened spot like a vegan restaurant. YOB, Lesbian, and Samothrace make brutal music for highly evolved beings. As I've said before about the Oregon trio, YOB achieve the difficult feat of making doom metal that balances heaviness with airiness. Check out the epic "Adrift in the Ocean" for a representative gush of YOB's majesty. Samothrace feature at least two dreadlocked dudes who work at Highline, but don't think this booking is nepotism. Along with Lesbian, Samothrace are making some of the most thoughtful doom-intensive rock in the city. Tonight, seitan rules. DAVE SEGAL

Saturday 4/6

Lovers Without Borders, Pleasure Beauties, Corner Kick

(Heartland) See Underage.

Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Brotha Lynch Hung, Kutt Calhoun, Ces Cru, Rittz

(Showbox Sodo) See My Philosophy.

Low, Thalia Zedek

(Crocodile) I'm one of those sad people who want to freeze Low in amber circa I Could Live in Hope. It would please me for the Minnesota band to have never evolved beyond that incomparably spare and beautiful record, one of slowcore's gleaming achievements. Seriously, the hushed, emotive "Words" was my anti-anthem for a good chunk of 1994. Alas, Low changed and began to rock more conventionally and loudly, albeit with a stoic grace that few of their peers could match. Leaders Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk still have those pure, clarifying voices—prim, but brimming with compressed feelings. If we have to listen to soft rock (and sometimes we do), let it be Low's lovely, aorta-melting new album, The Invisible Way. DAVE SEGAL

Lucero, Langhorne Slim

(Tractor) As much as I did not care for Lucero's latest album, Women & Work (what happened to your voice, Ben Nichols!?), I still can't, in good conscience, suggest that anyone miss this show. I've seen the Tennessee-based band half a dozen times, perhaps more, and they are consistently fantastic, littering their sets with equal amounts of their country-injected rock-and-roll numbers like "Sixteen" (with horns!) and somber, sure-to-put-a-tear-in-your-beer ballads like "Nights Like These" and "It Gets the Worst at Night." And, chances are, most of the grievances I have about the new album—Nichols's voice is too polished, and the songs get repetitive—won't apply to their live show anyway. MEGAN SELING

OMD, Diamond Rings

(Showbox at the Market) Comic books and movie franchises reboot narratives to correct course after a run of bad creative choices all the time, so why shouldn't pop bands? When British synth-pop duo OMD dropped History of Modern in 2010, it was as if the long, slow decline that followed their 1986 smash "If You Leave" had never happened. Full of simple yet indelible melodies rendered in timbres that recall the glory days of the Normal and Kraftwerk, plus a collage of voice-mail-retrieval prompts, the new English Electric does nothing to dispel that illusion. In concert, OMD go easier on the revisionist history, but latter-day singles ("So in Love," "Sailing on the Seven Seas") sound much better when flanked by classics like "Bunker Soldiers" and the solid new material. Plus, Andy McCluskey still dances like your clumsy, drunk uncle—thank god some things never change. KURT B. REIGHLEY

Sunday 4/7

SpaceGhostPurrp, Raider Klan

(Neumos) See My Philosophy.

Rx: ((PRESSURES)), Void Vision, Futility

(Electric Tea Garden) See Data Breaker.

Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Brotha Lynch Hung, Kutt Calhoun, Ces Cru, Rittz

(Showbox Sodo) See My Philosophy.

Juga Hill, Brainstorm, Fatal Lucciauno, Donte Peace, Billy the Kid

(Nectar) See My Philosophy.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Sharon Van Etten

(Paramount) Dashing and dangerous like a wolf magician, the ever-dramatic Nick Cave is bringing his Bad Seeds out and about for their first US tour in five years (and without right-hand Seed Mick Harvey—his bandmate of nearly three decades who left the band in '09). So what's Mr. Cave been up to, outside of those facial-hair experiments? Oh, just writing a screenplay, publishing a second novel, releasing a second album with his other band, Grinderman (then breaking up Grinderman), and doing all kinds of composing projects with Warren Ellis. And let's not forget the latest (15th!) Bad Seeds album, Push the Sky Away—softer, but still sinister. EMILY NOKES

Parenthetical Girls, Jherek Bischoff, Bandolier

(Chop Suey) If you've yet to delve into Jherek Bischoff's amazing Composed, now is the time. It's a gloriously choreographed dance between pop and classical music—bringing in lush strings, dynamic percussion, and huge crescendos. Songs like "Eyes" (featuring David Byrne) and "Young & Lovely" (featuring Zac Pennington, Soko, and perhaps the best trombone sound in the world) will make cherry blossoms burst open as you walk past them. And speaking of Pennington, his band Parenthetical Girls recently released Privilege, the box-set culmination of the band's bloody (literally) 12-inch series, which has been released periodically in limited quantities over the past three years. Perhaps Bischoff and Pennington will treat us to a rendition of "Young & Lovely" tonight? My skin crawls with goose bumps in anticipation. MEGAN SELING

Jessika Kenney and Friends

(Cornish) Extraordinary Seattle vocalist Jessika Kenney calls herself "un/traditional," which is just right. For this concert, she brings together Gamelan Pacifica, Eyvind Kang, and other guests for "a narrative concert inspired by a rereading of the appearance of 'Samsu Tabarit' at the Javanese court." It concerns Shams, that great friend of Rumi, in the process of winning Rumi's heart. JEN GRAVES

Monday 4/8

Spiritualized

(Neptune) See preview and Stranger Suggests.

Fitz and the Tantrums, Bear Mountain

(Columbia City Theater) Fitz and the Tantrums played Block Party last summer, and their energetic but cheesy soul-pop, coupled with Fitz's weird strut, did not impress. I'd heard some good things, and Noelle Scaggs, who sings with Fitz, seemed like a badass sorcerer, both vocally and dancewise. But floating over the crowds on a stage that dwarfed them, the Tantrums' sound was more of a time-out—people left in droves. The location had to be part of that awkwardness, so here's hoping that Columbia City Theater is the just right venue for F and the Ts, which it very well may be. Again, I've heard great reports of their live shows, and one hot summer night of failure shouldn't mark a band forever. Let's try again! ANNA MINARD

Tuesday 4/9

Ann and Nancy Wilson

(Benaroya) See Stranger Suggests and Sound Check.