Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (with Babehoven)
Crescent Ballroom 308 N. 2nd Ave., Phoenix, AZ, United StatesMarquee millennial indie-rock outfit Clap Your Hands Say Yeah visit the Crescent Ballroom to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their critically-acclaimed, self-titled debut album. The band's four-on-the-floor drum-machine beats, noodly synth lines and lead singer Alec Ounsworth's warbly vocals now feel like relics of the Pitchfork Age, but so what? None of us is getting any younger. Babehoven open the show, featuring the sort of moody-sadgirl-indie-mumbling which is doubtless becoming familiar to regular readers of HarperQuest: Nights!
Hinds (with Mamalarky)
The Nile Theater 105 W. Main St., Mesa, AZ, United StatesSpanish sweetie-pie indie-rock duo Hinds, despite a relatively thin discography, made a splash in the mid-2010s with their Euro-pop spin on indie rock; several albums later they're still going strong, forgoing complexity for a messy aesthetic that blends the energy of garage rock forebears like The Sonics with the Casiotone club instrumentation of an Ibiza discotheque.
Austinites Mamalarky perform indie rock with a decidedly chillwave influence; there's more than a hint of Steely Dan to be found here in the instrumentation underlying lead singer Livvy Bennett's fuzzed-out vocals.
Amyl and the Sniffers (with Sheer Mag)
The Van Buren 401 W. Van Buren St., Phoenix, AZ, United StatesLoud, brash, arguably tasteless Australian punk-rockers Amyl and the Sniffers bark and shred over four-on-the-floor drumbeats in classic garage band fashion, presided over by outrageous frontwoman Amy "Amyl" Taylor, guaranteed to put on an unforgettable live show. They're supported here by fellow female-fronted garage-revivalists Sheer Mag, who draw from 70s classic rock and early power pop, undergirding the powerful, throaty soprano vocals of lead singer Tina Halladay.
Darude (with Kristina Sky)
Sunbar 24 W. 5th St., Tempe, AZ, United StatesSandstorm! SANDSTORM! SANDSTORM!!!11 dududududu! dudududududu dududududududu du dududududu
A night of brainless, pre-dubstep techno could be had by all!
Kraftwerk
The Orpheum Theatre 203 W. Adams St., Phoenix, AZ, United StatesPioneering electronic multimedia performance artists Kraftwerk visit the Orpheum to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their seminal album Autobahn. The subject of uncountable parodies, from The Big Lebowski's Ueli Kunkle to Saturday Night Live's Sprockets, the Krautrock scene defined by Kraftwerk became an unstoppable cultural force whose influence is felt throughout all subsequent electronic music and manifesto-driven performance art. Realistically, I know we're not spending 60 bucks a head to see Kraftwerk, but wouldn't it be fun?
Graham Nash
The Celebrity Theatre 440 N. 32nd St., Phoenix, AZ, United StatesThe main creative force behind The Hollies and later member of the supergroup Crosby, Stills and Nash, Graham Nash's influence on harmonic, Laurel Canyon-style soft rock has been immense. Nash's brand of sensitive, save-the-whales pop music remains polarizing, less now for perceived challenging political and social content than for its increasingly shopworn 20th-century naiveté, but this Harper still has a soft spot for three-part harmony and an acoustic guitar.
SASAMI (with Jia Pet)
The Rebel Lounge 2303 E. Indian School Rd., Phoenix, AZ, United StatesCherry Glazerr alum Sasami Ashworth shares some of the indie sensibilities of her former band, but her solo project SASAMI ditches the lo-fi garage trappings in favor of a modern, electronic, girl-pop sound. A talented multi-instrumentalist, Ashworth delivers her emotionally raw lyrics in a rich mezzo-soprano that ranges from ironically detached to delicate and tremulous. When she sings "I'm such a cancer," one hopes she's comparing herself to the disease rather than indulging in her generation's weakness for astrology, an observation that encapsulates my crochety opinion of the pop cohort to which she belongs. Like Ashworth, Jia Pet's music draws heavily from Asian pop-idol aesthetics but skews more heavily toward break-beat, hyperpop and electronic sounds.
Dummy (with The Sheaves, Evergreen)
Linger Longer Lounge 6522 N 16th St #6, Phoenix, AZ, United StatesLos Angeles indie-pop band Dummy take their name from the celebrated Portishead album and aren't afraid to wear such influences on their sleeve, but they're more than shoegaze revivalists, interpolating psych-rock, glitch music, and vaporwave to create a thoroughly modern pop-rock aesthetic. "Making music shouldn't be fun" has served as the band's long-running mantra, and...
Los Mirlos
Valley Bar 130 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ70s Peruvian psychedelic cumbia pioneers Los Mirlos visit the Valley Bar as part of their "Tour Ayahuasca USA 2025." Could be a hell of a Wednesday.
King Hannah (with Veronica Everheart)
Linger Longer Lounge 6522 N 16th St #6, Phoenix, AZ, United StatesEnglish duo King Hannah's wry, singer-songwriter aesthetic evokes contemporaries like Phoebe Bridgers, Courtney Barnett, and Sharon van Etten (a featured collaborator on the band's second album), but their titles and lyrics make clear that they trace their influences to slice-of-life Americana observers like Neil Young and, yes, John Prine. There's a strange menace lurking behind...