Rock Picks: Rooney, Lili Haydn, Dizzee Rascal

 MONDAY, JULY 21

 Playing Monday:

Baka Beyond’s transglobal hoedown

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More About

• Dizzee Rascal
• Rooney (Musical Group)
• Lili Haydn
• Peter Walker
• The Duke Spirit

JAIL WEDDINGS, THE MOON UPSTAIRS, THE MAKEOUT PARTY at the Echo; TERRA NAOMI, LESLIE & THE BADGERS at the Hotel Café.

TUESDAY, JULY 22

 Summer Darling at the Echo

“We eat our young to keep you guessing,” Ben Heywood sings intriguingly before the rousing hook of “Ride This Wave of Good Feelings,” from Summer Darling’s latest EP, Good Feeling (Origami Music). Bassist Heather Bray belies her last name by lending some coolly sleek harmonies as the song gathers momentum and crashes magnificently into shore. “I’ve decided that nothing is worth my time,” Heywood declares airily as he contemplates the cost of heavy partying on the rueful “Born Again,” buttressed by Bray’s soulfully probing bass and Dan Rossiter’s lovely overlapping guitars. Spokes of similarly glimmering guitars light up the indie-rock tune “The Zealot,” while the contrastingly downbeat “Young Forever” is a sparse piano ballad that feels forever (Neil) young. Whether he’s turning religion inside out or looking at life from within a bottle, Heywood is an interesting lyricist, and his band mates provide suitably sympathetic, low-key settings for him to launch his flights of fanciful wondering/wandering. (Falling James)

Peter Walker at the Echoplex

A looming figure on the Greenwich Village folk scene of the late ’60s, guitarist Peter Walker studied with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan and was Timothy Leary’s musical director for the good doctor’s infamous LSD rituals. Walker more notably made two albums of a uniquely exploratory folk-raga for the Vanguard label that have in recent times elevated his status as a major influence on a modern-day bunch of avant-acoustic players, including Jack Rose, Thurston Moore and Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny. Their interest in Walker owes in large part to his crucial 1966 album, Rainy Day Raga, which many of this younger generation of guitarists paid tribute to on last year’s glorious A Raga for Peter Walker on the Tompkins Square label. Tompkins has additionally just released Walker’s first new record in 40 years, Echo of My Soul, wherein this wizardly plucker explores a newfound fascination with flamenco to extraordinarily fresh effect. This is a rare appearance by a deservedly legendary master. (John Payne)

Also playing Tuesday:

JAY BRANNAN at El Rey Theatre; RAY DAVIES at Grove of Anaheim; STRAY CATS, JOE ELY at Pacific Amphitheatre; BABYLAND at Spaceland; JAMES McMURTRY at the Troubadour.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23

Hercules & Love Affair at the Echo

Any moment now, it will be termed prog-disco or sexy-cheese-disco or even chamber-disco. Whatever the case, the “-disco” must be appended and heeded, for it is BACK. Hercules & Love Affair’s version of disco can make you wish it had never gone away — really. A former Denver leather-bar DJ named Andrew Butler is the producer behind Hercules & Love Affair, who have created a hugely trendy, self-titled new album on Mute/DFA. Butler and guests including idiosyncratic warblers Antony Hegarty (of “and the Johnsons” renown) and Kim Ann Foxman explore classic themes of Greco-Roman wrestling and bizarre sex under the moonlight over atmosphere-rich and gloriously melodic tracks that pay loving tribute to the electro-disco and Chicago house style that made them what they are today, which is somewhat messed-up and happy to be that way. H and L.A. are setting Europe, at least, on fire with their surreally smooth and simply sleazy disco seduction; open-minded sensualist young Americans are now invited to writhe into the orgy. (John Payne)

Also playing Wednesday:

STEELY DAN at Nokia Theatre; THE BOWMANS, JUDITH OWEN at the Hotel Café; INARA GEORGE & VAN DYKE PARKS at Tangier.

THURSDAY, JULY 24

 The Rescues at the Hotel Café

Singer-songwriters Kyler England, Gabriel Mann and Adrianne became familiar with one another in the Hotel Café scene, where each achieved some individual, if limited, success (all made Music Connection’s 2007 Hot 100 Unsigned list). Last year, a fan hired the three to play at his wedding, and they struck such a musical spark that they decided to band together as the Rescues. Each brings a different quality — Adrianne has a feisty, punkish energy, Kyler projects a more angelic presence, and keyboardist Gabriel holds down the middle — but they blend marvelously. Listening to their harmonizing on their upcoming disc, Crazy Ever After, it’s hard to believe they’ve only been playing together for about a year. Their voices take flight on the soaring opener, “Lost Along the Way,” and rarely land again. Their music, however, isn’t all soft edges. The gorgeously crafted rocker “Break Me Out” has already found music-supervisor love (getting showcased on Army Wives) and seems destined to break out big. (Michael Berick)

Baka Beyond at Skirball Cultural Center

Not all musical hybrids are as organic as those in the botanical realm, but Baka Beyond’s Afro-Celtic graftings have flourished better than most. Maybe it’s the forest connection. Martin Cradick and Su Hart first lived with the Baka people in the Cameroonian deep green in the early 1990s, developing lasting friendships, as well as an abiding love of the bird-song hocketing of yelli music, which first bloomed with Baka Beyond’s debut, Spirit of the Forest. The band have garnered a global fan base since then, but their friends back in the emerald canopy have never been far from Cradick’s and Hart’s thoughts. They have visited as often as possible, recording there and starting the Global Music Exchange to funnel royalties back to the Baka, culminating in the construction of a traditional-style music house. The current Baka Beyond — pan-African and pan-Celtic in membership and songcraft — strikes chords celebratory and mystic, jaunty and melancholy, a testament to the planetary potential for vibrational positivity. (Tom Cheyney)