MUSIC PICKS: Ruben Guevara, Buika, Bill Frisell's Beautiful Dreamers

BARDO AT SILVERLAKE LOUNGE

If Chelsea Handler fronted a band, this might be it. Bardo creates skinny-tied, sassy and sometimes funny power pop wherein sheer quality and Leslie King's slinky timbre trump any originality shortfall. Their poison is turn-of-the-'80s, guitar-based new wave: the Pretenders (a lot), the Knack, Blondie — even an odd nod to Toni Basil's "Mickey" (on their flagship "L.A. Is in My DNA" ditty). Their songs are urgent exercises in efficiency, with King's spunky 'n' punky vocals also capable of being barfly wounded ("Run"), vulnerable/yearning ("You Like Me a Lot") and incongruously Alanis Morissette–ish ("Free to Go"). Teetering at that rare cusp of experience and exuberance, Bardo performs with the honed technique of longtime lovers and the hair-tossing abandon of a one-night stand. (Paul Rogers)

Location Info

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UCLA Royce Hall

340 Royce Drive
Westwood, CA 90024

Category: Music Venues

Region: West L.A.

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More About

• Chris Martins
• Paul Rogers
• MACHINE Rey
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Punk Rock

Also playing Wednesday: A PERFECT CIRCLE at Avalon; CANDY CLAWS, CHAIN GANG OF 1974 at Bootleg Theater; KRADDY, DNAEBEATS, HERU at Low End Theory.

THURSDAY/NOVEMBER/11

BUIKA, LILA DOWNS AT DISNEY Concert HALL

Singer Lila Downs is a bit of an anthropologist, blending trad Mexican folk sounds with more modern strains melted down with blues, jazz, klezmer even. In her intriguing forays into the native Mesoamerican music and language of the Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya and Nahuatl cultures, her voice is a supple and soaring thing — she likes to throw in a bit of beat-poet rap, too, plus she chirps like a bird and hisses like a snake. She's supported by her longtime La Misteriosa band, which includes her husband/collaborator, Paul Cohen. The gasp-inducing Buika is a Spanish-born singer, to put it mildly, of smoky tone, burnished grain and wildly athletic vocal prowess. She excels in a wide range of traditional coplas (torch songs) and other jazz, Gypsy rumba, ranchera and Afro-Cuban-tinged songs of heartbreak and despair — and a woman's will to keep on keepin' on. (John Payne)

RUBÉN GUEVARA AT EASTSIDE LUV

Rubén Funkahuátl Guevara's musical career is so extensive, it's impossible to boil it all down into one short paragraph. What's more, his long and varied backstory is so stellar, it reads almost like the plot of a surreal movie. He's perhaps most widely recognized for his collaborations with Frank Zappa, bringing to life and making real what had previously been Zappa's fictional doo-wop parody Ruben & the Jets. But the Boyle Heights native's roots extend all the way back to 1965, when he appeared with Bo Diddley and Tina Turner on the pop television show Shindig. In the '70s, he reinvented himself as a Chicano activist, fronting the influential band Con Safos and working as a promoter to champion Latin-punk groups like the Plugz and the Brat and such rock en español comers as Tijuana No. Guevara's own music has moved restlessly from his early days as a blues, R&B and doo-wop stylist into stranger, freakier explorations that draw upon jazz, funk and his extensive spoken-word experience (he was once married to the great Angeleno poet Kate Braverman). This magic medicine man is back after too long of an absence with a new album, The Tao of Funkahuátl, which draws upon all of his varied personas, from the funky downtown grooves of the title track and the spoken-word insights of "La Virgencita de Boyle Heights" to the cool blue introspection of "The Eyes of God." (Falling James)

NOSAJ THING, TORO Y MOI, JOGGER AT EL REY

The simultaneous, blog-heralded 2009 rise of both the "chillwave" genre and L.A.'s distinctive electronic scene said a lot about where music was heading. Though one was an outcropping of the indie/psychedelic rock scene and the other found its genesis within hip-hop beat production, both were almost exclusively inhabited by solo bedroom producers, and both came steeped in gooey synthesizer notes, canned drums and rich, ambient-inspired textures. It makes sense, then, that only a year later, the leading lights of those separate scenes should meet up and tour the country together. South Pasadena resident Nosaj Thing has just released a remix set culling material from last year's astoundingly good debut, Drift. That album was a game-changer for instrumental electronic music, on par with work from Aphex Twin and Burial, but warmer and driven by rap bounce. Toro Y Moi, meanwhile, wowed fans and critics alike with this year's Causers of This, a subtle combination of warped-tape warble, '80s percussion styles and dreamy vocals. (Chris Martins)

K-CI AND JOJO AT CLUB NOKIA

Brothers Cedric and Joel Hailey have been through a number of reinventions over the years. When they first took the names K-Ci and JoJo, they and the rest of Jodeci were Pentecostalists looking to break into the burgeoning R&B market. As contemporaries of Boyz II Men, the group was hardly alone, but a young Sean Combs helped them establish an identity all their own: the rough-and-rugged hypersexual bad boys of New Jack Swing. Of course, when K-Ci and JoJo broke off as a duo with 1998's Love Always, their biggest hit was a touching ballad about fatherhood called "All My Life." Their subsequent singles stuck to this format, ultimately dooming the pair to a catalog that, in hindsight, is far more adult contemporary than adult subject matter. That didn't, however, stop K-Ci from fondling himself in front of an all-ages crowd at KIIS-FM's Jingle Ball 2000. Ten years later, it's anyone's guess who'll be taking the stage on Thursday night, but a heaping helping of nostalgia is guaranteed. (Chris Martins)

DEAN WAREHAM PLAYS GALAXIE 500 AT THE TROUBADOUR

Sorry, Dean: Team Damon & Naomi 4eva. (Gustavo Turner)

Also playing Thursday: THE SOFT PACK, KURT VILE at the Echoplex; TENNIS at the Echo; KT TUNSTALL at the Music Box; GAMELAN CUDAMANI at Royce Hall.