Music Picks: Regina Carter, Madness, Melvins, Grace Woodroofe

A$AP Rocky

GLASS HOUSE (POMONA)

PHOTO BY TIMOTHY NORRIS

Gotye: See Thursday.

Related Content

• S.S. Coachella Gossip: We Stalk Jarvis Cocker
  December 19, 2012
• Music Picks: As Blood Runs Black, Kelly Hogan, Regina Spektor
  August 9, 2012
• Music Picks: Aesop Rock, Azealia Banks, Toots & the Maytals
  July 12, 2012
• The Best Concerts to See In L.A. This Week
  April 1, 2013
• Update: Times Story on Coachella 2013 Was Fabricated, Says Writer
  January 22, 2013

More About

• Regina Carter
• Miike Snow
• Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival
• Ska
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media

Only a half-dozen or so months after buzzing online, A$AP Rocky, the Harlem-born, Houston-minded leader of the A$AP Mob, signed a rumored $3 million deal for him and his crew in September. Rocky's syrup-softened slur and languorous, eyelid-lowering mixtapes Deep Purple and LiveLoveA$AP owe more to Texas' chopped and screwed movement than his namesake, New York's legendarily unsmiling rapper Rakim. Opening for Drake recently at USC's Galen Center, his crew played a paint-by-the-numbers set; his show at SXSW, however, was more rambunctious. We bet the tone of tonight's show, squeezed in between his Coachella appearances, will lean toward the latter. —Rebecca Haithcoat

Miike Snow

EL REY THEATRE

There are certainly things to find fault with in the work of Miike Snow, the electro-leaning Swedish indie-pop trio composed of singer Andrew Wyatt and beat-making savants Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnburg (better known as dance-pop production duo Bloodshy & Avant, the brains behind Britney Spears' "Toxic"). There's Wyatt's voice, what with its nasally, Damon Albarn–without-the-distinguished-nuance tone. Lyrically, there's also much to be desired. But as befits their backgrounds, Wyatt has also logged production time. Miike Snow do compose tight, aurally appetizing tracks. "God Help This Divorce," an elegantly manicured cut on their latest full-length, Happy to You, is just one of many approaching the audible charm of "Animal," the breakout single from their 2010 eponymous debut. —Dan Hyman

Kasabian

MUSIC BOX

The British quartet has been absent from our shores for the last five years. Its most recent album, Velociraptor!, wasn't even released domestically. That fact hasn't made a huge difference in Kasabian's nonexistent impact on Americans whose memories would have to be jogged to recall vaguely the group's sync-friendly, chase scene–ready 2005 single, "Clubfoot." Kasabian are known for their infusion of electronic instrumentation into dance-rock song structures. Velociraptor!, however, is Kasabian's least adventurous album, sounding like it needs to be shaken awake every two minutes or so. Kasabian's live shows, on the other hand, have no need for a jump-start. The group brings its full-bodied, stimulating live show to L.A. in between Coachella appearances. —Lily Moayeri

Also playing

COUNTING CROWS at Club Nokia; ELVIS COSTELLO at the Wiltern; KIMBRA at Troubadour.

wed 4/18

Guitar Wolf

THE SATELLITE

A Guitar Wolf concert isn't a show so much as it is a sonic evisceration. Led by Seiji (aka Guitar Wolf), the Japanese trio's amps (and lungs) howl and screech with an overload of distortion and all-around noise. You could call their music punk or garage, but it's actually much wilder and sloppier than that. There's more spectacle than melody, as Seiji throws himself around the stage like a rag doll, his microphone spewing fire and his guitar spitting sparks (sometimes literally). Bassist Hideaki Sekiguchi died from a heart attack in 2005, but the group has a new "Bass Wolf," aka U.G., who supplies the necessary low-end mayhem. For all of their noise and confusion, Guitar Wolf also possess a lot of style and even have their own fashion line. —Falling James

Black Angels, Moon Duo

MUSIC BOX

Moon Duo's Ripley Johnson — if he's still got the beard and the hair — looks like a young Roky Erickson and sounds like a guy who knows he looks like a young Roky Erickson. His other band, Wooden Shjips, does a bristly, feral kind of psychedelia like the Stooges, Spacemen 3 and Japan's legendary mind-debriders Les Rallize Dénudés, while this band, Moon Duo, does a zoney-droney kind of psychedelia like Suicide, Sonic Boom and the (the early, angry) Jesus and Mary Chain. Dream to this one, dissolve to the other, or do both to both. Austin's Black Angels backed Roky for probably his most daring set in recent memory and deliver reverb-heavy rock & roll in the most honorable Old Weird Texas tradition. As a wise man once told Dick Clark when he asked who was the head of his band: "We're all heads in this band, Dick." —Chris Ziegler

Also playing

TECH N9NE at House of Blues; WILD BEASTS, SUPERHUMANOIDS at the Echo; TURISAS at Key Club.

thu 4/19

Pulp

FOX THEATER (POMONA)

Yes, Pulp are playing Coachella, where frontman Jarvis Cocker is sure to unload some delightfully withering commentary on the other acts sharing the bill this year. (Prepare yourself, Afrojack.) But if any band at the megafestival is worth seeing on its own, surely it's this reunited Britpop outfit, last heard from on record in 2001 with the typically incisive We Love Life. Pulp famously shifted shape throughout the course of their original run, so it's hard to say definitively what the band's music will sound like here or, indeed, even to say what exactly Cocker and his mates will play, other than "Common People," Pulp's classic 1995 meditation on the chimera of noble savagery. Whatever they decide, expect it to be very, very good. —Mikael Wood

Gotye

NOKIA THEATRE

Call it the xylophone's big comeback. Thanks to the chart-climbing success of Gotye's hit single "Somebody That I Used to Know" and, more specifically, the haunting xylo loop that underpins its melody, Belgian-born, Australian-raised singer-songwriter Wally de Backer has given this oft-perceived-to-be-elementary instrument its due. One imagines, though, it was all part of the plan: Gotye, whose breakout album, Making Mirrors, is held together by oddball instrumentation and countless samples, is a self-proclaimed audiophile. The song "Eyes Wide Open" even includes a sample from a musical fence located in the Australian outback. Gotye may borrow, but he also gives back. The musician, who gigs on SNL the weekend before his Los Angeles performance, has brought along Kimbra, the New Zealand–bred vocalist featured on his hit single, for his stateside jaunt. —Dan Hyman

Also playing

WILD FLAG at El Rey Theatre; MANA at Staples Center; FRANKIE ROSE, DIVE (BEACH FOSSILS), TWERP at the Satellite; JUDY WEXLER at Vitello's; SEOUL PHILHARMONIC at Walt Disney Concert Hall.