Music Picks: Bettye LaVette, Johnny Thunders, Johnny Hallyday

How the enigmatic duo known as Hype Williams gets away with hijacking the name of a rap music video king is unclear. All the same, their music couldn't be further off from those high-gloss "pimp reflections" that the Roots parodied so perfectly in the video for their 1996 single "What They Do." Hype Williams, the band, makes the kind of hazy, abstract, sampledelic psychedelia that underground rock heads gobble up by the cassette-full, spangling their post-everything lo-fi pop with pretty vocals courtesy of singer Inga Copeland. We hear this isn't her real name. We also hear they've sold albums at Brixton markets via USB sticks jammed into MacBooks, and that producer Dean Blunt is an ex-boxer. Whether the pair hails from Lisbon, Berlin, London or Estonia (each have been posited), it's quite clear Hype Williams aren't from here — which is reason enough to catch 'em on this rare outing. —Chris Martins

Johnny Hallyday

PHOTO BY TAMZIN BROWN

LP: See Monday.

Third Grade Teacher: See Sunday.

Related Content

• Music Picks: Lord Huron, Matthewdavid, Smell 15th Anniversary Party
  January 3, 2013
• Music Picks: Foxygen, Tomahawk and Nick Cave
  February 14, 2013
• The Best Concerts to See in L.A. This Week
  April 8, 2013
• Music Picks: Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge, and Anthrax
  March 21, 2013
• The Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend
  February 15, 2013

More About

• Hype Williams
• Leonard Feather
• Lorraine Feather
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Hip-Hop and Rap

ORPHEUM

The Parisian rock star/actor Johnny Hallyday — often touted as the French answer to Elvis Presley — seemingly left the building for good when he announced his retirement from live performances in 2007. Yet the lure of the limelight is a powerful drug, and Hallyday is already back to performing following a cancer scare in 2009. It's a good thing, too, since tonight's concert will be his first appearance in Los Angeles. With gently rocking oldies like "Retiens la Nuit," he comes off at times more like a Gallic Ricky Nelson than Elvis, and there are certainly some schlocky moments scattered among the pop hits of his long career, but there's also a reassuring warmth and presence to Hallyday's vocals amid all the kitsch. —Falling James

Also playing:

MICKEY AVALON at Key Club; JOHN DAVERSA SMALL BAND at the Joint.

wed 4/25

Enter Shikari

ROXY

Apparently aiming to appeal to every single one of their young Brit peers, Enter Shikari marry metalcore muscle and post-hardcore guitar adventurism to early-hours trance/electronica hedonism and the grimy grooves of dubstep and drum 'n' bass. Oddly, far from devolving into some lowest-common-denominator mush, their music sounds vital, heartfelt and, most of all, inevitable (as in "Why didn't someone do this sooner?"). Third album A Flash Flood of Colour makes militaristic riffs and guttural Middle Earth growls the utterly logical bedfellows of post-Prodigy beats, bouncy dancehall bass lines, Streets-y spoken-word rants and sudden, massive cascades of melody. Both documenting and defying belligerent, chav-era England (ironically, a warehouse full of their CDs and DVDs was torched during last August's London riots), Enter Shikari are a wonderfully free-thinking, one-stop British invasion. —Paul Rogers

Also playing:

BEN KWELLER at El Rey Theatre; BEHEMOTH at House of Blues; MELISSA MORGAN at Areal Restaurant.

thu 2/26

E-40

KEY CLUB

He's called Charlie Hustle for his entrepreneurial streak, the Ambassador of the Bay for his commitment to the NorCal rap community and Fonzarelli because he's just that effortlessly cool. He invented the "izzle" that a certain Dogg bit, and has collaborated with everyone from Tupac to DJ Shadow to Lonely Island to Drake. And though 44 is well into retirement age for many a rapper, E-40 shows no signs of slowing his roll. He dropped three LPs on the very same late-March day this year, wowing fans and critics with both an astounding consistency of quality and his remarkable ability to innovate still after 17 albums. The name of this triptych is The Block Brochure and it finds the Ballatician as smart and swagged-out as ever, reigning over the streets with an aplomb that many emulate but precious few ever achieve. —Chris Martins

Screaming Females

CENTER FOR THE ARTS, EAGLE ROCK

They're called Screaming Females, sure, and they can scream when they need to, sure. But what's really gonna heal the sick and raise the dead here is singer Marissa Paternoster's guitar — perhaps only Greg Sage of the Wipers could also so effortlessly shred within the confines of what one might tentatively describe as a punk band. With able backing from a rhythm section that isn't afraid to follow her off a cliff, Paternoster snaps her songs in half and lets everything inside spill out everywhere, and thus scientifically demonstrates once and for all what Crazy Horse would have sounded like had they rehearsed at 924 Gilman St. An upcoming album with Albini production surely will deliver this fearlessly powerful power-trio into basement rock history. —Chris Ziegler

Also playing:

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN at L.A. Sports Arena; VETIVER at the Echoplex; DUNES, DAVID SCOTT STONE, PROTECT ME at the Smell; REZ ABASSI & DAVID BINNEY at Blue Whale; ADAM SCHROEDER at Crowne Plaza LAX.