Music Picks: Kaskade, Dirty Projectors, Ondatrópica

sun 7/29

Fiona Apple

PHOTO BY DAVID LYNCH

Chrysta Bell: See Thursday.

Erika Spring: See Wednesday.

Related Content

• The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Week
  July 30, 2012
• The Best Los Angeles Jazz Concerts of 2012
  December 17, 2012
• Music Picks: Rhye, Papa and Motörhead
  May 9, 2013
• Music Picks: As Blood Runs Black, Kelly Hogan, Regina Spektor
  August 9, 2012
• The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Week
  September 17, 2012

More About

• Gil Evans
• Fiona Apple
• Computer Jay
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Southern Rap

HOLLYWOOD PALLADIUM

After all the record-company meddling and controversy surrounding the different versions of her convulsively romantic 2005 album, Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple didn't even tell her label that she was recording again until she'd finished her latest, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. The local singer-pianist is apparently wiser, too, observing life from the periphery ("They throw good parties there") and allowing that "I was still a dewy petal/rather than a moribund slut." Apart from the percussive throb of "Hot Knife," where Apple nimbly exchanges a feverishly hypnotic blur of sighs with her sister, Maude Maggart, the new album is a little starker than Extraordinary Machine, with Apple dividing the lonely spaces with flecks of searchlight piano and confiding her romantic travails via a rueful wit: "I made it to a dinner date/My teardrops seasoned every plate." —Falling James

Ondatrópica

Mayan Theatre

Forget about all the Latino-themed parties you've been to in your life, because this one is guaranteed to blow them all out of the water. Colombian cumbia supergroup Ondatrópica comes to L.A. for one night only. The group, founded by Mario Galeano of Frente Cumbiero and producer Will "Quantic" Holland, brings together numerous veterans of Colombia's cumbia scene with younger cumbia all-stars such as Pedro "Ramaya" Beltran and Juan Carlos "Chongo" Puello. Opening the night will be a trio of local artists who are reinventing old-school Latin sounds: vallenato veterans Very Be Careful, merengue/cumbia champions Buyepongo and psychedelic surf-cumbia group Chicano Batman. Throw in a few DJ sets from Sloe Poke, Canyon Cody, Panamami and Ganas, and you've got the best cumbia party L.A. will ever see. —Ivan Fernandez

Leslie Stevens

ECHO

Leslie Stevens is the kind of girl Terry Allen could write a song about — or write a song with, for that matter. She has a great-grandmother who rode a wagon across Oklahoma back when that was the only way to head west and a voice that flew out of Larry McMurtryland, Texas, with songs about love and Los Angeles that are equal parts smoke and wildfire. (The Leslie and the Badgers album was actually recorded during a particularly combustible L.A. season, and the sweetest song on there is about getting hit by lightning.) She was just on Father John Misty's own countrified Sub Pop album, so right now you'll have an easy reason to feel like you've heard her before. But really she's just got the kind of voice you'll realize you've been waiting to hear since forever. —Chris Ziegler

Also playing:

ABE VIGODA, JAVELIN at the Smell; CRYSTAL STILTS, MANTLES, SEA LIONS at the Echo.

mon 7/30

Big K.R.I.T.

EL REY THEATRE

The South rises again in the form of Big K.R.I.T. ("king remember in time"), a marvelously dexterous rapper-producer from Mississippi who insists that it's "Cool 2 Be Southern" on his debut full-length CD, Live From the Underground. He has produced key tracks by Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y and collaborated with the likes of Big Boi, Chamillionaire, Joi and David Banner, but his own music is dizzyingly diverse and hard to pin down to just one style. "I Got This" recalls Big Boi's rapid-fire delivery on OutKast's "Bombs Over Baghdad," but Big K.R.I.T. segues into cool soul grooves like "Porchlight," the slinky R&B of "Hydroplaning" and the kinky funk of "What U Mean," as well as such stranger spells as the contemplative idyll "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." The former Justin Scott also can kick up a ruckus on such songs as "My Sub (Pt. 2: The Jackin')," and he trips the light fantastic on the spacey tune "LFU300MA." He throws a hell of a get-down live, the sort that's guaranteed to rouse even the most blasé city slicker. —Falling James

Josh Nelson

VITELLO'S

Like baseball, it's common in modern jazz circles to assume all the best players end up in New York. This pianist from Long Beach helps push back against this Yankee narrative, for he made it somewhere without making it where Sinatra said he needed to go. Being Natalie Cole's personal pianist certainly helps, but so does becoming one of the best jazz pianists in the world, including NYC. With an absurdly effortless virtuosity, matched by his unlimited imagination, Josh Nelson seemingly can conjure up any musical idea and execute it flawlessly with a cherry on top. Part of his monthly "Discovery Sessions" series (which includes interesting spontaneous painting by Claudia Carballada), this show features the brilliant saxophone player Ben Wendel, whom Josh really needs to convince to move back to L.A. —Gary Fukushima

Also playing:

KELLY CLARKSON at Hollywood Bowl.

tue 7/31

HOTT MT, Oh Boy Les Mecs

ECHO

L.A.'s own HOTT MT are right now riding on a benevolent wave made of equal parts mystery and hype. The latter is due to the fact that, after driving to Oklahoma on a whim and landing on the porch of Wayne Coyne (on his birthday, no less), they managed to get the head Flaming Lip to record on one of their fuzz-fueled, synth-psyched songs. The former is, well, because no one knows who the hell these brass-ballin' weirdos are. With names like Ashi Dala, Spooky Tavi and Bad Bahd, the trio cultivates an air of enigma that suits its strangely surfy experimental dance tracks. They call their music "Thai gaze," but the airy, gushing vocals of their female lead (Ashi) seem much farther flung — from another planet, perhaps? Oh Boy Les Mecs is local, too, peddling a Björk-y mix of electronics and emotion. —Chris Martins