Music Picks: Rusko, HARD Summer, SMOD

Buddy Guy, Jonny Lang

GREEK THEATRE

PHOTO BY FOUAD ALLAOUI

SMOD: See Saturday.

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• Jonny Lang
• Nicki Minaj
• Juicy J
• Hip-Hop and Rap
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The blues are supposed to hurt. They're bloody and messy, unpredictable and feral like a cornered animal. Tonight's co-headliner, Jonny Lang, is an impressively deft and nimble guitarist, but his solos don't sting like the legendary Buddy Guy's. That's not Lang's fault, not really, as no one can deliver the blues with the same supreme menace and caustic intensity as Guy. If anyone has a tale worth telling, it's Guy, who backed Muddy Waters in the '60s and tried unsuccessfully to restrain his notoriously explosive style while toiling at Chess Records before finding success as a solo guitar hero. He has a new book, When I Left Home: My Story, but Guy tells his story just as eloquently and concisely every time he bends the strings and makes his guitar cry. —Falling James

Also playing:

SEAL, MACY GRAY at Nokia Theatre; BEAR IN HEAVEN at the Echoplex.

wed 8/8

Nicki Minaj

NOKIA THEATRE

Nicki Minaj has come so thoroughly to dominate pop culture over the last three years that it's hard to believe the singer-rapper's current headlining tour is her first. (Also curious — and revealing about today's imperiled music biz — is that she's playing the midsized Nokia as opposed to Staples Center.) What might benefit Minaj about that perceived delay is the time she's had to hone her act, not to mention the superstar temerity she exercised in June, when she bailed on Hot 97's Summer Jam after one of that New York radio giant's DJs criticized her hit "Starships." Expect to hear that tune tonight, along with cuts from Minaj's mixtapes and her two studio albums. And expect a pleasant evening above all: Last month The New York Times called the tour's first show "outrageously joyful." —Mikael Wood

Woods, Peaking Lights

ECHO

It's hard to do new folk without sounding beholden to past masters, but Brooklyn's Woods have done just that, making lo-fi jangle-pop infused with an inimitable weirdness that rarely, if ever, puts off. The band's core is held down by singer-guitarist Jeremy Earl and tape manipulator G. Lucas Crane. While the former is responsible for Woods' bucolic, candied melodies and his own warm vocal warblings, Crane adds vital unpredictability and the odd effects that give the songs so much character. The group's most recent album is 2011's Sun and Shade, whose title rightly illustrates the feel of the project. Up first is Peaking Lights, a husband-and-wife duo combining all manner of trippy styles — tropical pop, Jamaican dub, acid folk, bizarre beats — in order to create a cosmic, psychedelic slop that's worth basking in for a good while. —Chris Martins

Meek Mill, Rockie Fresh

HOUSE OF BLUES

Hip-hop imprints are the music business's version of the Brady Bunch. And sitting atop the blinged-out clan is the father figure — aka the kingpin rapper looking to pimp out his offspring for a supporting (and ideally one day starring) role in the rap game's version of a variety show. These days, flexing the Brady muscle bigger than most is Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group. Two MCs — Meek Mill, the Philadelphia MC behind the acclaimed Dreamchasers mixtape series, whose debut album, Dreams & Nightmares, drops in late August, and Rockie Fresh, a Chi-town spitter and MMG's latest signee — are hitting the road in brotherly fashion to show what this Rozay-sippin', happy-go-lucky clan has to offer. —Dan Hyman

Also playing:

WINO, CONNY OCHAS at the Satellite; MIKE ANDREWS at Bootleg Bar; PITBULL at Gibson Amphitheatre.

thu 8/9

Shovels and Rope

HOTEL CAFÉ

If the name Shovels and Rope conjures up hard-bitten roots music, you're on the right track, but this duo is much more. Now based in Charleston, S.C., Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst were both established artists when they met: Trent was in the Colorado-based indie rock band called the Films, and both have released solo albums. Together with a love of murder ballads, they created a sound that can veer off into the horn-driven menace of "Tickin' Bomb" and to the haunting waltz of "Carnival" from their brand-spanking-new sophomore album, O' Be Joyful. It's a doozy of a record. "Kembra" is a 2½- minute hootenanny that has something to do with chicken, fish and grits. Hearst's voice has a Janis-y, Wanda Jackson–y sandpapered wail to it, and Trent's is more dreamy. Onstage, they trade off on guitar, "junkyard" drum kit, harmonica, keys and other instruments, all adding up to a helluva beautiful racket. —Libby Molyneaux

Also playing:

TOTALLY ENORMOUS EXTINCT DINOSAURS at the Echoplex; IRON MAIDEN, COHEED AND CAMBRIA at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre; CHICANO BATMAN at Hammer Museum; THE ENTRANCE BAND at the Satellite; THE WESTERN CANON at Pershing Square; JEFFERTITTI'S NILE at the Virgil.