Last year's inaugural Summer Happenings series at the Broad offered a provocative series of four nighttime events combining live music, DJs, dance, art installations and performance art. After a successful first season, the downtown museum is bringing Summer Happenings back — and this year's lineup is even more impressive than the first, including performances by Xiu Xiu, Devendra Banhart, Miho Hatori, A Place to Bury Strangers and Zebra Katz among others.

As with last year's series, each Summer Happenings event will be tied to a theme, often connected to an ongoing exhibit at the museum. The series begins June 24 with “Warhol Icon,” inspired by Nico, the German singer and actress best-known for her collaborations with Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground, and will feature performances by Jenny Hval, Kembra Pfahler, Rose McDowall, Tiny Vipers, Geneva Jacuzzi and legendary genderqueer icon Vaginal Davis. On July 29, the theme will be “Strange Forest,” based on the contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, with performances by Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori, Devendra Banhart and ex-Ponytail guitarist Dustin Wong among others.

Perhaps this year's most intriguing event is “Oracle” on Aug. 24, an evening “inspired by themes of globalization, surveillance and the underlying systems and forces at work in the world” put together by guest curators Ron Athey and Afropunk Festival co-founder James Spooner. Noise rockers Xiu Xiu and A Place to Bury Strangers and performance artists Linda Mary Montano and Keijaun Thomas will perform, and there will be a “xenolalia” (speaking in tongues) room with more music and performance poetry.

Summer Happenings 2017 concludes on Sept. 23 with an evening devoted to New York artist Jean Michel Basquiat, also curated by Spooner and featuring Zebra Katz, Downtown Boys, DJs Rashida and Michael Stock and the “dance-bombs” of Mecca V A, The MOVEMENT movement and Jay Carlon.

Tickets for all Summer Happenings events are $25 and go on sale tomorrow, Wednesday, May 24 at Noon PDT at www.thebroad.org.

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