Bumbershoot Recommendations: Sunday, Aug. 31

Canary Sing, Saul Williams

Canary Sing may be unsigned, and they may only have an EP to their name thus far, but if you've got a gig sharing the stage with esteemed spoken-word poet Saul Williams (who will also perform on Saturday with a full band), you are obviously going about things the right way. It's tough to be a lady MC in a genre that favors men who spew misogyny like a frat pledge during Rush Week, but Madlinez the Lioness (Madeleine Clifford) and Ispire (Hollis Wong-Wear) offer a refreshing and all-too-rare counterpoint to all that testosterone and gangsta posturing. For those who thought hip-hop died, this is how it's gonna be resurrected: not by little dicks spitting hateful bullshit, but by tough, razor-sharp women who rhyme about stuff that matters. And they're young: Clifford and Wong-Wear are still students at UW, where they work with Youth Speaks (which also happens to be where the women met).The next Blue Scholars? Boeing Performing Arts Stage, 1:30 p.m.SARA BRICKNER

Keyshia Cole

The rare relevant artist to star in a reality series, Keyshia Cole actually broke ratings records with her BET program The Way It Is (named after her platinum 2005 debut disc). Cole's onscreen interactions and radio interviews suggest she doesn't compromise her songwriting goals or suffer fools lightly, and while those traits might make her appear brusque at times, they're quite possibly universal among successful artists—most just aren't willing to offer unflattering glimpses unless they're desperate for sales or attention. Cole's slow-burning mid-tempo numbers, such as "Was It Worth It?" and "Didn't I Tell You," both from 2007's Just Like You, suggest, like the show, that it's dangerous to get on her bad side. For all her toughness, Cole reveals more vocal vulnerability than most active R&B singers, letting her voice hiccup and crack with emotion during her smoldering ballads. Samsung Mobile Mainstage, 2 p.m. ANDREW MILLER

Post-It Note Reading Series

This American Life, the Moth reading series, and other literary arrivals of the past decade or so have done a lot to make literature safe for hipsters by adding interstitial music of a semi-ironic variety and downmarket touches that say, "Hey, this isn't for stuffy guys who write with a quill." Very much in this tradition is "Post-It," a newish, Brooklyn-based storytelling outfit run by This American Life veteran Starlee Kine and illustrator Arthur Jones. Started as a lark at a going-away party in Chicago, the series presents writers reading short, wry narratives, with Jones's pen-and-ink illustrations on Post-It Notes projected behind them. (A hilarious example by David Rakoff—you can hardly go wrong with him—and others can be found at postitnotestories.com.) The drawings aren't in real time, but "I try to keep them really fast," says Jones. "No second drafts." In addition to Kine, authors participating at Bumbershoot will include Jonathan Goldstein—whose own radio show, Wiretap (carried on KUOW), is alternately insufferable and hilarious—and local fave Lauren Weedman, with music by Judd Greenstein. "I hesitate to call it a variety show," says Jones. "But we do like to keep things moving, as it were." The "as it were" is in inverted commas for sure. Literary Arts Stage, Leo K. Theatre, 2 p.m. MARK D. FEFER

Strange Fruit

Seattle audiences have seen their share of dancers hanging from the ceiling or dangling off the Space Needle, but Australia's Strange Fruit offers yet another perspective on gravity. In "The Field," swaying at the top of flexible poles, the performers are clappers on upside-down bells, gentle arms on patient metronomes, loopy brides and grooms on a seasick wedding cake. And as we look up at their hypnotic repetition, the ground starts to shift under our landlocked feet. Fountain Lawn, 2:45 p.m. and other times. SANDRA KURTZ

Apocalypse in Coney Island: A Bumberlesque Cabaret

If the rumors are true, this might be the burlesque show to end all burlesque shows. The edgy, racy Apocalypse in Coney Island stars the acclaimed Julie Atlas Muz, a New York dancer and performance artist who was crowned Miss Coney Island 2005 and Miss Exotic World 2006, and who was once the "head mermaid" in a 9,000-gallon saltwater aquarium at a Manhattan nightclub. Here's some high praise from New York Press: "After Muz, everyone else in burlesque must go back to the dressing room and suck cock for tips. Sorry." She'll be joined by the voluptuous Dirty Martini (named "Sexpot Sophisticate" by New York magazine), and the "irreverent, sacrilegious, foul-mouthed, and uninhibited" trapeze act the Wau Wau Sisters, who "deconstruct the humor and paradigms of country and heavy-metal music, while playing matching guitars and barely sitting on one another's shoulders." Just...wow. Boeing Performing Arts Stage, 3:30 p.m. MICHAEL ALAN GOLDBERG

Your Little Hoodrat Friends

I recently had the great pleasure of reading Jeff Parker's hilarious, oddly touching debut novel, Ovenman, which deftly captures the underground-punk '90s via the travails of When Thinfinger, a hard-partying skateboarder, wannabe punk-rock singer, and master cook-turned-reluctant manager of "the most prestigious pizza joint in Central Florida." Thinfinger's adventures in the culinary underground are more comical and way more punk than anything in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, as Parker's appealing antihero deals with the consequences of his own shortcomings and sense of economic justice (i.e., swiping food, skimming the till, and worse...). And Thinfinger's surrounded by a bizarre cast of friends and co-workers: among them, a girlfriend who sings in an atrocious pop cover band and decorates their apartment in animal skulls, and a freshly surfaced biodad who's also a pathological liar. Parker's set to read from and talk about Ovenman alongside author Joshua Furst, who'll be reading from his own punk-themed novel, The Sabotage Café. Literary Arts Stage, Leo K. Theatre, 5:30 p.m. MICHAEL ALAN GOLDBERG