Twenty-two-year-old Wisconsinite Nika Roza Danilova is an operatically trained singer who, these days, goes by the purposefully peculiar stage name Zola Jesus. Danilovawho also performed with the synth-punk outfit Former Ghosts has a stunning, primative voice that bespeaks volumes of maturity and realismshes already released three full-lengths (2009’s New Amsterdam and The Spoils, last years Stridulum II) and a smattering of EPs. Zola Jesus’ songs are profound and hugely dramatic (check out the gothic romance of Poor Animal or her stentorian cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love”), but Danilova has the authority as a performer to carry them off. You might be looking at America’s own Björk. With Naked on the Vague, Crypts. ERIN K. THOMPSON
Wed., May 4, 8 p.m., 2011
