The Dead Weather, Thursday, August 20: Last summer, during a Raconteurs tour with the Kills, Jack White contracted bronchitis and had the Kills’ vocalist Alison Mosshart step in and sing several of his songs for the remainder of the tour. Afterward, Mosshart and White tapped Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs and Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age for an impromptu jam session at White’s Nashville studio, where they first recorded an eerily catchy cover of Gary Numan’s Are Friends Electric?i¿½ The group’s full-length, Horehound, is bluesy, psychedelic and so hip it hurts. Here, White plays drums, leaving Mosshart’s crackling, sultry vocals to top off the band’s crunching guitars and rambling synthesizers. The results are brilliant — the Dead Weather is ten times sexier than the White Stripes or the Raconteurs ever have been. Just check out the video for the single Hang You from the Heavens. It’s shot in a gritty black and white and has each band member wearing, naturally, black leather jackets. My God, this band is cool. Paramount Theatre, 911 Pine St. 467-5510. 8 p.m. $30 adv, $33 dos. All ages. Note by ERIN THOMPSON

Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca, Thursday, Aug. 20: Salsa music works because it follows a formula, but after a couple hours, that formula can sometimes be a bit much, even for the diehards that frequent Century Ballroom’s regular salsa nights. Ricardo Lemvo’s band gives you the best of multi-worlds, mixing salsa motifs with a pan-African sound that is both varied and uniformly irresistible. Afro-Cuban connections have been explored by many, many artists in recent years, but few have done it with as smoothly ingratiating a feeling as Lemvo (whose band’s name is an Africanized misspelling of crazy machine in Spanish). He goes down easy, like much of his Putumayo-style world-music brethren, but when you’e trying to execute those steps, rough edges aren’t what you need. Dance lesson starts at 9. Century Ballroom, 915 E. Pine St., 324-7263, 9:30 p.m.-1:30 a.m. $20-$25. All ages. Note by MARK D. FEFER

Karl Blau, Friday, August 21: For an artist to whom lo-fi, indie, and freak-folk are common attributions, Karl Blau’s forthcoming album Zebra is both surprising and natural. Though he clearly continues to favor a fairly basic production philosophy, Zebra is downright slick in comparison to the general gestalt of bedroom-style recording. The album also eschews some of the freakier and folkier elements of the genre, preferring to dabble in dreamy pop, psychedelia, and surf rock, informing much of the album with influences from African music and its far flung descendents. The album opens with the chiming bells and island-lounge-chic of Waiting for the Wind, skronks out on the jazzy (and most stridently lo-fi) bluster of Crucial Contact, and surfs through the Luna-esque beach bum shimmer of Apology to Pollinateurs, which also brings in the flair of exotica via a wind instrument (kazoo? sax?) that sounds like it would be more at home in a Moroccan bazaar than in Anacortes. That’s just the first three tracks. Elsewhere are influences of bluesy Hendrix riffing mixed with proto-grunge (Flood), minimalist British Invasion flourishes (Welcome to NW), and the reverse looping of trippy spoken word piece Shovel Song. Accompanying Blau is LAKE, sweet indie popsters and K labelmates for whom Blau has produced two albums. With John Van Deusen of the Lonely Forest, Goldfinch. Q Cafe, 3223 15th Ave. W. 352-2525. 7:30 p.m. $7. All ages. Note by NICHOLAS HALL

The High Strung, Friday, August 21: The High Strung is a trio from the Greater Detroit area that plays quick, fast, straightforward, and very good rock and roll. These days, such a no-bullshit m.o. is almost revolutionary, but what’s genuinely groundbreaking about the band is its affinity for playing the quietest of sanctums: the public library. Four years ago, they were touring with the Brian Jonestown Massacre when a Detroit-area librarian/former college radio DJ named Bill Harmer invited them to play a free show for teens. They did, and then they did more like-minded gigs, eventually capturing the interest of NPR’s Ira Glass, who devoted a This American Life segment to the High Strung’s bibliophilic tendencies. Since that airing, the band has barely been able to keep up with bookish demand; that it is able to squeeze an actual nightclub gig into its schedule here is a small miracle. But if you’re over the age of 21 and live on the grittier side of 520, that’s frankly the show to catch. The band’s music was meant to be digested alongside copious amounts of cheap beer. Detroit Rock City, baby. These boys don’t let you forget it. Redmond Public Library, 15990 NE 85th St., 4 p.m., free. Sunset Tavern, 5433 Ballard Ave. NW, 784-4880. 10 p.m. $8. Note by MIKE SEELY

Seattle Grunge Band Tribute, Friday, August 21: I have to admit, my first feeling regarding tonight’s tribute show, which features the music of some of the most revered bands to come out of Seattle, was to be extremely icked out. The overtly obvious names of the bands playing had me conjuring images of dudes in just-appropriately worn flannel, bad wigs like the one Matt Dillion rocked in Singles, and glued-on goatees, trying to in vain to summon the ghost of a very dead scene. But if done correctly, without imitation of the actual artists (assuming Jerry Cantrell’s playing stance, for instance) or the artifice of costume, it may not be a total flop. By focusing solely on playing the fuck out of some really great songs instead of the aesthetics and all the other external crap that would eventually bring those bands’ time in the spotlight to an end, this whole thing could come off without a hitch. And to be fair, it takes a colossal pair of balls to cover bands whose members could show up at your gig and throw things at you. With Jar of Flies (Alice In Chains Tribute), Superunknown (Soundgarden/Temple of the Dog Tribute), and Black Sun Morning (Screaming Trees Tribute). Showbox at the Market, 1426 First Ave. 628-3151. 8 p.m. $10. All ages. Note by MA’CHELL DUMA LAVASSAR

Pissed Jeans, Friday, August 12: Comprised of four guys whose greatest accomplishment is the ability to bang out rudimentary rock music, Pissed Jeans doesn’t have a lot to say. In fact, they have nothing to say, but insist on saying it anyway. Yeah, that’s right: anti-message music. Usually, anti-anything is irritating. Anti-cool, anti-intellectualism, anti-fun…all that calculated, self-important naysaying gets wearisome. The difference here is that there’s nothing calculated about it. The songs are not designed to tell a story, or convey any real meaning beyond the immediacy of a bunch of kids who have nothing to do and nowhere to go. The funny thing is, by defining a world in which nowhereness and nothingness are increasingly the norm, gussied up as lifestyle choices like what coffee to drink and where to work out, the anti-message becomes a sort of actual message. Using stomping drums, caterwauling guitars, sinister bass, and guttural howls, the band crashes through tracks like False Jesii Part 2, Half Idiot, and Human Upskirt, relying on speed and force to quell the growing sense of nothingness. Covering the other side of boredom, the band revels in the blind stumble of meandering tracks like Request for Masseuse, Dominate Yourself, and Goodbye (Hair). The music, too, carries a secret, perhaps half-intended message. Underneath and in-between all the noise are moments of subtle grace and beauty. Not bad for a bunch of ham-fisted rockers with nothing to say. With Suck Machine. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St. 324-8000. 9 p.m. $8 adv, $10 dos. Note by NICHOLAS HALL

Crocodiles, Saturday, August 22: Being in a tribute band is like being a porn star: Once you get famous for doing it, that’s it; sure, you can try to cross over and make original music, but no one will take you seriously and you’ll always be remembered as that dude who was John Bonham in Led Zepagain or whatever. Now, while there’s little wiggle room in porn — either you fuck on camera or you don’t — there’s loads of leeway for the tribute-band-inclined who want to be in an actual real band. You can blatantly rip off the same sounds, moods, melodies, lyrical ideas, production style — all of it — from the band you love. All you have to do is write some new words, change the order of the chords ever so slightly, slap some different song titles on your tunes, and — voila! — you’re an original band! Which brings us, finally, to San Diego’s Crocodiles. The band, its fans, its members’ families, friends, and significant others, and its record label can protest all they like, but Crocodiles sound exactly like the Jesus and Mary Chain. Same psych-reverb noise-pop, same barbed guitars, same quasi-malevolent vocals, same mechanized beats, same goddamn everything. By all rights, they should be billed as Psychocandy: The Jesus and Mary Chain Tribute Band, but they’re not. They’re Crocodiles. So, yes, no tribute-band/porn-star stigma for them. Shrewd move. But we know what you’re really about, Crocodiles. With Pens, Graffiti Island. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St. 324-8000. 9 p.m. $10. Note by MICHAEL ALAN GOLDBERG

Elvis Costello & the Sugarcanes, Sunday, August 23: He was obsessed with traditional country music before he was known as Elvis Costello. In the mid-’70s, young Declan MacManus discovered the genre indirectly, through his interest in seminal country/bluegrass-influenced groups like the Byrds, the Band, and yes, even the Grateful Dead. The English pub rock he later co-opted and infused with his unique brand of vitriol had its roots in country as well. Elvis was writing credible country tunes as early as 1978’s Stranger in the House and traveled to Nashville to record an entire album of covers, 1981’s Almost Blue. Nearly three decades later, he returned, teaming up with longtime collaborator T Bone Burnett for Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, a 13-track collection of acoustic songs released in June that will make up the bulk of tonight’s set. With backing from the Sugarcanes, a string band comprised of Nashville’s top veteran session men, the stripped-down, rootsy music includes numbers written with and for Loretta Lynn, two originally written for Johnny Cash, and brings to mind 1986’s King of America, also produced by Burnett. If you go, don’t expect anything like the Attractions or the Imposters — it’s not supposed to rock. And wish Elvis a happy birthday; the onetime angry young man turns 55 two days after this show. Chateau Ste. Michelle, 14111 NE 145th St., Woodinville. 425-415-3300. 7 p.m. $40 GA/$65 res. All ages. Note by MICHAEL MAHONEY

Existereo, Sunday, August 23: The L.A.-based Existereo has performed with a bunch of groups, including 2Mex and the Shapeshifters, and his experience, both in terms of years in the game and number of collaborations (being in a group teaches you how to edit), shows in his cyanide-laced jokes. Existereo blends the rebellious juvenilia of Sage Francis with his own sorta class clown-ish vibe. It’s hard to take what he says that seriously, but his talent is apparent: He actually enjoys both writing and rapping. Veteran underground hitmaker Deeske knows how to inject wiggly lines and ragged edges into the beats on Existereo’s last disc, 2007’s Hopeless Crooks with Open Books, to complement the MC’s weird predilections. There’s even a Northwest connection: Barfly of Oldominion guests on Ol’ Fashion Hard Livin. With Tullie the Rapper, Rheteric Ramirez, JFK, DJ WD4D. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St. 324-8000. 9 p.m. $6 adv., $8 dos. Note by KEVIN CAPP

fun., Tuesday, Aug. 25: Supergroups seem back in vogue these days, from Tinted Windows to the Dead Weather to Them Crooked Vultures. Add fun. to that list. Despite the lower-case lettering, the trio of Nate Ruess (ex-The Format), Andrew Dost (ex-Anathallo), and Jack Antonoff (Steel Train) projects a huge sound on Aim And Ignite, its over-the-top debut. Produced by Red Kross’s Steven McDonald, the album explodes with hooky, harmony-happy power-pop in the vein of the Raspberries, Big Star, and Badfinger. The robust tunes come front-loaded with piano, horn and string sections, gospel-style backup singers, and other gaudy adornments to match Ruess’s theatrical singing, pitched between Broadway and Queen. There are highlights galore, from the Weezer-indebted midsection of opener Be Calm to the smoldering beauty of The Gambler. As power-pop goes, you can’t get much more reverent than a song like All The Pretty Girls, and fun. reveal the true extent of their bombast on the nearly eight-minute finale, Take Your Time (Coming Home). It’s a blast. With Hellogoodbye, Limbeck, My Favorite Highway. Chop Suey, 1325 E. Madison St., 324-8005. 6 p.m. $15 adv. All ages. Note by DOUG WALLEN

New Orleans trumpeter Terence Blanchard