The LA Setlist: Sep. 23-29, 2024

Indian rapper/singer/songwriter Abhi the Nomad earned his stage name and shaped his sound globetrotting as the son of a diplomat and, in adulthood, residing in both the US and Europe. Now based stateside, his poppy, charmingly quirky alt hip-hop is a collision of the escapist exotica of his background and the highly relatable everyday of his present, for fans of N.E.R.D., Beck and the like. More than half of the songs in AtR’s four-album, six-EP discography are collabs, including two EPs with TikTok viral producer Kato On The Track, the just-released Icarus EP alongside Rhode Island rapper Khary, and tracks with Sherm, Foster Cazz, and Harrison Sands. Abhi the Nomad’s hard-to-resist bops keep coming, with self-produced single “The Bends,” which dropped in April (no, not a Radiohead cover), topping an impossibly funky bassline and head-bobbing off-beat guitar with clever and contemplative yet carefree, wonderfully rhythmic melody.

Tickets to the all-ages show at AXS.

Pittsburgh-raised, Atlanta-based Kelsey Hillock, aka KELS, defies her svelte stature with a big-voiced, jazz-rooted neo-soul signature that earns frequent comparisons to Amy Winehouse. Sultry and slinky, evoking late nights and classy clubs, she’s perfectly suited to the chill, music-first vibe of the Moroccan Lounge (sibling venue to DTLA's Teragram Ballroom). Alongside her arresting, self-penned original material, KELS has accumulated a serious catalog of online covers including, in the past year alone, songs by Adele, Shaboozey, Billie Eilish, Sexyy Red, and Lauryn Hill, as well as the aforementioned Winehouse. Her modulating, old-soul timbre graces all she touches, but KEL’s future is her own compositions, and it’s a mystery why tracks like last year’s “We Tried” and “Just In Love” languish with low-four-figure YouTube views. But KELS’ debut national tour last year – an eight-month fan-funded epic –, this 25-date run, and her imminent debut album will surely dent this incongruous obscurity.

Tickets to the 18+ show at AXS.

On Empress Of’s fourth album, For Your Consideration, it feels like the programmed instrumentation is not only complimented by her acrobatically tremulous voice but also conducted by it. The single-minded Honduran American singer-songwriter born Lorely Rodriguez summons such rhythmic and dynamic vocals across its 11 tracks that the accompaniment is truly just that. Released in May, this heartbreaking yet empowering bilingual collection dances through (and away) the pain, with ethereal contemplations, semi-exotic beats, and lurking backups reassuring and cajoling the fluttering top lines. For Your Consideration is the LA artist’s first release on her Major Arcana label and oozes independent spirit all around, replete with post-breakup sexual adventure and bold dancefloor bodytalk. On many levels a more sultry evolution of Empress Of’s original teen inspiration, Björk, For Your Consideration delivers enough production polish for even the swankiest of clubs while retaining sufficient bedroom/laptop eccentric charms for introverted headphone pleasures.

Tickets to the all-ages show at Dice.

Is says a lot that on the back of their sole album, last year’s 0.1 Flaws and All, South Korea’s Wave to Earth are headlining two nights at the 3,000-capacity Wiltern. A Top 20 hit in their native land, 0.1 Flaws and All is a rare double album that, at 53 minutes, doesn’t overstay its welcome. Releasing a 14-track record as their debut was a bold move for the trio, but the unusually coherent collection is a seamless slab of mesmerizing, slightly psychedelic and R&B-inflected sophisticated pop that’s easy to stick on in the background as much for mood as for conscious listening. Divided into “bright” and “jazz” sides, it offers something for multiple frames of mind, with gauzy contemplation and Kim Daniel’s nuanced, sometimes soaring vocals its constants. With the Wiltern being situated on the edge of LA’s Koreatown, expect a rapturous welcome for these rapidly rising homeland heroes. Tickets at Live Nation.

Canadian rock fans might be surprised to find compatriots The Sheepdogs playing the 450-capacity Lodge Room in hip Highland Park. You see, back home, the Saskatoon fivesome are multi Juno Award winners who had a number one album with their 2012 eponymous major label debut. Although from up north, The Sheepdogs have a bluesy Southern rock sound that falls, according to frontman and primary songsmith Ewan Currie, somewhere between Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Their unpretentious throwback fare is also indebted to Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Allman Brothers Band, and Stevie Wonder but, unlike some of their fellow Western shirt-wearing classic rock revivalists, Currie & co. don’t take themselves too seriously and are instead aiming for pure good-time rock ‘n’ roll. The Sheepdogs marked their 20th anniversary with the surprise Paradise Alone EP last month, a collection that captures their barroom boogie swagger at its infectious best.

Like all music subgenres, death metal – itself an extreme, growl-voiced/blast-beated heavy metal mutation – has over time splintered into sub-subgenres including “technical death,” “melodic death,” and “death-doom.” So, over the past five years New York’s Undeath have prided themselves on bringing back and staying true to old-school death metal à la Cannibal Corpse and Carcass, finding sufficient resonance to land a deal with scene flagbearers Prosthetic Records and chart placements in both the U.S. and Canada. Following their 2022 breakout second album It’s Time … To Rise from the Grave, the quintet is promising that follow-up More Insane, due next month, will be their “biggest, baddest, nastiest” release yet. In an era when reinvention between albums is almost universally praised, there’s something heartily refreshing about a band like Undead that unabashedly offer fans comforting predictability and delivery of expectation (the similarly brutal Nails took the same approach with last month’s comeback “Every Bridge Burning” opus).

Tickets to the all-ages show at Live Nation.

As Bea & Her Business, precocious Brit teen Bea Taylor has bottled the adolescent experience with such rare, playful zest that in just the past 18 months she’s exploded worldwide with already over 50 million streams for last November’s Introverted Extrovert EP. The turbulent teenage tales of self-discovery continued with June’s aptly-titled Me vs. Me EP – more Lily Allen-indebted tunefulness and Dua Lipa sass that somehow simultaneously channels emotional intimacy and carefree, single-life fun. For those unfamiliar, the Me vs. Me single “WOW!” is a hard-to-resist gateway to the rollercoaster world of B&HB; a winking, grinning ode to caving in to your inner romantic in the opiate rush of infatuation. Defying her tender years and astonishing career arc, Bea Taylor is already an experienced and confident live performer with assertive yet quivering vocal chops that swell into their own on slower tracks like the anthemic “Born to be Alive.”

Tickets to the all-ages show at Ticketmaster.

Guitarist Johnny Marr’s repeated refusals to reform The Smiths, despite allegedly super-lucrative offers and the willingness of his former bandmate Morrissey, has only earned him additional love and respect from both his own fans and indie purists in general. But it’s his huge contribution to making The Smiths so special in the first place – those cascading, proudly non-rock jangly arpeggios, with restless chord changes measured in beats rather than bars – and indelible influence on guitarists ever since that makes him matter. Indeed, four of the six stringers who defined the immediately post-smiths Britpop genre – Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, The Stone Roses’ John Squire, Graham Coxon of Blur, and Suede’s Bernard Butler – are all ardent Marr-olites. At face value, Marr’s sprawling, 73-minute fourth solo album, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, could come across as a legit legend getting self-indulgent, but instead finds him as purposeful and pure as ever, and even more soulful.

Tickets at Ticketmaster.

Completing an overload of Britpop elder statesmen this week at The Orpheum, following Johnny Marr’s performances over the previous two nights, are twin evenings with The Modfather, Paul Weller. While much of Weller’s predominantly male stateside audience still dates back to brilliant punk/mod trio The Jam (1972-1982) and, to a lesser extent, the more artsy and soulful Style Council, he boasts a nearly 35-year, 17-album solo career that has maintained revered, arena-level UK status ever since. The very Englishness (or, in the case of the Style Council, European-ness) of both his sonic and lyrical content – arguably the missing link between The Who/Beatles and Oasis/Blur – has at once made him a cult figure stateside and also apparently limited his commercial ceiling here. But recent Oasis reunion mania has offered reminders of Weller’s influence: he appears on that band’s era anthem “Champagne Supernova,” has frequently collabed with guitarist Noel Gallagher, and inspired the often lampooned “Weller haircuts” beloved of Oasis fans.

Tickets at Ticketmaster.

Ironically, Mitski’s struggle with becoming a music industry “product” only seems to have inflamed the almost Taylor Swift-level, borderline cultish devotion of her fanbase. Someone whose first two albums were college projects a dozen years ago, the breakout mainstream success of 2018’s Be the Cowboy collection led the Japanese American singer-songwriter to quit social media and then music itself the following year. To the relief of millions, she returned with 2022’s Laurel Hell and last year’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, the latter a hugely acclaimed Americana album that made multiple year-end lists and hit number 12 on the Billboard 200. Candid and catchy yet unpredictable, Mitski gives voice to our universal inner scream, with live shows that morph her wonderfully weird pop into performance art. The world needs more artists like Mitski and while her Hollywood Bowl-level acceptance is heartening, let’s just hope her unlikely stardom doesn’t also drive her away for good.