SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR

>>> Friday, May 27

Some performers, like Jarvis Cocker or Prince, are able to make their music purely, simply, uncomfortably about sex without it being embarrassing or seeming insincere. Their songs are chicken fights, bold stare-downs, at the end of which we always blink. There's always going to be something pretty thrilling about a singer doing away with juvenile innuendo and going straight for the jugular. Sugar Sugar Sugar absolutely ooze sex. The band's music is guttural, sometimes kind of violent and very dirty. Ranging from sleazy, harmonica-driven punk-blues to something that wouldn't sound out of place on an early Kinks album, Sugar Sugar Sugar comes across like something pretty unique in these parts: a band that sounds just as at home playing in a dive as it would on a festival mainstage. - Volcano Staff

[The New Frontier Lounge, with Lozen, Special Guests, 9:30 p.m., cover TBA, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]

PRINCEST

>>> Saturday, May 28

The songs on Princest's EP are foreboding, lo-fi post-hardcore rock that hint at fearsome live performances just out of range of the recording equipment's ability to capture. Slinking bass lines provide a wobbly platform upon which all of the songs shakily stand. Frontman Ben Farr's vocals are pitched halfway between terrifying and terrified - even when he swallows the mic and starts screaming, there's something in his voice that sounds as wounded as it is defiant. The riffs, when they come, are heavy and plodding, a trudging march to inspire dangerous headbanging. I've seen sinkholes of mosh pits open in the floor at Northern, which this show (also featuring Hot Rush and Ketamine Fight Club) definitely seems determined to inspire. Try your best to stay on your feet. - Rev. Adam McKinney

[Northern, with Hot Rush, Ketamine Fight Club, 9 p.m., $5, 321 Fourth Ave., Olympia, northernolympia.org]

ELK & BOAR

>>> Saturday, May 28

When the Volcano's resident Dungeons and Dragons expert, Joe Izenman, says something, I tend to listen. (Especially when he's talking about beards or mustaches, but that's beside the point ... or is it?) So, when Izenman said on SPEW a few months back, "I first saw Travis Barker leading blues outfit the Black Sails, but he's really found his niche partnered with the siren voice of Kirsten Wenlock," I knew he meant business. The group Izenman was referring to was Elk & Boar; at the time the duo had just performed in Tacoma at the Peabody Waldorf. Saturday, Elk & Boar are back, playing a Warehouse-produced free show at O'Malley's with Hurtbird and Brothers Young. There's no doubt this will be one of the best, hippest shows of the weekend. Brush your beard and come on out. - Matt Driscoll

[O'Malley's Irish Pub, with Hurtbird, Brothers Young, 8:30 p.m., no cover, 2403 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.627.9403]

MAL DE MER

>>> Saturday, May 28

Mal De Mar make absurdly catchy indie pop, which, on Saturday, will be served along with the considerably more caustic Pioneers West and the experimental hard rock of Musuji. It'll be a strange grouping, to be sure, but a bill so intriguing in its strangeness that one should hardly be blamed for failing to resist it. Mal De Mar, alone, shouldn't be missed. Their "Bubble Bobble," for example, is packed tight to bursting with neat hooks and goodwill, complete with an energetically falsetto chorus. This is the kind of music to send your head floating up into the cloudless sky of these increasingly warm Washington days. Pioneers West and Musuji will be there to usher you back into the sure-to-return rain and gloom to which we've grown far too accustomed. - Rev. AM

[The New Frontier Lounge, with Pioneers West, Musuji, 9 p.m., cover TBA, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]