In West Seattle, Über Alles:

West Seattle Summer Fest: Mudhoney, Mark Pickerel and His Praying Hands, more

(West Seattle Junction) This year, the West Seattle Summer Fest will celebrate its 27th year with two stages of music, hundreds of artists, food, an old-school video-game gallery, skate demos, a Rat City Rollergirls dunk tank, and more.

What makes West Seattle Summer Fest so great is that it really does feel like a neighborhood celebration.

"It's all about the community," says festival director Oliver Little. "Everything we plan is based on what West Seattle residents say they'd like to see. Our primary goal is to show off the neighborhood and get people out on the street together. Musicians and artists seem to dig this message and think of this as 'their' neighborhood festival. It's pretty incredible how many Seattle musicians live in the West Seattle area and are willing to play on the street."

In Data Breaker:

Bonkers!: Wisp, Relcad, the Naturebot vs. MC Anton Bomb, Dopelabs

(Re-bar) New York's Wisp (Reid Dunn) headlines this month's event. He's been making strangely contoured waves in electronic music's IDM sector with his most recent full-length, The Shimmering Hour, on England's seminal Rephlex Records (he's also released on Sublight and Terminal Dusk). The Shimmering Hour sounds like an archetypal Rephlex effort; in fact, some thought Dunn was behind the Tuss, a once-mysterious Aphex Twin production that caused a stir in 2007.

Also in Up & Coming:

Tears for Fears

(Chateau Ste. Michelle) Wrapping the primal-therapy indulgences of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band in secretary-pleasing synth-pop tunes, Tears for Fears followed their wounded inner children to freakish international success in the '80s. From debut The Hurting to the Sybil-inspired Songs from the Big Chair to the stupidly eternal "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had," Tears for Fears have comported themselves like a pair of Morrisseys with no sense of humor and endless therapy funds. Are Tears for Fears emo's unsung forefathers? Who knows, but it's only fitting they're playing the Chateau Ste. Michelle W(h)inery. DAVID SCHMADER

Schoolyard Heroes, the Pharmacy, the Whore Moans, Black Houses, Keg

(Vera) Since leaving Seattle for New Orleans last year, the charmingly messy psych-pop-punk band the Pharmacy have, as they usually do, gotten into some shenanigans (this is a band that has been arrested, broken down and stranded, and injured on tour multiple times). For example: Singer Scott Yoder is still recovering from hand surgery. "I severed the tendon in my pinkie while butchering swine at my job," he says. "I had surgery just a couple weeks ago to harvest tendon from my wrist. It was an eight-hour procedure!" Even so, the Pharmacy are not only ready to play a couple shows while in town, but they'll also be recording some new material with Calvin Havnaer of the Raggedy Anns. Cuff 'em, cut 'em, move 'em across the country—the Pharmacy will never stop. MEGAN SELING

Pterodactyl, Man Party

(Comet) Brooklyn's Pterodactyl (they must be like the 37th indie-rock band with that name, if maybe the first to break into mass subcultural consciousness) peddle a raucous version of the kind of noisy neo-psychedelia that has lately been made into big things by the likes of Animal Collective and, say, Yeasayer. Pterodactyl play guitars, bass, and drums, but they wring out of those standard instruments a loose-limbed, untethered racket that is far from ordinary; all four guys sing, but it's not folksy harmony as often as it is wildly overlapping, echoing outbursts. Nothing from their wide-ranging sophomore album, Worldwild, immediately lodges itself in my brain, but repeat listens are proving the album to be a subtly insistent suite of songs. ERIC GRANDY

The Tallboys, Slimpickins

(Tractor) I haven't heard the newest Tallboys album, but I can tell you this: The Tallboys are the best old-timey/bluegrass/square-dance band in all of Seattle. Maybe that proclamation doesn't mean as much in these post—O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack-madness days; maybe way back at the turn of the millennium, they'd get the respect they deserve from fickle scenesters. But even without the faddish followers, the Tallboys are one of the hardest-working bands in Seattle, and they consistently put on a great show. Every other band in town would kill to entertain as often and as skillfully as these guys. Watch and learn, and they'll show you how to hootenanny like there's no tomorrow. PAUL CONSTANT

For more live music and shows, check our searchable online calendar.