From the Stranger Suggests:

Dirty Projectors, Little Wings

(Neumos) There's a scene in the addenda to Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in which the author, while kayaking, is overwhelmed by the sight of a killer whale leaping, Free Willy—style, out of the ocean in close proximity*. That scene is all I can think of when trying to describe the impossible ebullience with which Dirty Projectors' Dave Longstreth yelps the words "Bitte orca!" halfway through the recent album of the same name, over an avalanche of avant-Afropop guitar. The album is a revelatory balancing act, as Longstreth's confounding arrangements coalesce again and again into irresistible melodies. ERIC GRANDY

From Up & Coming:

Mark Matos & Os Beaches, the Beautiful Confusion, Yuni in Taxco

(Comet) According his band's bio, Mark Matos was raised in a large Portuguese immigrant community in the SF Bay Area, where his father and grandfather founded a marching band. After high school, high on beat literature, Matos hit the road and spent a decade "washing dishes in Alaska, cold in Boston drunk tanks, amongst slack key players in Hawaii, and crashing countless couches in Seattle's Capital Hill [sic]." He formed a band in Tucson, but decided to move back to the Bay after "doses of LSD were administered" while on tour. As one might expect from all that, Mark Matos & Os Beaches' music is ambling, easygoing, acoustic folk rock, not much prone to psychedelia, but with a little bit of the frayed, faded weariness of one who's returned from some long, strange trips. ERIC GRANDY

And there's always more in our complete music calendar listings.

*Stranger reader Josh has written in to correct my whale fail here: "I can't imagine that more than ten people will notice or remember, but the whale described in the "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making" section of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius wasn't a killer whale, but a larger unspecified variety of gray whale that lifted a kayak while breaching rather than simply stunning while leaping in the distance. Anyway, it's a great story and a nice album. Thanks for the excuse to revisit both to confirm my recollections."