PDX POP NOW!: COOL NUTZ, BLOSSOM, PHONE CALL, RAP CLASS, COCO COLUMBIA, MIC CRENSHAW, MARRIAGE + CANCER, MUSCLE & MARROW, VICE DEVICE, THE LAST ARTFUL DODGR, CATHERINE FEENY & CHRIS JOHNEDIS, BIG HAUNT, BED, NO KIND OF RIDER, LADYWOLF, DAD ROCK, DYNASTY
(Audiocinema, 226 SE Madison) See My, What a Busy Week!, and All-Ages Action!

CHARLI XCX, BLEACHERS, BØRNS
(Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside) Charli XCX is the best thing to happen to mainstream pop music since the Neptunes arrived on the scene in the '90s. The young British performer/producer is so powerful that she made the terrifying cadaver of Iggy Azalea sound palatable and turned Icona Pop, a pair of shouty Swedish ladies, into international stars by writing the song "I Love It" for them. Even better is the work she's released on her own. Her two most recent albums—2013's True Romance and 2014's Sucker—are snotty, sex-positive, feminist futuristic pop barbed with inescapable hooks, glammy electro, and Charli's irrepressible energy. ROBERT HAM

WYE OAK, LAKE
(Doug Fir, 830 E Burnside) Baltimore duo Wye Oak reached a turning point with last year's Shriek. Leading up to that album, vocalist/guitarist Jenn Wasner and drummer/keyboardist Andy Stack were living in different parts of the country, Wasner feeling dissatisfied with her abilities as a songwriter and the duo on the verge of splitting. Picking up the bass instead of the guitar, Wasner opened a new window on Wye Oak's established sound, allowing more rhythm and negative space into the band's shaggy dream-pop. Now we're more than a year removed from Shriek, which was re-released in April in a deluxe edition with a bonus EP of remixes. This short West Coast tour feels like the closing portion of a transformative cycle for Wye Oak, which has successfully evolved their folkier indie-rock sound into dancefloor-informed electropop. Now the question is: What's next? NED LANNAMANN

FUNERAL GOLD, LOVE COP, MOTOR INN, STRANGE WOOL
(Kelly's Olympian, 426 SW Washington) In a sea of vapid garage-psych where every third band is trying to imitate the Monkees and the Oneders (who were fictionalized imitations themselves), Love Cop is one of the few unique and interesting exceptions. Their recent LP, Dark Ones, was jointly released on Los Angeles label Lolipop Records and the formerly Portland-based Gnar Tapes. The 1980s-darkwave/Twin Peaks synthesizers meet frontman Chill Phill’s truly creepy, breathy vocals and slow bouncy guitar riffs that feel intentionally out of place. As is to be expected from Gnar, Love Cop plays lo-fi stoner-pop with seemingly lazy production, but is downright infectious. They do so without drifting too far into tired psychedelia that uses buzzwords like “esoteric” to describe itself. CAMERON CROWELL