By Robert Ham. [Twitter @bob_ham]
Nomo @ Sunday @ Doug Fir Lounge
While the music writers and critics of the world try to parse out whether Vampire Weekend is honest in their approach to African pop, you should busy yourself with this fine group of gents from Michigan. Formed in the early part of the past decade, this sextet plays some of the best Fela Kuti-inspired Afrobeat you’re likely to find played by American natives. While they bring their upbringings as jazz and rock players into the mix, the heart of the group beats with the chugging, swaying rhythms of their plentiful percussion section and the buoyant back and forth of their horn section.

DJ Krush - Saturday @ Rotture
He touts himself on his MySpace page (or at least someone involved with his publicity does) as “one of the best hip-hop DJs”. Yet, one quick spin through his weighty discography and you’ll likely be saying the same thing. His work on the wheels of steel and as a producer have helped bring in such high profile collaborators as Mos Def, The Roots and Aesop Rock. But his musical chops have also earned him a place to perform alongside jazz/experimental icon Bill Laswell and Japanese avant garde trumpeter Toshinori Kondo. This night will likely see him tightening up his DJ chops for an upcoming event that will have Krush spinning for six hours straight. Prepare yourself accordingly for a long haul of deep grooves and lucid electronica.

Jaguar Love - Tuesday @ Holocene
The former members of the mighty Seattle group The Blood Brothers responded to that band’s break up by splitting up its musical personality. The gents who went on to form Past Lives took the sonic expansiveness, experimentalist leanings and low slung rhythms. But the boys who went on to create Jaguar Love kept the slinky sexiness that was always under the surface of many Blood Brothers tracks. Here, they’ve turned up the sensuality with the help of some curvy electro rhythms, taut guitar and keyboard antics and Cody Votolato’s straining vocals wriggling over the top of it all. Catch them now - for free, no less - in this cozy venue before the rest of the world gets a hold of them and you won’t be able to see them from the nosebleeds of whatever theater they’ll be filling up in six months’ time.

Benjamin Curtis left his band Secret Machines in 2007 to form School of Seven Bells with the twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, formerly of On! Air! Library! Named after a legendary pickpocket training academy, the band first released a single, My Cabal, in May 2007 on the UK label Sonic Cathedral. They have an album out on Ghostly International called ‘Alpinism.’

I’m laying all of this out so you have plenty of background should you decide to leave the last of the Thanksgiving dinner leftovers behind and head out to see them at Doug Fir this Thursday. Headliners, M83, are awesome too..

School of Seven Bells - Connjur

Chanteuse, Nicole Atkins along with her compatriots known as The Sea, play tonight at Portland’s Doug Fir and thanks to Justin and Briana Bononcini Lowe we will be gathering at their home to eat and make merry with Nicole before the show. We need to do more of this kind of thing - the last one was at my house for a Cut Copy pre-show dinner. So any of you touring bands out there need a pre-show dinner just holler and we’ll see what we can do. And any Portland folks who want to offer up their homes for a bash like this holler too. Let’s call it social networking in the “real” world…

Tea For Julie are set to release their new CD, ‘the Sense In Tying Knots’ on June 25th the day they play the Doug Fir. Have a listen to a track from the new CD below.

Tea For Julie - Take The Helm