With a tone like a pitch-shifted Lana Del Rey, Ethel Cain’s vocals are hefty with reverb and regret, her confessional, transgressive lyrics replacing Del Rey’s Americana obsession with Bible Belt imagery: blood and baptisms, bar fights and bruises. Her gorgeous debut album “Preacher’s Daughter” sees Cain conjure regardless of what she wishes, rising from ethereality to expose sluggish-burning nation ballads, warped piano instrumentals, strip club sleaze and shoegaze nightmares. The change moi of 24-calendar year-previous singer-songwriter Hayden Anhedönia has the makings of a Southern Gothic pop star. Standout track “American Teenager” is a deceptive anthem about the Friday night time lies sold around the counter to the nation’s small children. July 24 at 8 p.m. at Union Phase, 740 Water St. SW. unionstage.com. Sold out.
Bonbon is a “mini-festival” that delivers together quite a few of the city’s most important DJs and performers to advantage SMYAL, a D.C. nonprofit that supports LGBTQ youth via leadership and mentorship. Dvonne, a founding member of the Noxeema Jackson collective, provides collectively influences that array from Luther Vandross and Infamous B.I.G. to goth industrial and raver club. Tommy C and Kristy La Rat are veterans of D.C. dance floors, expertly mixing tracks from throughout the disco-property-techno continuum and pan-Latin, diasporic dance new music, respectively. The lineup is rounded out by Pwrpuff, Aphroditus, FRANXX and Gabberbitch69 — a purveyor of punishing, higher-tempo tracks — and attributes a general performance by Bambi, who makes “genderless and gendermore fantasies” as the mom of Haus of Bambi. July 24 at 5 p.m. at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. songbyrddc.com. $20.
For much of Laura Veirs’s occupation as a solo artist, her new music was inextricably connected to Tucker Martine, an indie super-producer who served helm her albums and is also Veirs’s ex-spouse. Whilst 2020’s “My Echo” was unveiled immediately after their divorce, the just-launched “Found Light” is the 1st that sees the singer-songwriter processing, planning and pushing by way of to a new period of lifetime and tunes. As she told NPR, “The entire system of making information was intertwined with my ex — who’s a good document producer, but I preferred to do it my possess way.” On “Found Mild,” Veirs’s lyrics are vivid poetry, complete of perception-stimulating photographs like “vermilion suns” and “pomegranate fingertips,” and the songs grapple with how she has acquired from discomfort, freed herself from burdens and returned to mother nature — and herself. July 27 at 8 p.m. at Union Phase, 740 Drinking water St. SW. unionstage.com. $20.