The Bowery Presents

Kamasi Washington – Music Hall of Williamsburg – July 29, 2026

Saxophonist Kamasi Washington, a 2017 Whitney Biennial artist, remains a godson of American Jazz, infusing his musical artistry across genres. Growing up in Los Angeles, his matriculation from the Academy of Music of Alexander Hamilton High School and UCLA set him up with a plethora of musical collaborators, including brothers Stephen (Thundercat) and Ronald Brunner. Washington featured on fellow Angeleno Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, and received a shout-out on “Squabble Up” with the line “High-key, keep a horn on me, that Kamasi.” The saxophonist graced the stage of the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Wednesday night for the first of two shows. 

Washington was joined by a talented band, which delighted him throughout the evening. His smile was widest while band members were given solos, and that just goes to show his joy as a collaborator. Opening with a crackle of the snare, the group began with “Lesanu” from 2024’s Fearless Movement. Backing singer Patrice Quinn serenaded with “Sing unto the world a new song.” The headliner shared that when he was just 11 that he’d met the late Ryan Porter as part of the Jazz in America program. He was astounded by Porter’s talent, and there began decades of touring together. The band honored the trombonist by covering “The Psalmist” off 2018’s Heaven and Earth. 

Another revelation came about the creation of “Lazarus,” from the 2025 Japanese anime TV series soundtrack. As his father, Rickey Washington, on flute and soprano saxophone duty looked on, Washington expounded on the honor of working with Shinichirō Watanabe and how the theme was based on ’80s TV show Knight Rider. It was especially clear as bassist Miles Mosley plucked the familiar basslines. Additionally, drummer Mike Mitchell had a solo that left the crowd enraptured by his prowess. The show concluded conversely with a cover of Astor Piazzolla’s “Prologue” from the 2024 album. —Sharlene Chiu | @shar0ck

(Kamasi Washington plays Music Hall of Williamsburg again tonight.)

(Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin and Robert Glasper play Union Transfer in Philadelphia on Sunday.)

Photos courtesy of Katie Dadarria | instagram.com/dadarria

Tomahawk – Brooklyn Steel – July 28, 2026

With Mike Patton, it may not always work, but it’s always going to be interesting. That’s the price of admission and also the return on investment for the “it” — the creative mojo that underpins the musical chameleon he’s forever been, which is experimental, up for adventure, sometimes loud, sometimes melodic, sometimes noisy-weird, sometimes jazzy, sometimes twangy, always engaging and in your face. There are precious few other musicians on earth who could roll through town like Patton did not six weeks ago on a mutant-country lark with the Avett Brothers, and then announce the next chapter in the occasional and ongoing reformation of his best-known band, and, in between, peel off an anniversary tour with one of his also-occasionally-reuniting supergroups, who seem to have chosen now to do this because, well, why the hell not? And with no less than the Melvins aboard to do a scorched-earth opening set? That’d be an unlikely year for most rockers. But for Patton, it’s practically de rigueur, all delivered with an impish, impatient grin like it’s of course all part of the plan. 

The supergroup band in question is Tomahawk, and they posted up at Brooklyn Steel on a wet, humid Tuesday night to clear out some cobwebs as part of their own first substantial tour in more than a decade. After the Melvins roared with an hour of sludgy-crunchy-double drummy bangers, Patton and his cohorts — Duane Denison (the Jesus Lizard), John Stanier (Helmet) and Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) — deftly rose to their own occasion, ripping through a 90-minute show that heavily favored 2021’s Tonic Immobility, Tomahawk’s most recent full-length release. 

They played with abundance, like they don’t often get to flex this music and may not be able to again for a while, so they reveled in it: coursing “Predators and Scavengers,” stabbing “God Hates a Coward,” brooding, trudging “Sidewinder,” full-throttle growling “South Paw,” and spooky material like “Howlie” and “Eureka” that sounded as much like droning, ancient-world chants as it does metal. A Duane Eddy cover (“Stalkin’”) popped in, as did a curious duet from Patton and Denison late in the encore segment. Patton presided — stage-housed, as almost always, in an onstage cluster lair of instruments, tables and effects-making stuff — another day in the panorama of a multi-hyphenate career. —Chad Berndtson | @cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Ellen Qbertplaya | instagram.com/qbertplaya

A packed Forest Hills Stadium welcomed CAAMP on Thursday night as the Columbus, Ohio, band brought last year’s folk-filled Copper Changes Color to adoring fans in Queens.

Photos courtesy of Andrew Pintado | @drooshotya

Actor-director-producer and singer-songwriter Finn Wolfhard triumphantly returned to NYC on Tuesday night with a sold-out show at Webster Hall as part of the just-launched North American tour behind his second LP, Fire from the Hip, which, per Paste, “examines celebrity with an oddball sense of humor and deftly arranged garage rock.”        

 (Finn Wolfhard plays Royale in Boston tonight.)

Photos courtesy of Lexi Yob | @lexiyob

Djo – Forest Hills Stadium – July 17, 2026

Djo (pronounced: “Jo” with the “d” silent) is actor-musician Joe Keery’s clever stage moniker. Although playing Steve Harrington on Stranger Things raised him to international fame, he was a musician first, as a founding member of the Chicago psych-rock outfit Post Animal. It was clear early on that Keery didn’t want his acting to bleed into his music: “Those guys are such talented musicians … I think it’s important that they’re hitting the pavement for a while and making a name for themselves and it’s not necessarily associated with Stranger Things,” he told Bustle. Although Post Animal opened for Keery on last year’s tour, Pond had the honor on this summer’s Deadbeat tour, opening at a sold-out Forest Hills Stadium on Friday night. 

Charging the stage in a red-and-blue rugby shirt, Keery opened the set with “Awake,” the final single off last year’s The Crux Deluxe, bathed in red backlight. Fans were ready and willing at his command, from singing along to “lighting it up” with cell phone flashlights. The exuberance for Djo was undeniable. He had me humming along to 2025’s “Basic Being Basic” amongst the sea of dedicated followers on the floor, which included a few kids perched on shoulders. Both “Potion” and “Fly,” from The Crux, elicited the cell phone flashlight treatment at different points of the show, the latter creating a magical moment in darkness against Keery’s croon. Major kudos have to go to the lighting director, controlling several lights rigged above the stage and ones behind. An illumination painted the ceiling in a wavy blue for the end of “Fly,” while spinning white lights later activated for “Egg.”

Standout moments included a birthday cheer for Keery’s twin sisters in attendance and a prerecorded video of Mayor Mamdani taking the voicemail verse on “Charlie’s Garden.” Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from this show but it’s clear Keery was meant to entertain as he worked the stage for the set-closing fan favorite, “End of Beginning,” off 2022’s Decide. As if that weren’t enough, the band returned for an encore of “Chateau (Feel Alright),” from 2019’s Twenty Twenty, and “Back on You,” off The Crux. To really put an exclamation on the evening, Kerry called out Post Animal to join in on “Flash Mountain” to give a chef’s kiss. —Sharlene Chiu | @shar0ck

Photos courtesy of Ken Grand-Pierre | www.kenamiphoto.com

Brooklyn electro-punk four-piece Lip Critic brought their second LP, Theft World, to Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday night for a spirited hometown show that included crowd-surfing and stilts.

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

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A pair of wildly talented frontmen known for evocative songwriting and fiery live performances — each with a recent new solo album — the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn (Always Been) and Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood (Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams) made the weekend last just a little bit longer when they brought their Devils in the Details tour to Music Hall of Williamsburg on Sunday.

Photos courtesy of Ehud Lazin | www.ehudlazin.com

Webster Hall was packed on Thursday night for the NYC stop of hip-hop heavyweights DJ Premier & the Alchemist’s He’s the Preemo I’m the Chemist world tour.

Photos courtesy of Toby Tenenbaum | @tobytenenbaum

Making his way across North America behind his “bright and bold third” LP, How Did I Get Here?, former One Direction member Louis Tomlinson dazzled the adoring crowd at MSG on Wednesday. 

(Louis Tomlinson plays Skyline Stage at Highmark Mann in Philly on Saturday night.)

(Louis Tomlinson plays TD Garden in Boston on 7/14.)

Photos courtesy of Ehud Lazin | www.ehudlazin.com

Local anti-folk heroes the Moldy Peaches began making sweet music together more than 30 years ago. Following the release of their only studio album in 2001, they opened for the Strokes across the world before breaking up in 2004. Original members Kimya Dawson and Adam Green have since reunited a few times over the years, including when “Anyone Else but You” became a hit after being included on the Juno soundtrack in 2007. And they just did it again on Friday for a one-night-only intimate, acoustic show at Carnegie Hall.

Photos courtesy of Anthony Grant | instagram.com/gallerybytm

Of Montreal – Webster Hall – June 23, 2026

Most bands come through town and play a show, but it’s a much smaller number that actually put on a show, and it’s aprecious few that put on a show quite like Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes brough the latest incarnation of his long-running psych-pop outfit to Webster Hall on Tuesday night, putting on a hypersexual gender-fluid orgy of sight and sound as only he can. Opening with “Id Engager,” off their 2008 album, Skeletal Lamping, they almost instantly went full chaotic, with kaleidoscopic digital weirdness projected on the screen behind the stage, three figures in bodysuits engaging in quasi-choreographed movements, and the band igniting the crowd with a pulsing rhythm.

Somehow, the night only went up from there, Barnes mixing in new songs and old songs and bouncing around the stage with the same energy he’s been bringing to his live performances for decades. “Bassem Sabry” delivered a dose of disco clavinet while “Blab Sabbath Lathe of Maiden” laid down a hammer of dark bass and synth, Barnes hitting the high notes in counterpoint, the coda going full fuzz and distortion. Throughout the set, the troupe returned to the stage, each time festooned in psychedelic costumes impossible to describe in words. For all the spectacle, it was the music that had the audience moving: 

“20th Century Schizofriendic Revengeoid Man” was a heavy rock and roll, the crowd growing increasingly manic while some sort of Middle Earth creatures crisscrossed the stage and a screensaver from hell cast down on the stage, Barnes singing, “Why does everything seem fake? / Why does it all seem so unreal?” to punch home the point. 

Of Montreal dropped the fan-favorite “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” midway through, everyone in the room dancing and singing along in a frenzy. If you were going to guess a cover for them to play, I’m not sure the country standard “Tennessee Waltz” would have been the top guess, but when Barnes started waltzing with his dancers, dressed in some sort of otherworldly Day of the Dead masks and dresses, it kind of made sense. The encore drew exclusively from the seminal album Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?, now almost 20 years old, the band building to an extended swell of noise that seemed to consume the entire room in its guitar-bass-keys-drums reverberations, Barnes and Of Montreal proving that they don’t just know how to put on a show, but they know how to end one too. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

(Of Montreal play The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., tonight.)

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @silvia_saponaro

@silvialovesmusic

Wilco/Yo La Tengo – Forest Hills Stadium – June 20, 2026

Wilco have been around long enough that they can easily transform into different bands. Sometimes the Chicago six-piece are a band for theaters, other times for large rock clubs, amphitheaters or even arenas. On Saturday night, they were a full-fledge stadium band, feeling quite at home in the concrete horseshoe of Forest Hills Stadium. They chose an opener who also fit the bill, their longtime friends — and local heroes — Yo La Tengo, who ended their warm-up set by mutating into different bands themselves: the intimate bedroom pop of “Autumn Sweater,” the vicious guitar meltdown of “Tom Courtenay” and then closing with the sweetly quiet “Our Way to Fall.” 

Wilco took the stage still basked in the sunshine of a beautiful day, jumping into “Handshake Drugs,” John Stirratt’s bass sounding especially massive, creating space for Nels Cline’s open-air guitar shredding, the band melting into an extended drone outro. Frontman Jeff Tweedy’s voice fully at ease floating on a warm breeze on “If I ever Was a Child,” Glenn Kotche’s drums shuffling alongside. The marathon set drew from Wilco’s gargantuan 30-year catalog, expertly flowing from one era to another, the crowd of old heads and newer fans nothing but smiles across the stadium, even more so as Tweedy jokingly bantered about the Knicks between songs.

“Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull” was an early highlight, starting quiet with Tweedy’s image-invoking lyrics front and center, then opening into a fiery extended stadium-size double-guitar jam before bubbling back quiet to close. Hearing many of the well-worn Wilco tunes, it was apparent that Tweedy has benefited from the foresight of writing songs his 2026 self would have no trouble carrying. “Via Chicago” was quite strong, the sweet nostalgia of a hometown and travel alternating with gnarly guitar-drum sounds.

That kicked off perhaps the strongest stretch of the night, which went from “Via Chicago” to “Impossible Germany” with Cline’s six-minute guitar solo that told as much of a story as Tweedy’s lyrics, and the crowd favorite “Jesus, Etc.” When the sun finally went down and Forest Hills went dark, Wilco shifted into full stadium-rock mode with big bleacher-rattling takes on “Walken,” “Kingpin” and the set-closing “I’m the Man Who Loves You.”    

It wouldn't be a Wilco show without an extended encore, and the band returned to explore more of their catalog, highlighted by “California Stars,” the audience raising cell phones to create a wraparound starscape that earned Tweedy's approval. After “Falling Apart (Right Now),” the band left the stage again, but the show didn't feel quite over yet. Like any good veteran touring rock band, Wilco had held back a little “best for last” from the ecstatic Queens crowd. Three musicians returned to the stage, but it wasn’t Wilco at all — instead it was Yo La Tengo launching into one of their longer, stadium-ready rockers, the instrumental “I Heard You Looking.” 

As the trio built their fireball of sound, the headliners joined in piecemeal until the stage was filled with musicians throwing themselves headlong into the growing wall of sound, eventually reaching its peak and receding. Not to be outdone, Kotche and Stirrat flowed the jam right into their own build-to-peak “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” Cline and YLT guitarist Ira Kaplan mixed krautrock with free jazz on either side of the stage on top of a double-drummer rhythm. Another explosive peak and an audience participation on the tune's main riff finished things off before the show closed, an ending worthy of a tennis stadium in Forest Hills or any other sized venue you put them in. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

Photos courtesy of Ellen Qbertplaya | instagram.com/qbertplaya

Having just released their sixth LP, Big Modern! — “their most accessible and hook-filled album yet” — Connecticut jam stalwarts Goose kicked off a highly anticipated two-night run at Madison Square Garden on Friday with two dynamic sets of originals, covers and sit-ins.

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @silvia_saponaro

@silvialovesmusic

AVTT/PTTN – Kings Theatre – June 12, 2026

AVTT/PTTN — the thrilling combo of the Avett Brothers and perennial rock-and-then-some trickster Mike Patton — are on record saying their unlikely collaboration works because of mutual admiration that they discovered, picked up and ran with. They hit it off, in other words, and that much is evident in their self-titled 2025 album, which at times sounds like a mutant version of the “classic” Avetts country-soul sound, and at times sounds like the musical polyglot Patton unleashed to help deliver twang, heavenly harmonies and more of an “ancient ox driver song” vibe than a “get spacey and skronky” vibe. 

But what’s especially thrilling is how far their collaboration further transports in the live setting. At the gorgeous Kings Theater on Friday, the combined band — touring as an expanded unit that swells from as few as two to more than 10 players depending on serving the song — wasn’t merely content to safely and sturdily play the record, although that would have been fine, and perhaps been a sign they don’t want to push it too far, for fear of overdoing it or over-burdening it. But no, instead, they got after it, infusing that mutant sound into everything from Avetts staples — including “Pretty Girl from Chile,” “Satan Pulls the Strings” and “Laundry Room,” the latter’s reliably lively hoedown coda getting raucously blown out — to chestnuts from throughout Patton’s vast catalog spanning Faith No More (“Ashes to Ashes”!), Mr. Bungle (“Retrovertigo”!) and other associations, to cover songs both fitting because they made sense or because they were less likely but — don’t-ye-have-little-faith — they worked.

The country classic “King of the Road” got trussed up with Mr. Bungle’s “Vanity Fair.” The Dean Martin twang-crooner “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” got an earnest reading — their giddy grins plastered throughout showing how much they all just plain love the song. The ancient hymn “It Is Well with My Soul” was a beautiful benediction at the end of an extended encore segment that also included “Froggie Went a-Courtin’” (part-sung in Korean) and “Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women.” Even the Avetts’ own “I and Love and You” — with its tender “Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in” chorus — got a touch of Patton scuffing without scraping its delicate heart. 

They found the through line in all of it, allowing for a little mess to keep it interesting and for potential boundaries to stay flexible. The result was a sonic feast, spanning two hours and filling Kings’ every gilded nook and cranny, and could have easily been two hours more. Here’s hoping they’ve found enough fun to come back for another round of this. —Chad Berndtson | @cberndtson

(The Avett Brothers play Elmwood Park Amphitheater in Roanoke, Va., on 9/5.)

(The Avett Brothers play the Westville Music Bowl in New Haven, Conn., on 9/17.)

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

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Philadelphia (by way of Turkey) pop singer-songwriter INJI’s North American tour in support of her debut mixtape, SUPERLAME, brought her to a packed Webster Hall on Friday night. 

Photos courtesy of Lexi Yob | @lexiyob