Everyone knows dubstep, but it’s not the only fusion of dance music with the spacious Jamaican production style known as dub.

In the 1990s, a small group of German producers pioneered dub techno, a far more experimental and ambient genre of techno than most prevalent at the time. Dub techno tracks can stretch well over 10 minutes, and though you can certainly dance to the genre, it doesn’t have the catharsis of most house and techno. This isn’t party music, but I’ve always found it works best on a long nature walk or in a smoky room late at night.

Here are some of the essential documents of dub techno:

Andy Stott — Luxury Problems

Britain’s Andy Stott is dub techno’s main indie star thanks to his vocal-heavy productions, relatively short tracks and keen aesthetic sense. Though his recent work leans more towards trap, Luxury Problems is a contemporary classic in the dub techno canon.

Basic Channel — BCD/BCD2

The brainchild of German reggae fan Moritz Von Oswald, who also makes great improvisational music with his Trio, Basic Channel is usually credited with kicking off the dub techno movement. BCD, their only official album, is ambient and soothing; BCD2 is dark, sprawling and abrasive.

Deepchord Presents Echospace — The Coldest Season 

A late addition to the canon, The Coldest Season isn’t the most original dub techno release, borrowing shamelessly from Basic Channel. But it’s an exemplary release in the canon, pairing sheets of ambient sound with dancefloor-ready grooves over 80 icy minutes that somehow feel a lot shorter.

Loscil — First Narrows

Vancouver’s Loscil uses aquatic dub textures to simulate the wet and rainy environment of his hometown. The first in a series of albums based on locales in his hometown, First Narrows — named after the bridge of the same name — evokes sea spray, ebbing tides and water dripping off the hulls of docked ships.

Monolake — Hongkong 

Give this one to your masseuse. This is dub techno at its most melodic and soothing, and though its first track “Cyan” takes a while to build, it’s worth it when those massive, billowing chords take over the song.

Porter Ricks — Biokinetics

On their sole album, Germans Porter Ricks show off their mastery of sound design, imbuing their creations with an organic wetness that makes each track sound as if it’s been marinated in primordial goo.

Uusitalo — Vapaa Muurari Live

Finnish polymath and Moritz Von Oswald Trio member Vladislav Delay flirted briefly with dub techno on his first and best album as Uusitalo. Though its track list is offset by long, meandering ambient pieces, there’s some compulsively danceable stuff here — try not to shake your ass to “Dutch Wallpaper.”

The six University of Oregon students who comprise The Nouns have only been a unit for three months. But in that time, they’ve acquired an enviable following for any student band. They’ve played in Portland, but they’re focused on Eugene at the moment, gigging at house shows as well as bigger venues like Cozmic Pizza, where they won $200 in cash after competing in the Phi Psi Battle of the Bands.

The money’s going towards recording, and at the time I spoke to them, they were about to head into Sprout City Studios to record their new album. They don’t have a title yet, but they have a tracklist in mind and a solid idea of how the album will sound.

“A lot of our shows are structured improv,” said saxophonist Lee Burlingame. “We’re trying to get in there and keep it as structured as possible but keep that live vibe.”

Musically, The Nouns play a fusion of hip hop and jazz, largely based around the lyricism of rapper-songwriter BigMo and singer Shenea Davis. Numerous members of the band are in other projects. BigMo has released five rap albums on his own, while bassist Ian Lindsay plays in numerous bands, including Burlingame’s jazz quartet and a band called the Leafs with drummer Adam Hendey.

The group formed when Hendey’s girlfriend met BigMo through Rideshare.

“Mo took a ride with her up to Portland by coincidence,” said Hendey. “A day or two before that, I was telling her it would be a good idea to have a band with a rapper, so she hooked the two of us up.”

The rest of the band met through the music school at UO, which the entire band except for BigMo attends. Davis and keyboardist Daniel Surprenant were the last to join, and the sextet made its debut at Black Forest, opening for the Leafs.

Though their style is unusual, audiences react very positively to their music.

“It was crazy seeing the way people reacted to listening to straight jazz,” said Burlingame. “They were doing all the same stuff they would do if we played rock or hip-hop, just dancing and grinding.”

Though the members of The Nouns have a lot of clout from their prior bands, they attribute the amount of success they’ve enjoyed to their performing style.

“We have a lot of fun playing with each other,” said Surprenant. “Anyone who watches us can see that. And we’re doing something with music a lot of people in Eugene haven’t been exposed to, so there’s definitely an interest factor.”

Andy Grammer’s “Honey, I’m Good” is rapidly becoming one of my favorite pop songs of the year — meaning the song has accomplished exactly what it wants. I’ve never heard a pop song that tries to make you love it as much as this one does. Grammer trades in on an ingenious sort of “cute for adults” persona that affords him as much sex appeal as he needs minus the pernicious Lothario-isms of most male pop stars that exert a sexualized image; he’s got this down to a T on “Honey I’m Good.”

The premise of the song fits with this. Grammer’s on tour, surrounded by beautiful women obsessing over him; he acknowledges the desire, but he’s committed to his partner. Even if you’ve never seen a picture of Grammer, who’s stunning, you know from the song he’s sexy: “I could have another but I probably should not.” The moral for the audience: you can crush on Grammer, but it won’t lead to anything.

The language is a bit sexist, though not terrible compared to most male-sung pop tunes (give Maroon 5’s V a spin and cringe). Grammer refers to women with body-part synecdoches (“those long long legs are damn near everywhere”) and calls the woman he’s turning down “honey.” But at least he holds himself responsible for his desires, stating that “better men than me have failed drinking from that unholy grail.” “Unholy grail” thus comes across less as some disgusting moral-panic metaphor for a vagina and more as a synonym for Grammer’s own lust.

“Honey, I’m Good” initially scans as an advertisement for monogamy, especially in tandem with a violently cute music video depicting scores of couples kissing each other, with signs showing how long they’ve been together. But it thankfully doesn’t frown on promiscuity, just infidelity. In fact, an anti-monogamy reading isn’t hard to come up with; Grammer is near-constantly tempted, raising the question of how happy he really is in his relationship.

In other words, you don’t have to interpret this song as propaganda, and what we’re seeing here isn’t sexual morality but a new kind of sexuality. In a post-Robin Thicke era, it’s increasingly difficult for male pop stars to advertise themselves as Casanovas. But Grammer showcases an effective new approach to male sex appeal in pop: being as cute as earthly possible with only the bare minimum of sex-symbol posturing. His exuberance is infectious, and hearing a singer this joyful is endearing.

That joy carries “Honey I’m Good.” The song is essentially Rusted Root’s dreadful 1995 hit “Send Me On My Way” (which you may remember from Matilda and Ice Age) EDM-ified. Instead of Rusted Root’s folky textures and incomprehensible babbling, there’s airtight disco and a voice that seems to be yelling in ecstasy. It’s just about the most likable thing ever, and even people who might be put off by its saccharinity will dance to it while drunk.

At the end of the day, pop is all about psychology, and “Honey, I’m Good” is pretty much the equivalent of Andy Grammer proposing to your brain. Saying yes — and gaining a new guilty pleasure in the process — is the best decision I’ve made this year.

College students have an insatiable appetite for dance music, and University of Oregon events like the Willamette Valley Music Festival and the upcoming Campus Block Party have responded by booking electronic acts in droves. Among these is drums-synth duo Octonaut, whose recent spot at the Willamette Valley Music Festival should secure them a reputation around campus as a live act worth seeing in Eugene.

Most of the band’s audience at the moment consists of Eugene natives. But since opening for Megan James of Purity Ring at the WOW Hall for the UO Cultural Forum, they’ve begun to see the commercial potential of playing for a college audience.

“(Students) bring our music with them when they go back to Chicago, San Francisco, wherever,” said synth player and producer Graham Reinhart.

“To get into playing for people who are only here for a few years — exposure to that is very sought after,” said drummer Phil Allen. “Of course we’ll play on campus on a huge stage with a huge sound system, why wouldn’t we?”

Allen and Reinhart first met at a bimonthly improv event hosted by the Maize Lounge, a music club owned by the Cornucopia franchise which lasted from 2011 to 2012.  After the lounge shut down, Allen and Reinhart started to take their jamming more seriously, and Octonaut was born.

Since then, they’ve frequented the WOW Hall, Luckey’s and they’ve even gigged in Portland and San Francisco.  They currently hold a monthly residency at Blairally Vintage Arcade in the Whiteaker, where they play the first Saturday of every month.

Their first EP, Thud Glow, was released in February by FunDip Records, home of local favorites like KittyTrap and SugarBeats. They’re planning their next release, which will be either an EP or a full-length. They’re estimating six to eight tracks.

The group previously recorded at home, but they’ve moved into Track Town Records, a large studio in the Whiteaker, to commence work on their next project.

“It’s great having our setup completely ready to go, all turned on and the doors opened for creativity so we don’t have to move all our stuff every time we play,” said Reinhart. “That next day we can just walk in the door and start fresh.”

It’s anyone’s guess how Octonaut will expand their sound in the studio. But one thing’s for certain: this is a band we’ll be seeing a lot more of around campus.

The main stage from a distance. Photo by Daniel Bromfield

This year’s Willamette Valley Music Festival delivered on a tried-and-true formula: starting with the bands, then wheeling out the DJs. None of the bands that played either the main stage at Lillis or the Kind Stage at the EMU Amphitheater attracted more than a small crowd of revelers. But between 7:30 pm and 1 am, when guitars were out and mixers and laptops were in, the festival slowly but surely blossomed into the party its organizers surely hoped it would become.

Lures perform on the main stage at the Willamette Valley Music Festival, Saturday, May 9, 2015. (Daniel Bromfield/Emerald)

The main stage kicked off a little after noon with Eugene’s own Pluto the Planet, whose high-energy indie-Afropop was wasted on a sun-baked crowd with no energy to dance. Lures, a much lower-energy indie pop band, came next; though they had to go after Pluto as a touring band, they would have fared better at the beginning, helping the audience transition from their groggy Saturday mornings to an all-day music party.

Dirty Man & The Chiefs perform on the main stage at the Willamette Valley Music Festival, Saturday, May 9, 2015. (Daniel Bromfield/Emerald)

It wasn’t until Dirty Man & the Chiefs, a very good and explicitly populist psychedelic soul band who covered both Elton John and Marvin Gaye at the end of their set, that a crowd started to form. It mostly started out as friends of the band, but more and more revelers joined in over time, and Dirty Man & the Chiefs enjoyed a sizable audience by the end of their set, which the Joe Cocker-style rock big band Pancho & The Factory inherited.

Era Coda performs on the main stage at the Willamette Valley Music Festival, Saturday, May 9, 2015. (Daniel Bromfield/Emerald)

The very good jam band Era Coda soundtracked the spillover to the beer garden. I was surprised by how calm the beer garden was, and so was the staff; there was only one belligerent drunk all night. With the opening of a new pub in the EMU next year, the UO campus seems to be loosening its dry policies, which it’s held on to since 2002. The civility of the beer garden is a good sign, and UO students can no doubt look forward to more booze at campus events from here on out.

Crater performs at the EMU stage during the Willamette Valley Music Festival on Saturday, May 9, 2015. (Daniel Bromfield/Emerald)

If the main stage was devoted mostly to conventional rock bands, the EMU was where the organizers dumped all the weirder fare. Aptly-named R&B trio Mellow Yellow, intriguingly consisting of a guitarist, sample-pad player and a keyboard player, opened up. Next came the Tony Glausi Quintet, who continued the stage’s lethargic, sit-down vibe. Synthpop duo Crater danced a lot harder than its audience, and it took an outlier–bluegrass ensemble Alder Street All-Stars, who also played an impromptu set near Johnson Hall–to get the audience on its feet for the gothic dance-rock of Tetra Bomb. 

The DJ duo Sugarbeats performs at the main stage in front of the Lillis Business Complex during Willamette Valley Music Festival in Eugene, Oregon on Saturday, May 9, 2015. (Taylor Wilder/Emerald)

Counterintuitively, the second stage closed just as the festival hit peak attendance. Drum-synth duo Octonaut served as both a literal and figurative transition into the EDM portion of the night, warming up the crowd with sultry, lush techno. Next came the “future funk” of SugarBeats and the multi-genre, anything-goes sets of Aaron Jackson and JayKode. (JayKode’s profile on the WVMF website says his repertoire includes “electro house, trap, twerk, hip-hop, moombahton, and even oldies”; what the website didn’t mention is that he spins all of those things within five minutes of each other.)

Partiers. (Daniel Bromfield/Emerald)

By this time, there were hundreds of partiers with hula hoops, glow sticks, and a ton of energy. This was still a substantially tamer crowd than the fairly sketchy one at last year’s festival, even with the extra flow of intoxication coming from the beer garden. Perhaps the legality and ready availability of five-dollar beer at this festival gave the crowd less impetus to dash off campus and chug cheaper, more potent fare before running back for the next act.

(Daniel Bromfield/Emerald)

Forty-five years in, the Willamette Valley Music Festival still isn’t perfect. Given how much fewer people come during the daytime, the second stage doesn’t seem all that necessary. I also noticed only two of the festival’s fourteen acts had female members–step up your game, folks! But the beer garden thankfully wasn’t a complete fiasco, and the mere fact that it was present made the WVMF a viable alternative to boozier Saturday night activities. I hope to see a lot more people at the Willamette Valley Music Festival next year. Let’s just hope they’re always this well-behaved.

L.A.’s Samo Sound Boy is a member of the Marshawn Lynch school of electronic producers — artists who repeat one vocal hook ad nauseam, raising the emotional stakes with each cycle. Caribou popularized this style with his album Our Love, on which he whispered “can’t do without you” with the intimacy of a coffeehouse folkie. Samo, meanwhile, screams “WHAT CAN I DO” at the top of a burnt-out skyscraper for the whole town to hear, presumably on his knees in a tattered shirt.

But it’s not his voice, but rather a vocal sample. Samo’s sound, as displayed on his debut album Begging Please, is built around these — simple mantras, culled from soul and gospel, that seem to be sung by a thousand people at once. One could make a compelling argument that these samples aren’t representative of real emotion in that they’re borrowed from someone else’s catharsis. But everything on Begging Please feels physical: slamming drum patterns, blaring synths, and even a tinny, well-worn-sounding piano similar to Aphex Twin’s.  In this context, these samples barely scan as digital wizardry.

This maximalism resembles that of EDM, and “Baby Don’t Stop,” with its mawkish 1-4 progression and brooding piano, even resembles big-festival indie pop. But the greatest strength of Begging Please is how it makes these giant sounds feel introspective. This music’s too confusing for parties, too abrasive for dorm rooms, but it works like hell over headphones. This is music designed to directly bombard the listener.

This might make Begging Please hard to get into.  Though Samo thankfully limited the record to 44 minutes — two of them taken up by the sort of amorphous intro I generally find gratuitous, but which works here — it’s still a bit much. Most of these songs build endlessly before dropping off into some synth drones; the title track is especially frustrating in that nearly half is ambient noodling, and it teases a return to the main hook at the end but doesn’t deliver.

“What Can I Do” circumvents this issue with its thrilling, unpredictable structure. But it doesn’t have the raw catharsis of the other songs’ massive buildups. This sheds light on the album’s core flaw and contradiction: the more successful a Samo track, the harder it is to listen to. Begging Please isn’t a bad album by any means. It’s just one that demands a certain mood from the listener. This is music you listen to when subtler fare won’t work and you just need to feel something, now.

Following their near-legendary 2013 gig at the W.O.W. Hall, Unknown Mortal Orchestra is back for more. Portland’s favorite psych-pop power trio will return to the W.O.W. this Thursday to promote their new record, Multi-Love. Prior to the band’s arrival in Eugene, singer-guitarist Ruban Nielson sat with the Emerald to discuss what fans can expect from the band’s next show and new material.

What can fans expect from your upcoming show? What will be different from your last show in Eugene?

We have a lot of new material and a new band member, Quincy, on keys. We try to make every single show unique and change things and improvise. We extend songs and freak out a lot. There are solos and all that good stuff. We play like bands used to back when you had to be good at your instruments, (laughs). It’s been a while since our last W.O.W. Hall show, so I’m sure it’ll be quite different and better. A lot of shows played since then.

I saw you in 2013 at the W.O.W. Hall and most of the positive feedback I heard from people afterward had to do with your technical prowess. How important do you believe technical ability is in rock?

It’s not important at all in the strictest sense, but it also doesn’t get in the way. You have to be pretty dumb to let skills ruin your music. I used to only know three chords and now I can play complex things, but I seem to have always been a musician people wanted to go and watch for some reason. It’s not about impressing people. It’s about playing something with some weird truth in it.

You worked on this record with your dad. How easy to work with is your dad in the studio?

Dad came to visit, and I was showing him what I was working on and wanted him to play on it. It was kinda cool working with him. He’s still a professional musician now, and I grew up around a lot of jazz and stuff like that. I think this album is the first thing I’ve done that actually impressed him, (laughs). Actually, a really cool thing is I found my dad to be kind of uptight and hard on himself when recording. I found it cool to be like, ‘Dad, your playing is awesome, you just need to relax a bit so that a good emotion makes it on the record rather than the vibe of someone trying to sound super good.’

You’ve said you’re trying to get away from the “idea of manly white-guy rock music.” What is your relationship with rock music at this time?

I mean, this week I spent building three different octave fuzz pedals to try and get the perfect Jimi Hendrix Foxy Lady-guitar sound, so I think me and rock are pretty tight. I just thought it was a boring idea to feed into the most typical idea of what a male with a guitar represents. I don’t just get up on stage and do a bunch of random shit. I think a little more deeply than that. I don’t want to alienate people of color and LGBT people and women by being just another boy in the boy’s club of rock. That’s incredibly boring to me. Wait, I know what you’re thinking: ‘But Ruban you rock so damn hard!’ Well yes, this is true and life is weird.

You played on Toro Y Moi’s new record What For?  What is the experience of working on someone else’s record like compared to your own?

I’m getting better at working around other people. I used to prefer to be by myself while I worked, but I’ve been trying to get better at collaboration. When I’m by myself I have a weird kind of logic to the way I work. I might start by reading something and then that will lead to watching an interview with someone in the book I’m reading and then that will make me want to modify a piece of equipment and then that will finally lead to recording something. Of course it’s hard to work like that with other people, but I’m learning when you’re collaborating you’ll talk through subjects and watch YouTube videos and stuff too. It can be similar but it’s just more social, you joke around, discuss current events, get drunk or smoke something and then plug a keyboard in and do some work. So I’m getting better at that. And I used to kind of meditate and wait for inspiration to arrive, but nowadays, I’m getting good at forcing myself into the zone on demand. I don’t always have five hours to wait. I might have to catch a train in forty minutes or whatever, so I’m getting better at going into the state of mind where good ideas happen.

Follow Daniel Bromfield on Twitter @Bromf3

Dance music is in the middle of a major commercial and stylistic revolution right now, and as a result, music consumers are becoming increasingly attuned to regional scenes across the globe. Among these is a club style that’s developed in Lisbon’s Afro-Portuguese community as a fusion of African dance styles like kuduro, kizomba, and semba with house and techno. Pioneered by the Principe Discos label, the genre has no official name yet, and it’s been referred to as “batida,” “the ghetto sound of Lisbon,” or simply “Afro-Portuguese club music.” But it’s compulsively danceable and some of the most interesting electronic music Europe’s producing at the moment. Here are a few of the scene’s essential artists.

DJ Marfox

The undisputed king of Lisbon club music, Marfox is influential enough that some of the scene’s most prominent DJs have taken on “fox” in their name out of respect (DJ Nedwyt Fox, DJ Nigga Fox, DJ Liofox, among others). He’s comparable to Chicago footwork’s DJ Rashad or bounce music’s Big Freedia in his role as international ambassador for a hyper-regional dance style, and he’s a familiar face on festival lineups across Europe.

DJs Do Guetto

The Lisbon club community cites 2006, when a teenage Marfox’s DJs Do Guetto crew released DJs Do Guetto Vol. 1, as “year zero.” Reissued by Principe Discos in 2013, Vol. 1 is the movement’s Holy Bible and arguably its definitive record.

Nidia Minaj

Though 17-year-old Minaj is French rather than Portuguese, she releases her music on Principe Discos and works in a similar style to Marfox and compatriots. Like Marfox, she inserts her own name into her tracks frequently, but cuts it up creatively; on “House Kaliente,” a standout from her phenomenal EP Danger, a voice shouts “Nidia!” repeatedly, egging her on as her fingers fly faster on the drum pad.

DJ Nigga Fox 

Marfox’s protege is at least as skilled as his mentor, and his O Meu Estilo EP is one of the Lisbon scene’s most satisfying and accessible releases. His skill with percussion is practically unreal, and he seasons his drum tracks liberally with bits of synth and voice that swirl around and create an intense sense of momentum.

Piquenos Djs Do Guetto

It speaks to Marfox’s influence that Piquenos Djs Do Guetto would name themselves after the legend’s first collective. Piquenos Djs Do Guetto sound best on the B.N.M./P.D.D.G. mini-album, on which the various members of the collective show off their solo skills alongside members of the group Blacksea Nao Maya.

Tia Maria Produções

This four-man crew is one of Portugal’s most accessible and melodic producers of club music, and it’s likely Tia Maria will end up as the Lisbon scene’s breakout act for this reason. Yet they’re still willing and able to confound their audience; “Moh Cota” is one of the most out-there productions the Lisbon scene’s seen yet.

Following the opening of the Boreal last year, Eugene has yet another new music venue. Old Nick’s Pub, a so-called “metal bar” and concert hall geared towards touring rock bands, opened its doors at the beginning of this month. Located at 211 Washington St. in the Whiteaker, Nick’s has already lined up a formidable set of shows over the next few months.

The brainchild of music promoters Emily Nyman, Jevon Peck and Tim Kinney, Old Nick’s Pub provides an option for bands too big for the bars but with too small an audience for major venues like the W.O.W. Hall or McDonald Theatre.

“We’re a step up from other bars with lower capacity and smaller size,” Nyman said. “In that way we’re able to bring acts to Eugene that might not have other places to play.”

Among the bands they’ve brought to town are crossover thrash legends D.R.I. and Canadian hardcore punk pioneers D.O.A. Acts from the golden age of hardcore punk seem to be Old Nick’s specialty. Dr. Know of early hardcore band Bad Brains will play on June 14, and Adolescents and U.K. Subs are also slated to play over the summer. Yet Old Nick’s also plans on hosting comedy and burlesque, and it is doing an Irish music jam night every Monday at 6 p.m.

So far, Old Nick’s has been successful: both D.R.I. and D.O.A. sold out. But it took endless hours of stress and pain for the founders to get the venue off the ground. Originally set to open Halloween of 2014, the unexpected amount of renovation and construction the founders had to perform on the building set them back months.

“We had to bring everything up to code,” Peck said. “The place had previously been a bar, and to change it back, the city had to make us do everything again. This put us months and months behind. We had to do everything from scratch–everything is brand new.”

But now that it’s open, Peck, Nyman and Kinney can focus on bringing some of the world’s best touring rock bands to Eugene. Here are a few of the upcoming shows Nick’s has to offer.

All shows are 21+.

Condemned? with Not A Part Of It, Toxic Witch. Apr. 26, 9:00 p.m. $5.

Product with Ugly Sex God. Apr. 30, 9:00 p.m. $3-$5.

Psyrup with Mammoth Salmon, Old Kingdom. May 2, 9:30 p.m. $5.

Green Jello with Headless Pez, Wade Graham, 30 Pound Test. May 15, 9:00 p.m. $10.

Dr. Know. June 14, 9:00 p.m. $10.

UK Subs. June 18, 9:00 p.m. $15.

Adolescents with Weirdos. July 13, 9:00 p.m. $20.

As “UC Oregon,” the University of Oregon has a fair share of Bay Areans who will likely return home for the spring. Some of y’all may have tickets for Outside Lands. If not and you’re still trying to go, good luck affording rent next year, but if so, here are some of the hottest acts to see at the Bay Area’s biggest music festival.

Go see:

D’Angelo. He’ll probably flake and be replaced by someone like Eminem, which is a shame, because he’s a strong candidate for the title of funkiest man alive. Come just for “Sugah Daddy.”
Elton John. Elton John is the wildest, queerest, most theatrical man in rock–and he entirely makes up for the booking of Sam Smith, the most self-hating gay pop star since Little Richard. 10 points for every bro you spot rapping “Super Rich Kids” to “Bennie & The Jets.”
Odesza. Wanna chill out late in the night? After presumably descending from a spaceship shaped like a swan, Seattle’s sweetest, smoothest chillwave duo will touch down in Golden Gate Park and vibrate you to your core.
St. Vincent. Annie Clark is maybe indie rock’s best guitarist, and she matches her skills at the fretboard with her sheer, scary confidence onstage.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra. For all the gearheads out there. Their recent work has leaned more towards generic indie-synthpop, but they’re still one of the best power trios in modern rock. 

Honorable Mentions:

Dan Deacon. The wildest man in electro comes to Outside Lands, fresh off the most normal album of his career. Still, he might play something from Spiderman of the Rings. Shout “Crystal Cat” as loud as you can!
Kendrick Lamar. I mean, come on, he’s the Tupac of his generation.
Mac DeMarco. Maybe he’ll stick his thumb up his butt. Maybe.
Tame Impala. Though their new singles lean towards generic ’80s pastiche, they’re a hell of a band as long as they stick to the classic-leaning psych of their first two albums.
Toro Y Moi – Though Chaz Bundick doesn’t usually play long, he’s never written a bad song, and you’re guaranteed at least twenty minutes worth of the best pop music of the last five years.

Don’t bother:
Billy Idol. 10 bucks he’ll say something absolutely awful to a female member of the audience.
G-Eazy. Macklemore was at Outside Lands last year. Buy a time machine.
RL Grime. Not actual grime.
Sam Smith. Unless you’re trying to fall asleep at the park and get carried off by security.