An artist who, according to American Blues Scene magazine, “plays a head-spinning variety of styles … never failing to excite the listener,” the Florida-based J.P. Soars and his band The Red Hots play a May 28 concert presented by the Mississippi Valley Blues Society, their engagement at Rock Island's Riverfront Grille demonstrating why BluesSource.com wrote, “Soars can stroke, persuade, bend, and stretch notes from places other guitarists haven't even heard of.”

Described by Glide magazine as “a self-assured powerhouse” who “will knock your socks off with her smart, unpretentious rock and roll,” the Nashville-based Ruby Boots performs as the headliner in a May 15 Moeller Nights concert, demonstrating why LouderSound.net lauded her “artfully scruffed alt-country songwriting” and “powerful, versatile, wide-open voice.”

Lauded by PopMatters for “the band's playfulness with both sound design and the use of sound effects,” the Los Angeles-based experimental rockers of Xiu Xiu headline a May 18 Rozz-Tox concert in support of their 2019 release Girl with Basket of Fruit, the band's 14th studio album and a recording that Spill magazine called “a Finnegan's Wake of sound which deserves to be placed on a level with some of the famous works of art that it samples and references.”

Delivering what NoDepression.com calls “a daring blend of innovative modern swagger and classic Americana cool which dares listeners not to come along for the ride,” the bluegrass, hip-hop, and country-rap artists of Gangstagrass play a special free concert at Davenport's Redstone Room on May 10, producing a singular sound that, according to Essentially Pop, “smashes every borderline, every genre, every preconceived idea of what a bluegrass hip-hop fusion might sound like.”