Jacuzzi Boys | Mon 30 Apr | Hare & Hounds | £8.80
If Jacuzzi Boys started out with the equivalent of garage-rock molasses – a kind of Pinkerton-by-way-of-Liars sonic treacle with frontman Gabriel Alcala sing-droning “DIE” over the top – then their last album, ‘Ping Pong’, was a sweet white sugar rush in comparison. But don’t let that fool you – these Miami pranksters have barely refined themselves at all, and they’re as raucous as ever. seetickets.com

Yo La Tengo | Tue 1 May | Town Hall | £23
Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley are the stuff of indie filmmakers’ dreams: two New Yorkers straight out of art school, who fell in love and formed a band in the mid-eighties: cue cult status and a couple of fuzzed-out masterpieces. Don’t miss these art rock godfathers and humble legends. See our full preview here.

Her’s | Wed 2 May | Hare & Hounds | £8.80
Hazy post-punk, dream-pop, beach-scuzz: call it what you will, but Her’s are one of the finest examples of the current explosion of 80s revivalists combining Peter Hook-style chugging krautrock basslines with dreamy, jangling guitars and crooning angst. Tune in, bliss out, and enjoy some surfy, soothing tongue-in-cheek misery. seetickets.com

Vundabar | Thu 3 May | Sunflower Lounge | £8.25
Boston alt-rock band Vundabar hit gold with this year’s ‘Smell Smoke’, a cathartic, state-of-the-moment album filled with fear, anxiety, joy and bounding riffs with the infectious energy of a badly trained puppy. There’s a raw, turned-up-to-eleven intensity at work that’s pure Boston, drawn from the same well as grunge-poppers Krill, not to mention their greater ancestors, Pixies. seetickets.com

Mexrissey | Thu 3 May | O2 Institute | £20.50
Mexico’s answer to Manchester’s arch-miserablist, Morrissey, saunter into town again at the O2 Institute: this time paying tribute to classic Smiths album The Queen is Dead – or ‘La Reina is Dead’, if you will. Ditch the tribute band misconceptions – Mexrissey are something surprisingly stirring. See our full preview here.

Bruno Major | Fri 4 May | O2 Institute 3 | £11.50
Don’t be fooled by the fragmented, song-per-month release schedule of Bruno Major’s debut album: it’s as cohesive a set of jazzy, folk-pop songs you’re likely to find, held together by classical guitar, minimal electronics and soft doo-wop harmonies. If you wondered what a modern-day crooner might sound like without all the overbearing mainstream production tropes, Major is worth a spin. ticketmaster.co.uk

Gypsyfingers | Fri 4 May | The Cuban Embassy | £9.05
The ethereal folk duo Gypsyfingers make fragile, misty music, influenced by fragmented trip-hop as much as Wainwright-ian folk. Their first new music in a good few years, ‘Half World’ shows the formula at its best: immaculately constructed pop, almost awkwardly earnest until it rips into an unexpected guitar solo. Be among the first to hear whatever else they’ve been working on. skiddle.com

Pinkshinyultrablast | Sat 5 May | Castle & Falcon | £11
Self-described, once upon a time, as ‘thunder-pop’ and ‘kung-fu-gaze’, in truth there’s no describing Pinkshinyultrablast, who combine wile-out shoegaze distortion with hailstorms of electronic noise – and somewhere, in a cloud of reverb, disconcertingly feather-light vocals. Never short of stupefyingly intense, the St Petersburg four-piece stick to the ‘more is more’ maxim favoured by My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. seetickets.com

We Are Scientists | Sun 6 May | O2 Institute 3 | SOLD OUT
The indie kids who burst out the gate with ‘This Scene is Dead’ in 2006 – back when Bloc Party were the hot new thing – have outlived a helluva lot of their peers, and they’re still knocking out highly honed, glossily euphoric choruses that barely waste a minute. See our full preview here.

Amanda Palmer | Sun 6 May | Town Hall | £25.50
The undefeatable pianist-songstress Amanda Palmer is back on the road following the typically caustic, frayed emotional workout of last year’s ‘Piano is Evil’. If you never caught the infamous Dresden Dolls in their heyday – or, in fact, on their recent reunion tours – then you should know Palmer is best experienced live, where setlists get shredded and the Marmite proposition of her gothic-piano-pop becomes a truly special experience. www.thsh.co.uk