August is the peak of the outdoor concert season, so it’s no surprise that half of the month’s live-music highlights are open-air. As always, though, there are up-and-comers worth checking out in the area’s smaller venues.
Tennessee native Zoh Amba played saxophone as a kid and debuted with a 2022 album on the label run by avant-jazz exponent John Zorn. But the new album, “Eyes Full,” finds Amba strumming guitar and singing with a distinctively cracked voice. The result is a punky brand of country blues that’s wild, strange and compelling. (Saturday at 8 p.m. at Pearl Street Warehouse, 33 Pearl St. SW. unionstagepresents.com. $21.)
Iceland is a musical powerhouse known for sounds that are often ethereal and atmospheric. One notable exception is Kaleo, a quintet whose American-style blues rock is raw and earthy. This tour celebrates the release of the 10th-anniversary edition of the band’s breakthrough album, “A/B.” The expanded version places never-heard tracks alongside such hits as the brooding “Way Down We Go.” (Aug. 8 at 8 p.m. at the Anthem, 901 Wharf St. SW. theanthemdc.com. $58-$91.)
Best known for soaring with Jefferson Airplane, guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady met as students at D.C.’s Woodrow Wilson (now Jackson-Reed) High School in the early 1960s. The duo has performed with various incarnations of trad-blues outfit Hot Tuna off and mostly on for 57 years. While the electric incarnation of Tuna did a farewell tour in 2023, the acoustic version continues to play Delta and Chicago classics with verve and heart. (Aug. 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. birchmere.com. $87 box office; $96 online.)
This tour marks the 10th anniversary of Noname’s provocative debut mixtape, “Telefone.” But the Chicago rapper and activist isn’t just looking to the past. Noname is headed forward into “the big leagues,” as she proclaims in her insistent new single, “Squatter.” (Aug. 9 at 8 p.m. at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. thehowardtheatre.com. Sold out; waiting list open.)
Part of the northern-British alt-rock continuum that stretches from the Fall to the Arctic Monkeys, the Leeds, England, quartet Yard Act deftly balances declamatory vocals, spiky guitar and boom-boom rhythms. The band’s newly released third album, “You’re Gonna Need a Little Music,” is a series of intense dialogues — among guitar, bass and drums, but also singer-lyricist James Smith’s multiple personae. (Aug. 14 at 8 p.m. (doors) at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. blackcatdc.com. $37.)
Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters will always be a stadium rock band, but the sextet’s 12th studio album, “Your Favorite Toy,” sounds almost as punky as the Northern Virginia bands in which the drummer-turned-front man got his start in the 1980s. For all the vehemence of the new material, Grohl remains a crowd-pleaser, so such old favorites as “Everlong” will surely be heard. (Aug. 17 at 5:30 p.m. at Nationals Park, 1500 S. Capitol St. SE. mlb.com/nationals/tickets/concerts/foo-fighters. $125-$292.)
If the Eagles were country rock, Jason Aldean is rock country — plaintive vocals and red-state attitude atop crunching electric guitars. His chart-topping 2008 ode to rural women, “She’s Country,” sounds more like Aerosmith than Hank Williams. The Nashville hitmaker will be joined by Luke Bryan, who has a more traditional country sound but is enough of an Aldean acolyte to have recently released a hymn to a woman who’s “Country and She Knows It.” (Aug. 20 at 4 p.m. at Nationals Park, 1500 S. Capitol St. SE. mlb.com/nationals/tickets/concerts/doubledown. $65-$341.)
Leading “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” band, Jon Batiste played plenty of pop and rock. But the three albums the pianist will release on Aug. 14 reveal his true interests: jazz and classical. Two records interpret the music of Thelonious Monk, one as “meditations” and the other as “movements”; the third album is “Black Mozart,” which features such updates as “Gospel Andante.” Batiste’s backup band for this gig is the National Symphony Orchestra, so he will probably lean into his classical repertoire. (Aug. 21 at 8 p.m. at Wolf Trap, 1551 Trap Rd., Vienna. wolftrap.org. Sold out; waiting list open.)
Dubfire and Sharam, of the Iranian-American deep house duo Deep Dish, thrilled dancers in their native D.C. for a decade before undertaking separate careers in 2006. Reunited full-time in 2024, the partners have released one single, the chill but driving “Midnight,” and have operated DJ booths at major clubs worldwide. (Aug. 22 at 6 p.m. at Berhta, 1237 W St. NE. berhtaclub.com. $36.)
Where an earlier generation of African musicians combined Indigenous folk music with American soul, rock and jazz, the Nigerian singer and rapper Asake blends hip-hop with African pop chorales. Asake’s music is lush and layered, with abundant mainstream appeal, yet retains the street-level attitude that led him to title his latest album “M$ney.” (Aug. 28 at 8:30 p.m. at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia. merriweathermusic.com. $63-$387.)
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