10 Not-To-Miss Concerts In The Boston Area This Spring

Spring has not yet technically sprung, but music in Boston and Cambridge is already awaking from its winter slumber, with artists embarking on album release tours and spring festivals emerging on the horizon.

Below are 10 local live music events not to miss this season.

The Ottawa DJ collective A Tribe Called Red is the musical incarnation of the modern indigenous rights movement: It's tenacious in its messaging and expansive in its tastes. The group’s third album, “We Are the Halluci Nation,” mixes hip-hop beats and EDM drops with traditional pow wow drums and vocals.

With the Boston Underground Summit, the local underground music promoter Boston Hassle injects energy and spunk into the concert-going experience. The event's ninth installation will feature nine bands that range from lo-fi hip-hop to post hardcore to ambient experimentalism. They'll trade songs round-robin style on three stages.

New York City’s first all-female, Latin Grammy-nominated mariachi group is as creative and charismatic as it is novel. Clad in spiffy embroidered mariachi suits, the members of Mariachi Flor de Toloache captivate with breathtaking vocal harmonies and dazzling musicianship.

Boston’s beloved DIY weirdos, Pile, return with a new full-length album “A Hairshirt of Purpose.” The two singles released thus far see the band in fine form, careening from muted melancholy to crashy dissonance, with characteristic eccentricity and guts.

Ladyfest — a loosely linked series of grassroots festivals that emerged in 2000 from the feminist frenzy of the Riot Grrrl movement — is at last resurrected, debuting in Boston in 2012. The 2017 iteration aims to cast a wider net, spotlighting trans musicians and artists of color among its many performers during a weekend of concerts, workshops and potlucks. Among the lineup's many local acts is singer-songwriter Judy Chong, featured in the video above.

The Grammy-winning Tuareg outfit brings its hypnotic, relentlessly groovy brand of Malian blues to Boston in support of its new album “Elwan."

Now well into the third decade of her prolific career, the poet rock luminary is as searching and uncompromising as ever.

Fans of traditional Irish music will undoubtedly recognize some famous names in the The Gloaming’s lineup, including fiddle legend Martin Hayes and his longtime musical partner, guitarist Dennis Cahill. The group offers more than mere supergroup schtick. It trades in penetrating subtlety, offering a tantalizing vision of folk music’s transcendent potential.

Since she burst into the cultural consciousness with her Grammy-winning neo-soul classic “Baduizm,” Erykah Badu has mellowed into a kind of spiritual godmother to today’s progressive-minded hip-hop and R&B artists. She is, of course, as enchanting as ever, and perhaps even a little more carefree.

D.C. rapper and producer Oddisee possesses a nimble flow and an expansive ear. Though perhaps his greatest talent is the ability to channel an excess of ideas — lyrical, musical, intellectual — through the purifying filter of the heart.