Baby Dee

Baby Dee is a classically trained harpist, a transgender person who worked circus freak shows, a cabaret singer attracted equally by the sacred and the profane. On Safe Inside the Day, her third album, she gets help from indie rock vets such as Will Oldham, Matt Sweeney, Andrew WK and Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons, with whom she shares a willingness to revel in overwrought emotions). It's a strange and wonderful record full of creepy, unsettling fairy tales and childhood remembrances, caught somewhere between Brecht/Weill's show tunes, Nina Simone's earthy anger, and Tom Waits' streetwise humor. She brings her act to the Tin Angel for a late show on Saturday, with two gauzy openers from Greg Weeks' local freak folk community, Meg Baird and Ex Reverie.

- Steve Klinge

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Concert Previews

Joe Henry

He may be Madonna's brother-in-law, but Joe Henry's name is a lot less familiar than many of the folks whose acclaimed records he's produced, including Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco and Solomon Burke.

Yet among contemporary singer-songwriters, the adventurous Henry has few peers. This last year, he delivered two winning products: his endearing score for the hit movie Knocked Up, and his own knockout CD Civilians, which combined earthy folk with a sort of smoky jazz club ambience. But Henry's got 10 full albums worth of songs to choose from Wednesday night, all of which have their share of emotionally complex lyrics and strikingly bold melodies. For his current tour, he's keeping the sound lean and mean with backing from Dave Piltch on bass and Jay Bellerose on drums.

- Nicole Pensiero

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Joe Henry plays with guest the Last Town Chorus at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St. Tickets: $25 and $40. Phone: 215-222-1400.

Dan Deacon

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From The Wire to the Baltimore club music scene that's emerging from its cocoon, thanks in part to Philadelphia artists and producers like Spank Rock and Diplo, the Maryland capital also known as Charm City has an ever-growing pop cultural profile these days. Add electronic music party-starting geek Dan Deacon, who renames his hometown "Wham City" on his Spiderman of the Rings album, which hurtles forward with tinny beep-beeping momentum. Deacon's mission is turn experimental music into the stuff of sing-along audience participation, and it works: You rarely see a photo of the beefy, bespectacled guy where he's not in the middle of a mosh pit, leading a mass of sweaty indie kids toward cathartic release.

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- Dan DeLuca

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Dan Deacon with Ultimate Reality plays with Mincemeat or Tenspeed and Jeff Brown Duplex at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St. Tickets: $12. Phone: 866-468-7619, www.r5productions.com

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Baby Dee plays with Meg Baird and Ex Reverie at 10:30 p.m. Saturday at the Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St. Tickets: $10. Phone: 215-928-0770.

OneRepublic

Ryan Tedder, the chief songwriter/frontman of OneRepublic, knows his way around the pop charts. Having already cowritten and produced for Hilary Duff, Ashley Tisdale and J.Lo, Tedder broke airplay records with his own band last year when Timbaland reconfigured the creeping, Maroon 5-ish ballad "Apologize" into a beatwise Top 40 smash. Expect OneRepublic's breakthrough album, Dreaming Out Loud, to capitalize even harder in months to come on the gap between Justin Timberlake's new-jack revival and the Fray's piano-oriented, adult contemporary ballads. The sexy "Stop and Stare" seems especially poised to steal your girlfriend, though I'd keep my eye on "Won't Stop," too. Watch your back, Adam Levine: These guys are just one SNL Digital Short away from total media conquest.

- Dan Weiss

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OneRepublic plays with Eric Hutchinson and the Daylights at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Trocadero, 1003 Arch St. Tickets: $17.50 in advance, $20 day of show. Phone: 215-922-5483.

Toumani Diabate

You could wait for next Thursday to hear the African highlife-influenced indie rock of Vampire Weekend at First Unitarian Church, or get your Afro-pop fix straight from the source at World Cafe Live on Sunday. Toumani Diabate, born in Bamako, Mali, plays the kora, a 21-string cross between a harp and a lute, and you could say music is in his blood: He's said to come from a line of 71 Malian kora players. Of late, he's tickled world music fans' fancy with In the Heart of the Moon, his beautifully contemplative 2005 collaboration with the late Ali Farka Toure, released his jauntier 2006 album, Boulevard de l'Independance, with his Symmetric Orchestra, and collaborated with Bjork on her 2007 album, Volta.

- Dan DeLuca

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Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra plays with Gina Ferrera with GYIL Fusion at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St. Tickets: $35-$40. Phone: 215-222-1400, www.worldcafelive.com.

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