Dan DeLuca's picks: Kendrick Lamar, Marlon James, Marty Stuart, and more

Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry." Compton, Calif., rapper Lamar heightens anticipation for the wish-it-would- come-out-already follow-up to his 2012 album, good kid, M.A.A.D. City, with this deep, dense, unsparing, and soul-searching song about African American identity. It borrows its title from Wallace Thurman's 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel.

Go-Betweens, "G Stands For Go-Betweens: Volume 1 1978-1984." A thorough and exhaustive box-set journey through the early years of the great, bookish, Brisbane, Australia, indie-pop band fronted by Robert Forster and the late Grant McClennan. The package includes a silk-screen poster promoting the band's fan-boy first single, "Lee Remick." A treat for true fans, on Domino Records.

Marlon James. Jamaican- born author of the dazzling Bob Marley-inspired 2014 novel A Brief History of Seven Killings heads up a fiction-writers triple bill, with LaShonda Katrice Bennett and Bridgett M. Davis. Thursday at the Free Library.

A Place to Bury Strangers. Oliver Ackermann's New York noise-rock band and Jesus & Mary Chain acolytes headline a triple bill in support of its new album, Transfixiation. With Ed Schrader's Music Beat and Pink Wash. Wednesday at Underground Arts.

Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives. Country singer and bandleader Stuart is also a photographer. His coffee-table book, American Ballads, accompanied a show last year at the Frist Center for the Arts in Nashville. He splits his honky-tonk and sacred- music proclivities down the middle on his double album, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning. Two shows Friday at the Sellersville Theater.