Ian Walsh

Like Jack Johnson before him, 19-year-old Ian Walsh is a good-looking surfer-turned-songwriter with his eyes trained on mainstream success. He may hail from Hockessin, Del., and tend toward moody full-band rock, but his glossy new album, Please Remember, sticks strictly to the commercial-radio playbook, with much emphasis on ringing hooks and dramatic song structures. Walsh's world-weary emoting is high in the mix, as are universal lyrics about love and loss. He's shooting for the most accessible songs possible, and the likely single, "Unhappy Ending," pushes all the right buttons. Skillfully striking a balance between pouting and empowering, Walsh's songs are big, crunchy and rimmed with melancholy, finding fist-pumping choruses amid everyday disappointment.

- Doug Wallen

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Ian Walsh with Crash Motive, John Faye, Fooling April and Susan Steen at 7:30 Wednesday at World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St. Tickets: $13-$18. Phone: 215-247-1300.

Fleet Foxes

The joy of harmony singing: That's at the center of the refreshing debut from Seattle's Fleet Foxes. Helmed by young Robin Pecknold, but including veterans from Pedro the Lion and Crystal Skulls, Fleet Foxes relish reverb-soaked voices stylistically rooted in the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Zombies, with hints of traditional sacred harp singing and doo-wop (especially on the gorgeous, roundlike "White Winter Hymnal"). Like their Northwest peers Band of Horses or their Southern forebears My Morning Jacket, Fleet Foxes favor country-tinged, finger-picked guitars and don't shy from grand moments that reach skyward. And like the Shins, they arrange their songs with unpredictable but seamless twists. Despite all those musical reference points, Fleet Foxes sound like themselves: soaring, timeless, joyful.

- Steve Klinge

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Fleet Foxes with the Duchess and Duke at 8 p.m. Tuesday at First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St. Tickets: $10 advance; $12 day of show. Phone: 1-866-468-7619.

Rachid Taha

At 49, Franco-Algerian electro-rai-rocker Rachid Taha might be a bit young or simply too unknown to American ears for the Rock el Casbah: The Best of Rachid Taha collection that comes out in two weeks. But then again, with his gruff, cackling croon and the rarefied antiquity of his ferocious sound, despite its tech-heavy feel, Taha comes across as a centuries-old punk. That's a compliment. Using traditional chaabi instrumentation (mandolute, oud), florid Bollywood arrangements, and the grimy force of the grouchiest rock, Taha's electronically tweaked tunes such as "Douce France" and "Ya Rayah" feel as ancient as they do futuristic. Taha's best songs breathe with the rebel prose of the Algerian Berber masters. Yet for kids who fear the unknown mysteries of the chaabi musicality and Indian-inspired strings, there's always Taha's brutish, brooding version of the Clash's "Rock the Casbah" to warm their hearts and ease their minds.

- A.D. Amorosi

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Rachid Taha plays at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center, 260 S. Broad St. Tickets: $20. Phone: 215-893-1999, www.kimmelcenter.org.