Concert Previews

From their antipodean home of Dunedin, New Zealand, in the 1980s, the Clean were the secret architects of '90s American indie rock. The catchy, droning, experimental guitar sounds crafted by brothers David and Hamish Kilgour with Robert Scott provided the blueprint for angular indie luminaries and professed fans such as Pavement and Yo La Tengo. The band's releases have been few and far between, thanks to side projects (like Scott's the Bats) and Hamish's move to New York; tours have been rarer still. Their most recent release, 2009's Mister Pop, furthers the band's penchant for jangly melodicism mixed with murky, moody bits. For their first Philadelphia appearance since 2007, the Clean again make the rounds with Columbus, Ohio's, noisy, frenetic Times New Viking, another band that owes them a stylistic debt of gratitude.

Simone Felice has found the perfect venue to present songs from his new solo album: He and his band play the First Unitarian Church Side Chapel on Friday night, and his hushed acoustic songs possess a reverential seriousness appropriate for a pew-lined room. Felice was the drummer in the Felice Brothers and the leader of The Duke & The King; he's also a writer of stories and novels. The folk songs on his self-titled record often start with characters - "Bobby Ray," "Stormy-eyed Sarah," "Courtney Love," "Ballad of Sharon Tate" - but turn into meditations on loneliness, commitment, and loss. Although Felice has help on the album - from his brothers, from members of Mumford & Sons, from a children's choir - the focus is on his gentle acoustic guitar strumming and his softly sincere voice, and they should sound all the more freighted in the intimate venue.

The combination of L.A.-based, Cambodian-inspired rock group Dengue Fever and Syrian folk-pop singer Omar Souleyman promises to be one of the most-inspired double bills of the year. Dengue Fever began performing covers of '60s Cambodian pop and psychedelic tunes in the early 2000s and started writing original material soon after, performing in both Khmer and English. The band has since released four LPs, all chock-full of jangly rhythms and eerie, ethereal vocals, an unexpected blend of James Bond-esque escapades and Bollywood sentimentality. Souleyman, meanwhile, was singing at weddings in the early 1990s before cassette tapes of his performances garnered him attention domestically and internationally. With modified synth and drum machines, frenetic beats, and impassioned vocals, Souleyman melds the convivial folk songs of the Middle East with Western techno beats.

      - Katherine Silkaitis