Upcoming pop concerts: King Britt/Fhloston Paradigm, Billy Joe Shaver, and Northern Arms

Well traveled and much respected Philadelphia DJ King Britt has had a storied and adventurous 20-plus-year career, with lots of bullet-point highlights, from his conceptual house-music project Sylk 130, to his days DJing with Digable Planets, to King Britt Presents: Sister Gertrude Morgan, his 2005 album that put the preaching of New Orleans sermonizer and outsider artist Sister Gertrude Morgan to music. Britt's latest intriguing move is Phoenix, an album of sci-fi Afrocentrist techno recorded under the alias Fhloston Paradigm, a play on Fhloston Paradise, the resort Bruce Willis' character visits in Luc Besson's film The Fifth Element. Britt weaves hip-hop and jazz and ethereal vocals into the mix to create a futuristic soundscape with a soulful human element. On Saturday, he plays Union Transfer, opening for Nightmares on Wax. And on Monday, he spins at Johnny Brenda's, as part of a DJ-night book party for Eilon Paz's colorful coffee-table tome Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting.

- Dan DeLuca

He may be "long in the tooth," as he audaciously semi-raps on the title song of his new album, but Billy Joe Shaver still has plenty of bite. Nearing 75, the rough-hewn Texas song poet and self-proclaimed "Wacko From Waco" is as potent as ever on his first set of new material in six years (it's due Aug. 5). He confidently balances rousing barroom honky-tonk ("Last Call for Alcohol") with sober-minded social commentary ("The Git Go") and humble romantic declarations ("I'll Love You as Much as I Can"). When he and pal Willie Nelson poignantly lament "It's hard to be an outlaw who ain't wanted anymore," Shaver is alluding not to his having shot a man outside a saloon in 2007 but to his and Willie's history in redefining country music with the Outlaw movement of the early '70s. Four decades later, these two rebels may no longer be a commercial force, but, remarkably, they're still showing how it's done.

- Nick Cristiano

Northern Arms sometimes is called Philadelphia's answer to Arcade Fire - perhaps mostly because local art-pop musicians Keith Richard Peirce and Eric Bandel's newish big band has a lot of people in it, at least 10 at last count. The longtime friends, renowned for having first penned "Last Horse" together in 2012 for their mutual pal/Tritone co-owner Rick D, have turned Northern Arms into a highly orchestrated blues-gospel-C&W ensemble with horns. Their dark, cloudy sound (at least on their newly released eponymous debut album) is nothing like Arcade Fire's bright, up-with-people tone. This doesn't mean Northern Arms, produced by Jeff Zeigler and Brian McTear, is without soul or air. Singer PJ Brown's take on the hymn-like "Flesh of Arms" is gloriously open and inviting. So too is "Let the Water Come Down" and Northern Arms' version of "Last Horse."

- A.D. Amorosi