This week? – kinda packed! Weekend? – kinda calm…

Not sure why, but the week is full of shows, but a little sparse for the weekend. Couple theories- it’s Father’s Day weekend; or more likely, bands are traveling to and from bigger festivals and making a weeknight local stop – Bonnaroo was the previous weekend, and numerous regional festivals are the following weekend.

Speaking of, Phase Fest is in KCKS at Legends on June 20, celebrating the emo pop-punk of the early 2000s, which we neglected to mention below.

Let’s take look at the Kansas City / Lawrence KS metro musical happenings for the upcoming week of June 16th-June 20th.

(ticket hyperlinks are embedded in each show’s headline)

MONDAY JUNE 16

MJ Lenderman w/ Colin Miller, June 16, Truman, $40.52

North Carolina native MJ Lenderman and his band, The Wind, have extended their 2025 North American Tour into September including a return trip to the area. So, second chances can come true if you missed them in Lawrence earlier in the year, in a show that was long sold out (or just need to see them again, which we get).

Last year was huge for Lenderman as he released his critically acclaimed Manning Fireworks LP. The nine-track collection was among many Best Albums Of The Year lists and the ensemble features guitarist Jon Samuels, bassist Landon George, pianist Ethan Baechtold, drummer Colin Miller and Xandy Chelmis on dobro and fiddle. The new leg starts in Indianapolis on June 14, then plays St. Louis before hitting KC. Drummer Miller opens with some new music of his own, so arrive early.

Faun, June 16, Granada Theater- Lawrence,$30

The acclaimed pagan folk band are here and have a new single ‘Lament’, a track that taps into the mournful power of myth, ritual, and grief, an old pre-Christian mourning song from the north of England. The band have extended this song by a few verses and turned it into an epic and emotional dirge with choirs, drums and old instruments.

The band comments: “With a choir of four singers from FAUN, with hurdy-gurdy, flute, key fiddle and lure (Celtic long trumpet), we dedicated this song to their friend and sound engineer, Jürgen Schneider, who tragically passed away in 2023, after more than ten years of travelling and concerts together.”

Their current World HEX Tour 2025.takes them all over the world: the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Europe and the UK, and includes many festival dates too.

Their twelfth album HEX was just announced for a Sept 5 release.

TUESDAY JUNE 17

Static X / Gwar, w/ Dope, June 17, $48.32-$179.44

UPDATE: Moved to Uptown Theater

Static-X‘s original “Wisconsin Death Trip” lineup of Tony Campos (bass), Koichi Fukuda (guitar) and Ken Jay (drums) along with current vocalist/guitarist Xer0, celebrates the record’s 25^th anniversary and brings its “evil disco” extravaganza on the road in 2025 for the “Machines Vs Monsters” tour, which kicked off May 23 in Tucson, AZ. Special guests Gwar, Dope, and A Killer’s Confession are also along for the ride.

In a recent interview with Rock News Weekly, Campos spoke about the band’s plans for the year: “There’s some stuff in the works for North America. The only thing that’s confirmed right now is Europe in the summer. And then we’re hoping to get the documentary done and out by next year. We’re still finishing it up… I think it’s gonna be cool, man. It’s gonna be a really cool look back at the history of the band and the history of [late STATIC-X frontman] Wayne [Static] and how he affected all our lives.”

After original bandleader Wayne Static died in Nov 2014, mixing Xanax and other powerful prescription drugs with alcohol, most assumed the band was forever gone after they released six studio albums and Static was already pursuing a solo career. With this rebirth, album “Project Regeneration Vol. 1” came out in July 2020 and the new “Project Regeneration: Vol. 2”, arrived last January.

Shock rock legends Gwar continue their 40th anniversary celebration with the release of their new single, “The Great Circus Train Disaster,” the second track from their upcoming multimedia release ‘The Return of Gor Gor,’ out July 25 via Pit Records/Z2 Comics.

The new single arrives with an animated adventure that captures the mayhem and madness only Gwar can deliver. Guitarist Grodius Maximus comments on the song:

“The song just kinda came to us one day while we were all hanging out injecting ketamine and crushed-up insects into our dick holes. We were f****d up for days as we experienced hallucinations of charred clown bodies, lobster people impaled on stalagmites, and the unholy image of our pet baby dinosaur being whored out as sexual meat to a greasy mass of scabies encrusted republicans and greased up catholic priests. When we came to, the song was fully formed. All we had to do was hit record and BOOM…’The Great Circus Train Disaster’ was born…”

I’m With Her, w/ Mason Via, Wild, Clear and Blue, June 17, Kauffman, $44-$84

Folk supergroup I’m With Her has returned with their sophomore album, Wild And Clear And Blue, out last month via Rounder Records. The trio of Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins is out on tour in support of the album, which features lead single, “Ancient Light.” Their debut album, the Grammy Award-nominated See You Around, came out in 2018 and we caught the group live that year in St Paul, MN.

“When we write together it’s almost like we’re a three-headed creature—there’s never any need to take ownership of ideas, and always an ease of letting go when something isn’t working,” O’Donovan explained.

“Sometimes in the studio songs end up losing a bit of their sparkle, but with this record everything kept tumbling forward in a very natural, positive way,” Watkins said.

“Because we’ve played together so much at this point, we have a much stronger sense of what we’re capable of creating together,” Jarosz stated. “We wanted to be open to anything on this record and give ourselves more space for the solo sections to really breathe.”

Arrive early for bluegrass-country rising star, Mason Via, who was previously in town during the annual Folk Alliance International conference. He’s a former (and youngest ever) member of Old Crow Medicine Show, now solo with a new, self-titled album released April 24th on Mountain Fever Records.

Provoker w RIP Swirl, June 17, recordBar, $20

Jonathon Lopez started Provoker as a solo effort, designing scores for sci-fi and horror films. Vocalist and songwriter Christian Crow Petty and bassist Wil Palacios later joined Lopez, creating the beloved synth pop trio that is today. Body Jumper — an exploration of virtual worlds — was their first studio album in 2021, following it with the fantasy-inspired Demon Compass two years later. The LA-based band has just released their third record, Mausoleum, published by Swedish indie label YEAR0001.

Jack’s Mannequin, June 17, The Truman, sold out

Coming out of the Wilderness, Jack’s Mannequin is one of the many musical projects helmed by Andrew McMahon, who cut his teeth in the early 2000s with the pop-punk/piano band Something Corporate before spreading his creative wings and taking on new challenges.

The band has reformed for a 20th anniversary tour, its first proper tour since officially going on hiatus in 2012. The band has released a total of three studio albums, with both their sophomore LP The Glass Passenger (2008) and third and final album People and Things (2011) entering the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart.

McMahon also founded the Dear Jack Foundation in 2006, a nonprofit which provides impactful programming that directly benefits adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer in order to improve quality of life and create positive health outcomes from treatment to survivorship for patients and their families.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 18

The Head and the Heart, June 18, Uptown, $75.45-$241

Seattle’s The Head and the Heart have returned with their sixth studio LP, Aperture, released on May 9 via Verve Forecast. The 12-song album marks their first self-produced album since their 2011 self-titled debut and features lead single, “After the Setting Sun.” We’re big fans, having seen them regularly over the past fifteen years, most recently in Minnesota last summer and before that, in Kansas City on a co-headlining tour out at Starlight.

“For me, Aperture represents the choice we all must make between resigning ourselves to darkness or letting the light in and recognizing our own agency to do so,” the band’s Matty Gervais explains in a release. “It feels relevant to the times, in that we’re literally choosing between authoritarianism vs. democracy. Ignorance vs. enlightenment on a macro scale, and complacency/cynicism vs. hope, empathy and perseverance on the micro scale. To me, it sums up a lot of what each of these songs is grappling with in some form and what we’ve collectively gone through as a band. It’s about choosing hope again and again, no matter how many times it may feel that you have lost it.”

Futurebirds and Anna Graves scheduled to open.

Artemas, June 18, Truman, $40-$41

Artemas Diamandis, known professionally as Artemas, is an English singer, songwriter and record producer. He is best known for his singles “If U Think I’m Pretty” and the viral “I Like the Way You Kiss Me” and is signed to the record label 10K Projects. He emerged from his bedroom studio during 2020’s lockdown with a sound that’s equal parts alt-grunge, dark R&B, and dreamlike pop.

His breakout moment came with ‘i like the way you kiss me,’ which topped the Billboard Global 200, went RIAA platinum, and currently sits at over 1.7 billion global streams and his ‘yustyna’ mixtape debuted at #4 on the Global Spotify Chart.

THURSDAY JUNE 19

Perfume Genius June 19, the Truman, $44.27

Mike Hadreas — who has been performing as Perfume Genius for more than a decade, is out in support of his latest release, Glory, which was released March 28th via Matador. Glory sees Hadreas reunite with producer Blake Mills for what is described as his “most directly confessional” album to date, tackling themes of fame, isolation, and aging, especially focusing on how gay culture addresses one’s older years.

“There’s a map for the first part,” he explained in a statement. “There’re books about hustlers and drinking and drugs and going out. And then, after that, there’s not a lot.” We last caught the group live in Minneapolis in 2017, so are overdue to catch up with the live show and newer music.

National Touring act coming to Kansas City, Lawrence, KS, Topeka, KS, or vicinity? Let us know so we can spotlight the appearance-email johnc@weheartmusic.com