By Karen Muller

It’s that time of year again. Boston Calling is almost here, and we’re here with daily artist-by-artist rundowns to help you determine which sets to stake out, which new acts to catch, and when you’ll be safe to hit up the food trucks without missing a beat.

Grey Season: 1:00, Red Stage

Genre: Folk Rock

Recommended If You Like: Frank Turner, The Ballroom Thieves

Boston’s own Grey Season kicks off the weekend by picking up where Friday night leaves off, blending familiar folk acoustics with five-part harmonies, electrified melodies, and rambling bluegrass banjo. They were recently hailed by Billboard for rallying an impressive crowd during “arguably the worst time slot” at Bonnaroo, and this time around they won’t even have to deal with competing stages.

Essential Listen: Satellites

 

Skylar Spence: 1:35, JetBlue Stage

Genre: Electropop

Recommended If You Like: Capital Cities, Last Dinosaurs

In the spirit of city pride, we can almost claim Skylar Spence (formerly known as Saint Pepsi, newly monikered thanks to trademark drama) as local talent: he has roots as a former BC kid. Like so many Bostonian artists before him, he’s Brooklyn-based now, and he’s shaking up bigger dance floors with his LP Prom King, which dropped last week. Between silky synths, nu-disco beats, and playful sampling, he’ll bring the party atmosphere to lead into the weekend’s most upbeat day. Check out the full story behind his name change and new LP with AP’s recent interview.

Essential Listen: Fiona Coyne

 

Doomtree: 2:20, Red Stage

Genre: Alt Hip-Hop

Recommended If You Like: Kendrick Lamar, spoken word

Boston Calling has never been big on hip-hop, but its curators have represented the genre by cherry-picking its biggest innovators for the past few festivals. Thankfully, they’re sticking to that habit this time around with Minneapolis-based hip-hop collective Doomtree, the collaborative effort of 5 MCs and 2 producers who trade off rapid-fire wordplay and measured choruses against sizzling electronic beats. Their dynamic structures are complex enough to make comparisons difficult—no one sounds enough like them to make such observations worthwhile—but those intricacies build an equally strong argument for why they’re worth seeing live. If you get hooked, you’re in luck: most of the crew’s members also head up promising independent projects.

Essential Listen: Final Boss

 

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: 3:05, JetBlue Stage

Genre: Rock

Recommended If You Like: Guided By Voices, Thurston Moore

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks bring a much-needed dose of guitar-slinging rock to the weekend, not to mention a sudden spike in the festival’s Cool Dad population. Though the band lives in the slight shadow of its frontman’s past success with Pavement, it’s worth appreciating in its own right for cleverly careening lyrics and inventive arrangements. Still, all that talent might not be enough to shake the one question on holdover fans’ minds: Will they play any Pavement songs? We can hope.

Essential Listen: Lariat

 

Sturgill Simpson: 4:00, Red Stage

Genre: Country

Recommended If You Like: Jason Isbell, Willie Nelson

Following suit with the curators’ recent tendency to spice up lineups with slightly out-there picks (you might call it the Tigerman WOAH factor), Saturday’s bill takes an unexpected twist with country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson. Good news: he isn’t of the bro-country ilk, and he’s miles away from singing about solo cups ’n pickup trucks. There’s an authentic twang here, and he’s often described as an artist of “outlaw country”, which is possibly the most badass-sounding subcategory of the entire lineup. Expect a sound that’s raw and honky-tonk-infused, and probably going to result in one of the most divisive performances of the weekend.

Essential Listen: Turtles All the Way Down

 

Father John Misty: 4:55, JetBlue Stage

Genre: Folk

Recommended If You Like: Mac DeMarco, Andrew Bird

Acoustic snark machine Father John Misty lives to mess with expectations. Just this week he released his own one-upping cover of Ryan Adams’ cover of Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space”, and as if that wasn’t enough, he did it in the style of the Velvet Underground. If you know nothing else about him, know that it was hardly a one-off joke: though he may sing sweetly, his first-glance earnestness is pervaded by weary wit. He’s charmingly sincere on occasion, but seems more interested in sizing up everything from one-night stands to his own performances through the scope of self-aware sarcasm. A proponent of live-show gimmicks, he once framed a stage with a giant iPhone screen cutout, with the implied message that most of the crowd would’ve seen it that way anyway. The opportunity to indulge in similar hijinks on a festival scale might just be too good for him to pass up.

Essential Listen: I Love You, Honeybear

 

Walk The Moon: 6:00, Red Stage

Genre: Pop Rock

Recommended If You Like: Grouplove, Two Door Cinema Club

Walk The Moon is responsible for a couple strong “song of the summer” candidates in recent memory (“Anna Sun” back in 2012 and “Shut Up and Dance” this past summer), so it’s only fitting that they’re a part of the season’s last hurrah. They self-categorize as an alt-rock outfit and sound closer to straight-up pop, but regardless of what you call it, there’s no fighting their massive choruses. To get right down to it, their music doesn’t need much explaining: it’s been so ubiquitous that there’s almost no way you could’ve avoided it if you’ve spent any amount of time in a bar, restaurant, or grocery store over the past six months.

Essential Listen: Shiver Shiver

 

Chromeo: 7:05, JetBlue Stage

Genre: Electropop

Recommended If You Like: Cut Copy, Calvin Harris

In step with the day’s upbeat lineup, Chromeo’s modern funk set kicks off the evening’s plunge into electronica. The Montreal-based duo specialize in smooth hooks (about women and pretty much nothing else) and poppified beats. Think of them as this millennium’s version of Hall and Oates, but in a cool way. If you’ve ever dreamt of participating in a sunlit dance party on government property, this is your chance.

Essential Listen: Jealous (I Ain’t With It)

 

Chvrches: 8:10, Red Stage

Genre: Electropop

Recommended If You Like: Purity Ring, The Naked and Famous

If there was ever a time to catch Glaswegian trio Chvrches live, this is it. Amid a massive international tour and fresh off Friday’s release of sophomore album Every Open Eye, this is the first time the group is returning to Boston since its big break back in 2013. Lacing ebullient melodies with dark lyrics about relationship struggles, their music explores a different side of electronica from the day’s other synth-driven sets. There’s a decidedly emo element to their songwriting, but it’s disguised in a glossy, 2015-appropriate package that makes them an upper or downer depending on your current mood. In full festival force, they’ll be an upper for sure.

Essential Listen: Leave A Trace

 

Alt-J: 9:35, JetBlue Stage

Genre: Indie Rock(ish)

Recommended If You Like: Bombay Bicycle Club, MGMT

“Indie rock” is a fickle term. Alt-J is decidedly more of an indie rock band than it is anything else, but thanks to its quirky electronic compositions and elaborately layered vocals, that doesn’t feel like a fair way to sum them up. If you haven’t listened to them before, imagine a disenchanted college a capella group that’s finally gotten ahold of some instruments and devoted itself to crafting metaphors so obtuse that they almost distract from their own dirtiness. Will we be able to make out what they’re saying on Saturday night? Probably not, but that’s not the point. Alt-J’s artistry lies beyond melody or meaning alone, simultaneously setting a mood and forcing you to feel a part of the moment.

Essential Listen: Breezeblocks