Gear up for Treasure Island Music Festival this weekend. Or, if you can't handle crowds, more intimate musical gems happening this week.

Monday: Mutual Benefit at The Independent

Bandleader Jordan Lee admits that the Mutual Benefit story has been somewhat romanticized in the media, but one listen to his band’s album Love's Crushing Diamond makes you want to believe their fairy tale-y story. Lee has bounced around the country — from Ohio to Austin to Boston to now Brooklyn — rallying bandmembers at various points along the way, adding a classically trained violinist here, an angelic vocalist yonder. But there’s more to it — each bandmember and instrument is clearly a strategic gesture. All players harmonize brilliantly with Lee’s hushed otherworldly lead vocals in no random terms. Judge for yourself:

Monday: London Philharmonic at Davies Symphony Hall

Audiences can expect two very different sentiments in tonight’s London Philharmonic visit, featuring: A) the major-chord uplift of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and B) the urgent tenacity of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Tuesday: Cloud Nothings at the Chapel

Cloud Nothings headline the Culture Collide mini-festival Tuesday, “collide” being the unintended operative word here. Cloud Nothings thrash through songs and sets, bodies inevitably colliding with bodies in their moshed-up wake. Four albums into a still-young career, the Ohio natives have aced at least their last two efforts, Attack on Memory (2012) and Here and Nowhere Else (2014), two albums that re-re-position punk as a thinking-man’s genre.

Thursday: James Murphy DJ Set at Public Works

“That's how it starts / We go back to your house / We check the charts / And start to figure it out / And if it's crowded, all the better / Because we know we're gonna be up late / But if you're worried about the weather / Then you picked the wrong place to stay / That's how it starts.” Mr. Murphy, seven years later, your words still make us want to party until 4am. And, as we vowed, we’ll frequent your DJ sets on the one-percent chance you’ll play "All My Friends," surrounded by all of our friends. 

Friday: SBTRKT at Fox Theater

Rave reviews are pouring in for SBTRKT’s latest bombshell of an album, Wonder Where We Land. Producer Aaron Jerome checks off all the boxes: layered songcraft, unexpected sonic navigation, innovative deployment of varied lyricists, etc. Paste sums it up succinctly, saying: “There’s a distinct vision and calculated collective involved in Wonder Where We Land. Jerome still has singer Sampha by his side for much of the record, but it’s the rest of the collective that puts the bow on this gift.”

Follow @ChrisTrenchard on Twitter for more words like these.