It’s inadvisable, let alone impossible, to ignore the news, but during this particularly distressing season, we all need at least a few nights’ worth of escape.

New York City’s April show calendar promises many opportunities to let go, whether you’re in the market for in-your-feelings pop, hip-hop-infused jazz or skull-rattling ambient metal. Read on for our top show picks for the month.

Annahstasia
Public Records, April 1-3

When asked to recommend three treasured albums in a recent interview, Los Angeles singer-songwriter Annahstasia picked one apiece from Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, and genre-blurring cult favorite Terry Callier. Her selection is telling, because like this trio of artists, Annahstasia herself operates outside of any easily defined genre.

As heard on “Tether,” her 2025 debut, she blends a deep, breathy vocal delivery with majestic fingerpicked guitar and lyrics that find poetry in vulnerability and quiet pain. It’s an arresting sound that seems to exist outside of time, and it should make for a powerful show in Public Records’ intimate confines.

Kassa Overall
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, April 2

One of the best jazz albums of 2025 focused entirely on standards, but instead of the Great American Songbook, drummer Kassa Overall’s “CREAM” drew largely on the canon of ’90s hip-hop. Leaving aside the rhyming and sampled beats he has incorporated in the past, Overall took an entirely acoustic, instrumental approach, emphasizing the strong melodic content and sturdy R&B underpinning of classics like “Big Poppa” and “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.”

The material shines in the live setting. Make sure to register before heading out to this free gig in Harlem.

Dirty Three
Pioneer Works, April 3

There are conventional power trios, and then there’s the Dirty Three, the inimitable Australian outfit whose wordless songs range from elegiac ballads to thunderous art-punk eruptions. If the band — Warren Ellis on violin, viola and keyboard, Mick Turner on guitar, and Jim White on drums — seemed like outliers in the ’90s, when they toured with Beastie Boys and Pavement and even turned up on Lollapalooza, they’re now an institution with an international cult following.

For their first North American tour in more than a decade, Ellis has promised marathon sets lasting three hours. Hydrate well and expect to leave spent but ecstatic.

DJ Python and Loidis
Good Room, April 4

Around a decade ago, Brian Piñeyro, who produces and performs under the name DJ Python, coined the term “deep reggaeton” to describe his sensuous and minimalistic tracks. Layering drifting melody over a subtly driving dembow pulse, it’s a sound that equally invites dancing or dreaming, and it pairs perfectly with the hazily pulsing beatscapes of billmate Loidis, the latest venture by seasoned producer Brian Leeds, who made his name with more ambient-leaning material under the moniker Huerco S.

Sullivan Fortner
Village Vanguard, April 7-12

Before pianist Sullivan Fortner took home this year’s Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, an under-40 artist hadn’t won in the category for around four decades. For those who have been following Fortner’s rise across the past decade-plus — as he moved from a steady role in the band of the late, great Roy Hargrove to a close partnership with vocal powerhouse Cécile McLorin Salvant — the award felt perfectly timed.

Approachable yet subtly surprising, history-conscious yet effortlessly contemporary, he’s exactly the kind of artist you want to hear in the city’s most legendary jazz room.

Lala Lala and Mother Soki
Night Club 101, April 16

“And if it’s nothing for me, then I’m willing to leave / I’d rather live true, than waste it on you,” Lillie Amadea West sings on “Even Mountains Erode,” a track from “Heaven 2,” her latest LP under the name Lala Lala and her debut for Sub Pop. The album as a whole shows off West’s knack for crafting songs hooky enough to hold their own on pop radio but more richly layered — and refreshingly frank — than what you’ll typically find there.

She shares a bill here with Mother Soki, another alt-pop auteur who scored a viral TikTok hit last year with her melancholy banger “Rivet Gun.”

Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman
Brooklyn Paramount, April 19
Beacon Theatre, April 20

For fans of a certain strain of singer-songwriter-dom, the 2020s have been a new golden age. Heading up this unofficial movement, which marries the wry, unflinching intimacy of ’90s indie with the comfy warmth of ’70s folk-rock, are Katie Crutchfield, who has been releasing acclaimed albums as Waxahatchee since the early 2010s, and MJ Lenderman, who found breakout success with his fourth LP, “Manning Fireworks.”

One listen to “Right Back to It,” a bittersweet 2024 Waxahatchee single featuring Lenderman on guitar and backing vocals, shows why the two are perfectly matched collaborators — and why these shows, which will feature them performing both solo and together, ought to be among the spring’s most captivating.

Sunn O))) and David Torn
Town Hall, April 12

Heavy metal has gotten a lot more highbrow in the 21st century, and you can trace that evolution directly back to Sunn O))), the guitar duo who illuminated the link between the towering riffs of Black Sabbath and the long-form minimalism of La Monte Young. Their albums often feature guest instrumentalists and singers, but their upcoming self-titled LP, out April 3, focuses on the elemental six-string crunch of core members Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley.

This well-matched bill with veteran guitarist and sound sculptor David Torn promises to be one of the loudest ever at venerable Midtown theater Town Hall.