Los Angeles this week: one pick from every category, May 18 to 25, 2026
June gloom hasn't dropped in yet, the days run long, and the calendar is good. Giegling is back in town for a one-night DTLA pop-up with the full home team rotation. Marc Maron is in the Largo back room for what is probably going to be the angriest 90 minutes of his year. Wild Nothing is doing the 15th-anniversary Gemini run, Yungblud is on tour at the Greek, and the GRAMMY Museum's Clave Especial showcase is the kind of programming the building has been getting right since the pandemic ended. A real week.
The full live map is on the Los Angeles map. This is the editor's cut, one pick per category.
Parties
Giegling in Los Angeles: Leafar Legov, Map.ache, Edward, O.BEE, Tomas Station, Konstantin
The Giegling family circles back to Los Angeles with a top-to-bottom roster night and an undisclosed downtown room, which is the way Giegling has always done it: the lineup is the address. Leafar Legov, Map.ache, Edward, O.BEE, Tomas Station, and Konstantin spin the entire night between them, which is the format people who care about the imprint actually want. The label's particular brand of slow-burn techno, swung-out house, and patient builds wants a small room with a long leash and a 9 AM finish, and the promoter knows this. Presale tickets are listed as essential. They mean it.
Comedy
Marc Maron, Stand-Up Show at Largo
Largo is the Coronet stage where the working comics from Maron's age cohort road-test the material that doesn't have a home anywhere else, and Marc Maron in 2026 has a lot of material that doesn't have a home anywhere else. The WTF era is in its long postscript. The on-stage version of him has gotten meaner and funnier in equal measure since the pandemic, and the Largo room is the right size for the small-club crankiness to actually land. Bring proof of purchase, because Largo's no-phone policy is real and they will lock yours in a Yondr pouch. If you sit in the front row, you will be looked at. You have been warned.
Live music
Wild Nothing: Gemini 15th Anniversary, with Lunar Vacation
Wild Nothing's Gemini turned fifteen this year, which means Jack Tatum is on the road playing it front to back for the people who came to this music through Tumblr and have never quite recovered. The record holds up better than most of the 2010 dream-pop class because Tatum was always more interested in the songwriting than the reverb, and the recent reissue treatment makes a strong case for the bones of "Chinatown" and "Live in Dreams." The Glass House in Pomona is the right room for it: 800 cap, sticky floor, brutally good sightlines, the kind of inland-empire indie pilgrimage that makes the drive feel earned. Lunar Vacation opens with a set of their own twang-leaning indie that's been on a slow build for two records.
Art
The Drop: Clave Especial at The GRAMMY Museum
The GRAMMY Museum's Drop series has been the building's best programming since the museum opened, partly because the room is small enough to make the artist-in-conversation format actually work, and partly because they keep booking acts whose stories are bigger than their streaming numbers. Clave Especial, the Riverside-based regional Mexican group whose Spotify run has been one of the more interesting under-the-radar success stories in música mexicana, take the stage for a stripped-back set and a Q&A. If you've watched the streaming chart shift toward bandas and corridos over the last two years and not really understood why, this is the room where you'll learn faster than reading the trade press for a month.
Arena
Yungblud: Idols, the World Tour at the Greek Theatre
Yungblud at the Greek is the kind of bill the venue's outdoor season was built around: a midsize British rock act with a real American audience, a tour cycle running on press momentum, and a 5,800-cap shell that turns a Friday in Los Feliz into a destination. Idols is the most committed swing he's taken at the arena-rock big-tent move (which is to say, he's stopped pretending he isn't trying to be Bowie crossed with My Chemical Romance), and the songs are mostly built for crowds to scream rather than rooms to hold. The Greek does this better than any room in the city. Get the rideshare drop at Vermont Canyon and walk down. The lot is hellish.
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