This month brings to town some local Coconuts, the country’s biggest young global star and the return of Vivid Live. Here’s who to see and when.

1. Rufino and the Coconuts

May 5, HiWay Bikini

He has seen it all, this suave enigma Rufino. The self-described “Catalan Casanova” from time to time plays violin and croons with the entertaining cabaret troupe Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen.

2. The Lazy Eyes

May 7, Oxford Art Factory

It’s all happening for up ‘n’ coming Sydney psych-rockers The Lazy Eyes.

First, they blew us away at their own mini-festival Lazyfest in that surreal period between early COVID variants in March last year. (Bonus gig alert! May-a, their fellow talented indie kid who opened that edition of Lazyfest, will also play at Oxford Art Factory on May 19-20.)

3. The Kid Laroi

May 26-27, Qudos Bank Arena

The rise over the past few years of 18-year-old Charlton Howard, the rapper-singer of Indigenous Australian descent better known as the Kid Laroi, has been extraordinary to say the least.

4. Paul Kelly with Thelma Plum

May 27-29, 31, Opera House Northern Boardwalk

At last, Vivid Live – the music part of the festival’s celebration of “Light, Music and Ideas” – is back. And while it might not have the shiny international drawcards of years past, it will certainly open strongly with four distinct events on May 27.

5. Sampa The Great

May 27-28, Joan Sutherland Theatre, Opera House

The other key opening-night show of this year’s Vivid Live stars the breathtaking, double AMP-winning Sampa The Great, whose ARIA awards-show performance of Final Form, beamed in from her birthplace of Zambia in 2020, was among the most powerful I’ve seen – even before the music kicked in properly, the dancers got moving and Sampa herself started rapping over soul-powered sampled horns, pounding beats and howling guitars, taking the performance to the transcendent.