This year, the holidays in L.A. offer the gift of live music that will allow us all to excite or escape our out-of-town relatives when they come to the West Coast. We’ve dug up a little something for everyone — from K-pop fans to alt-rock lovers and R&B/hip-hop nerds. Enjoy our guide to 10 must-see concerts to enjoy from post-Thanksgiving through the top of 2026.
The only guide you need for holiday entertainment.
Iluka, Moroccan Lounge, Dec. 4
This Aussie expat to L.A. has found a sweet spot of desert-country twang, exuberantly melodic songwriting and rock sass that pairs well with her witchy, suffer-no-fools feminism ( “Crucify Me” has this banger of a chorus: “You love to crucify me / But I’m way too hot to die”). Her new piano-brooder of a single, “Hard to Love Me,” hits right in the Adele-shaped hole in pop balladry right now. This release show for her album “The Wild, the Innocent and the Raging” — funny Springsteen riff, that — could be the start of something much bigger. — August Brown
KIIS-FM Jingle Ball, Intuit Dome, Dec. 5
The Top 40 radio station’s annual holiday concert features plenty of the year’s big hitmakers, including Alex Warren, Audrey Hobert, Jessie Murph, Reneé Rapp, Leon Thomas and Zara Larsson. But the real draw is probably a rare appearance by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami — better known as the voices behind “Golden,” the chart-topping pop smash from Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters” that was just nominated for a Grammy Award for song of the year. Also on the bill: Conan Gray, Feid, Jackson Wang, the Kid Laroi and Sean Paul. — Mikael Wood
Ben Folds, Blue Note, Dec. 11
Fresh off his resignation from the Kennedy Center after, well, all of that, Folds is returning to a more hospitable venue in the new L.A. outpost of the jazz club Blue Note. Folds released the delightfully titled Christmas album “Sleigher” last year, and this holiday-themed set will likely pull from it and his vast pop catalog as well. It’s hard to image a cozier seasonal vibe after the awful year we’ve all had in L.A. — A.B.
The Katseye members. From left to right: Megan Skiendiel, Sophia Laforteza, Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Yoonchae Jeung, Manon Bannerman.
(Andy Jackson / For The Times)
Katseye, Hollywood Palladium, Dec. 13
It’s a long shot for new artist at next year’s Grammys, but even making it to the nominations was a big step for Katseye, the globe-spanning girl group that’s nominally K-pop in its structure, training and Hybe affiliation, but one more overtly geared to American tastes and sensibilities. Alongside “Golden” and Rosé and Bruno Mars’ “Apt.,” this is a watershed moment for K-pop being taken as pop music like any other within the Recording Academy. Katseye has never put on less than a killer performance in its brief life as a band. — A.B.
KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, Kia Forum, Dec. 13
Reading the top of the bill here — Evanescence, Papa Roach, Social Distortion, Rise Against, the All-American Rejects, Third Eye Blind, Yellowcard — you’d be forgiven for thinking KROQ got trapped in a time loop doomed to endlessly repeat the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. But come early for the incongruously booked but supremely exciting U.K. post-punk of Wet Leg and the ferocious Atlanta pop-punk combo the Paradox, who opened for Green Day and Jack White on the strength of just a few viral videos. — A.B.
Cameron Winter, Palace Theatre, Dec. 13 & 14
He was just in Los Angeles for an extremely buzzed-about gig with his New York-based band Geese at the Fonda Theatre, where the crowd reportedly included Bono, Beck and Chappell Roan along with a bunch of record execs eager to start an old-fashioned indie-rock bidding war. After Geese’s tour wraps — and before the band’s appearance at next year’s Coachella festival — the group’s slacker-dreamboat frontman will return to L.A. for a pair of shows behind his acclaimed 2024 solo album, “Heavy Metal.” — M.W.
4 Non Blondes, Roxy, Dec. 15
Though 4 Non Blondes broke up in 1994, pop music never seems to go long without finding some new use for the group’s early-’90s alt-rock hit “What’s Up?” This year it was Cardi B and Lizzo’s sampling the song for their track “What’s Goin On,” which then seemed to lead to a viral TikTok mash-up of “What’s Up?” with “Beez in the Trap” by Cardi’s nemesis Nicki Minaj. Before all that happened, the group’s frontwoman, Linda Perry — who went on to establish a successful career as a songwriter and producer for stars like Pink and Christina Aguilera — got 4 Non Blondes back together for a handful of festival dates over the summer. Now the band is set to play the Roxy ahead of a reunion album that Perry says is due in 2026. — M.W.
Allman Betts Family Revival, Orpheum Theater, Dec. 20
These scions of Southern rock have done right by their formidable legacy in this supergroup, where Devon Allman, Duane Betts, Berry Duane Oakley, Alex Orbison and others need no introduction to anyone who still longs for swampy three-part guitar harmonies. (The double album “Bless Your Heart” could have been in rotation for the late Jimmy Carter). They’re calling in every admirer and collaborator for this holiday show with Robert Randolph, Jimmy Hall, Dweezil Zappa, Sierra Green, Cody & Luther Dickinson and more. — A.B.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 03: Leon Thomas performs onstage during the blond sessions Presents Leon Thomas on June 03, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jason Mendez/Getty Images for the blond)
(Jason Mendez/Getty Images for the blond)
Leon Thomas, The Wiltern, Dec. 22 & 23
Fresh from half a dozen high-profile Grammy nominations — including nods for album of the year and best new artist — Thomas will spend two nights at the Wiltern on tour behind his acclaimed 2024 LP, “Mutt.” It’s a crafty retro-R&B disc that shows off the years of studio expertise he accrued behind the scenes as a writer and producer for the likes of Ariana Grande and SZA; it also reveals a bit of the ham who got his start as a child actor on Broadway and Nickelodeon. — M.W.
The Roots, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dec. 31
Three decades after they broke out of the Philadelphia hip-hop scene, Questlove and Black Thought’s hard-working hip-hop outfit is one the most reliable live acts in music: a crowd-pleasing soul-funk groove machine equally at home at a music festival, a supper club or on the set of “The Tonight Show,” where the Roots somehow still seem to be having fun as Jimmy Fallon’s house band. Given the group’s ample catalog and Questlove’s countless A-list pals, it’s anyone’s guess what they’ll play — or who might put in a surprise appearance — as they ring in the new year at Disney Hall with two shows, one at 7 p.m. and one at 10:30 p.m. — M.W.