Perpetual Groove They’re back. Perpetual Groove have just come off of a nationwide fall tour, and while it was their first in years the Athens, Georgia four-piece aren’t going to slow down for the winter. They’ve made a September recording of their set at The National in Richmond, Virginia available for free download, and the record is a perfect two and a half hour primer for what is likely to go down when frontman Brock Butler brings his boys — bassist Adam Perry, keyboard player Matthew McDonald and drummer Albert Suttle — to this relatively tiny Ybor club for an intimate show (The National holds about 1,5000 compared to the 300 or so that can jam into Crowbar). Expect long jams (“Mr. Transistor,” “Teakwood Betz), trippy arrangements (“Paper Dolls”) and spirited, genre-bending covers, too (“Golden Path,” “All My Friends”). Perpetual Groove is also on the bill for the upcoming Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival, so this is a good chance for fans to see them well before they play that swamp in March. (Crowbar, Ybor City) INFO

Queensrÿche w/Armored Saint/Midnight Eternal The most hardcore of Queensrÿche fans already knew this, but just in case you just popped your own 80s metal cherry, then know that you won’t be seeing Geoff Tate at this show. The band’s longtime frontman un-amicably parted ways with the group in 2012, but we’re willing to bet that fans won’t mind too much since new singer Todd La Torre and the rest of the Washington-based still lean hard on their influences (Kiss, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd) as they recreate nearly forgotten hits from a pair of hit albums (1988’s Operation: Mindcrime and 1990’s Empire) (Cuban Club, Ybor City) INFO

Melissa Etheridge Less than a week after the father or her child, David Crosby, hit Clearwater, Lisa Lou Etheridge is coming to St. Petersburg for a holiday show at the Mahaffey. The 55-year-old Grammy and Oscar winning singer-songwriter has a new album out (this year’s MEmphis Rock and Soul), but this particular set should lean almost entirely on a 2008 holiday album that Etheridge has described as a means “to bridge our old oppressive cultural ways with the enlightenment of our coming future.” That particular album clocks in at just about 45 minutes long, however, so expect to hear some non miseltoe-ish folk jams at this one, too. (Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg) INFO

Dream Theater Ah yes, epic, practically timeless nerd rock returns to Ruth Eckerd. A Dream Theater set will find prog-rock devotees trying to keep up with ridiculous time signature shifts plus the band’s overall technical prowess, and while the Berklee-originating outfit has plenty of past material which fans have committed to memory, they’ve also got an almost year-old, hopefully-not-prophetic concept album (The Astonishing, where a dystopian society watches a rebel militia overthrowing an empire) to show off as well. (Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater) INFO

Hidden The last “Hidden Experience” party at CL space featured promoters taking over the other half of our offices for an after-hours, multi-sensory art & music exhibition, and while we were preoccupied with a concert happening across the street, the near-capacity room was enough to make us what to actually walk back towards the desk for a little overtime. (CL Space, Ybor City) INFO

Gungor Bands don’t normally get to play two shows just 13 miles and 24-hours apart, but most bands aren’t led by Michael Gungor either. The 36-year-old songwriter is the leader of a Grammy-nominated musical duo where he and his wife Lisa play what’s widely described as “liturgical post-rock.” The indie-rock loving atheists out there would be happy to know that the Wisconsin-based outfit stops short of calling themselves “Christian contemporary,” and also boasts a sound that has been compared to that of Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver and even Arcade Fire. The Gungors play Seminole Heights on Thursday, but also hits the greater Brandon area the next day for a non-school night show at Element Church. (Watermark Church, Tampa) INFO