If the touring hip-hop festival Rock the Bells had existed in 1998, its line-up might have looked virtually identical to this year’s. Headliners like A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, De La Soul and Mos Def were the biggest names in alternative rap a decade ago, and they remain so today. Of course, that’s as much a sad comment on the dearth of new talent in the scene as it is a testament to the headliners’ longevity, but the veterans did their best to prevent the bill from becoming a nostalgia tour. Although A Tribe Called Quest . . .

John Hiatt knows how to show an audience a good time, as evidenced by an evening he christened “Summerfest Indoors” to an enthusiastic Pabst Theater crowd Friday. “Hello, young people,” Hiatt said as a greeting to his mostly older but jubilant fans. “Your mayor said this week is all about fellowship, beer and entertainment, and that’s what we’re about tonight.” The entertainment part, which kicked off at 9 p.m., lasted about 2 hours and went a long way toward creating fellowship between the audience and Hiatt’s band, The Ageless Beauties, with or without . . .

They say Milwaukee is a cover town, and this year’s Summer Soulstice Music Festival Saturday on North Avenue did little to disprove that notion. Emanating from usual suspects like The Love Monkeys to less likely sources like Northern Room, covers abounded. Even headliners Local H performed a punked-out version of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” to both fan delight and confusion. And when songs weren’t being covered they were pantomimed—imitative air-guitar demonstrations filled the time between sets.

A battalion of atavistic bands are raising the specter of psychedelic music, painting it black with plural nouns evocative of the netherworld. Saturday night's show at Mad Planet billed two such chthonic acts as bookends with a curious bolt of Call Me Lightning in the center. Promoting their fifth album, Heavy Deavy Skull Lover, The Warlocks performed with a skeleton crew half the size of their original lineup. Despite attenuated personnel and an unfortunate opening slot on a three’s-a-crowd bill, The Warlocks filled the space with brooding, elegiac new material.

Just in case you were worried, the spirit of punk is alive and thrashing, thanks in part to the eclectic collective Gogol Bordello. The group stormed the stage at the Turner Hall Ballroom last Wednesday, while a solid turnout of punkers, college kids and boomers (reliving their mosh-pit days) showed that punk marches on, even when mixed with a multi-ethnic sturm und drang.

As leader of The Silos, Walter Salas-Humara has been recording since the mid-’80s, working on more than a dozen albums with collaborators as diverse as Alejandro Escovedo and, in an upcoming project, novelist Jonathan Lethem. At Sunday’s Shank Hall show, Salas-Humara led a band made up of Milwaukee and Madison musicians.