Dan Deacon

Dan Deacon has amassed quite a reputation for his live shows, which often devolve into fits of reckless abandon, with the cuddly little man going bananas on stage, throwing punches and offering up belly waggles. His antics are surpassed only by his rich, elastic electronic compositions, which are made up of a truly infectious combination of hooks, abstraction and gleefully tweaked vocals. For this tour, he's inviting eight people from each city he visits (four boys and four girls, picked from e-mail responses) to don choir robes and join him on stage for a rendition of "Wham City," a song with the same name as the artists' collective he helped found in Baltimore. Deacon says the idea came to him in a dream — although in that dream, it was a choir of horses.