Music Festival

Avicii, Kid Cudi and the Shins headlined the Sweetlife Music Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday. Reporter Vivienne Machi reviews the event. If the Sweetlife Festival were an actual sweet, I'd vote for a lemon bar: smooth, luscious, with only a few chunks of sour, yet on the whole thoroughly enjoyable. For the second year in a row, music lovers from around the state and beyond gathered through rain and patches of sun to celebrate some of the biggest names in dance and electronic music, and, to a lesser degree, sustainability, environmental consciousness and all that jazz.

Finally, a no-brainer. Kicking of Merriweather Post Pavilion's season, the Sweetlife Food and Music Festival boasts an eclectic, solid lineup of established acts and rising talents. In chronological order, here are the five acts I suggest finding time for on Saturday: Action Bronson (12:25 p.m., Treehouse) Before heading over to the main stage for Fun., check out a few songs from this Albanian-American star-in-waiting. If you like raps about high-end food, left-field pop references and other atypical topics for hip-hop, Action Bronson will make your day. His latest mixtape, "Blue Chips,"  is an intoxicatingly fresh listen.

Fiona Apple played a short series of promotional shows earlier this year to support her upcoming album. Now, she's launching a full tour for "The Idler Wheel is Wiser" that includes stops in Baltimore and Washington D.C. Apple's mini-tour, her first series of live performances outside of Los Angeles, started at South by Southwest and garnered near-ecstatic reviews from critics who said she was giving once-in-a-lifetime performances....

The Sweetlife Food and Music Festival's second stage, a.k.a. The Treehouse, will feature Delta Spirit, Twin Shadow, Zola Jesus, the Knocks, RAC, U.S. Royalty, Yuna, Haim, LP, Cut Copy's Ben Browning and Bluebrain, it was announced Wednesday afternoon. This is the first year the Sweetlife Festival - which takes place April 28 at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia - has expanded its acts to two stages. The artists for the Treehouse were chosen as "emerging acts, many coming off the SxSW buzz," according to a press release.

In a couple of weeks, hordes will descend upon Miami again. It seems people are always mobbing Miami - for international art fairs, for Martin Luther King Jr.weekend, for sporting events, and of course, for those famed beaches, which always seem overwhelmed with bronzed bodies in tiny swimwear. But this crowd - as many as 200,000 over three days - will come wielding glow-sticks, furry boots, designer drugs and paraphernalia promoting their favorite superstar DJs as they descend on the Ultra Music Festival, the largest electronic music festival in the United States.

After a fatal accident in July at the All Good Festival in West Virginia, Walther Productions, the festival's Maryland-based promoter, has moved the jam band music festival to Ohio, the company has said. The accident, which left a 20-year-old woman dead and two others injured, has resulted in three lawsuits , as first reported by The Baltimore Sun, accusing the company,  as well as several of the festival's vendors, like a security company, of negligence. Earlier this month, Walther Productions moved to dismiss the lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Clarksburg, West Virginia.

The week before Thanksgiving is always light on the nightlife and entertainment fronts. And while that's true again this year, there are a bunch of Thanksgiving Eve special events planned. And, on the Saturday following the holiday, there's Fall Massive , an indoor electronic and dance music festival at RFK Stadium in Washington. Among the performers? Moby, Armand Van Helden, Diplo and other dance music marquee names. Promoters have billed it as Washington's answer to Starscape.

A third person involved in a car accident at this year's All Good Music Festival has sued the organizers, Maryland-based Walther Productions. The jam band festival, which takes place in July in West Virginia, was accused of negligence in a pair of lawsuits filed earlier this month by two other victims, a young woman who was injured and the father of a young woman who died as a result of the car accident. In an interview last week, an attorney for the organizers defended the festival's safety record.

A car accident that left a young woman dead at the All Good music festival in July was caused by the “wanton, reckless, grossly negligent" acts of the organizers, Maryland-based Walther Productions, the woman's father alleges in a recently filed wrongful-death lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed in West Virginia's Northern District Court, is one of two against the festival, which celebrated its 15 th year in July and is known for its jam band line-ups. Another woman injured as a result of the accident has also filed a separate lawsuit.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is hosting another music festival Saturday, though this one will be almost definitely Deadmau5-fan free. It's HFStival, which returned last year after a four-year hiatus. The Avett Brothers and Flogging Molly are the biggest names on the line-up. Performers - which also include Minus the Bear and Maryland's Clutch  - will appear at three different stages. Avett Brothers, Flogging Molly, Minus the Bear and Clutch will be on the main stage. Bands Pasadena, River James and Lionize will be on the local stage.  Organizers sent over the full schedule, posted below.