Here are a few randomly selected recommendations among the many acts playing the Miami Music Festival. Visit MiamiMusicFestival.org for individual venue details. Many of these funky-named places you've never heard of are subdivisions of real venues, with made-up names just for festival purposes. Others venues are tents; Transit Lounge alone will host a couple, as well as putting on separate showcases within its walls. Three-day festival wristbands are $50 ($35 for students); one-day wristbands are $25 ($20 for students). Otherwise individual show admission is $10.
Carlos Bertonatti: Ladies will swoon for this Venezuelan-born, Miami-based crooner and guitarist, blessed with movie star looks and extremely catchy, sunny acoustic pop rock. Imagine, perhaps, John Mayer, but without all the douchiness.
Alex Nelson: A fast-rising one-man-band from Fort Lauderdale, Nelson specializes in hushed tales of heartbreak run, live, through a byzantine setup of knobs and buttons. It captures the essence of both Dashboard Confessional and, say, the Postal Service, and it works -- really works.
1 a.m. Thursday (Friday morning) at the Lounge at Transit, 729 SW 1st Ave. 10 p.m. Friday at La Guaracha, 801 Brickell Bay Dr. (in the Four Ambassadors).
Shonie: One of Slip N Slide's most recent discoveries, Shonie brings frank talk back to R&B. Rather than sing with her head in the clouds, Shone gives it to you straight from a female perspective, as she did with her minor Internet hit earlier this year, a somewhat salacious response song to Jeremiih's "Birthday Sex."
1 a.m. Thursday (Friday morning) at Ecco Lounge, 168 SE 1st St.