Chet Atkins-certified guitar virtuosos John Knowles and Tommy Emmanuel fingerpick their way into sublimity at City Winery on Friday and Saturday—be ready for some creative acoustic inversions of popular standards. Friday also brings the locally launched international folk group Newpoli to the Lizard Lounge, its Mediterranean pulse rooted in the traditional music of Southern Italy with singers Carmen Marsico and Angela Rossi and tamburello ace Fabio Pirozzolo.

Saturday offers the biggest event, however, in the chance to catch pop-country singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves (pictured) in the acoustical finery of the Boch Center Wang Theatre on the heels of Golden Hour, an album that led my Top 10 of 2018 like many others. And local pop heroes Guster hit House of Blues the same night behind the newly released Look Alive, the band’s first album in four years, incorporating cooler synth sounds inspired by recording in a vintage keyboard museum in Calgary.  World Music presents the jazzy French cabaret group Paris Combo, fronted by singer Belle du Berry, to the Berklee Performance Center on Saturday, while pop-country upstart Caroline Jones rolls into Berklee’s Café 939 just down the street.

Local musicians are also alive in different settings this weekend. After years of fronting hard-rocking bands from the Titanics to the aristocrat-clothed Upper Crust, Nat Freedberg performs under his own name behind a new solo debut, Better Late Than Never, on a bill including heavyweights both Watts and Justine and the Unclean at Once Ballroom. You’ve probably seen him with Buffalo Tom (or last September in a cameo with Pearl Jam at Fenway Park); see Bill Janovitz hold court (you can expect BT tunes in the mix) at the Burren’s Backroom Series in Davis Square with brother Scott Janovitz adding his own musical support. And the Lizard offers a great Saturday bill with GA-20, a heavy ’50s-60s blues outfit featuring Matthew Stubbs (Antiguas, Charlie Musselwhite), and the Devil’s Twins.

Sunday also stars local favorites at the fourth annual Jeff Berlin Fundraiser at the Burren’s Backroom. It’s an eight-hour event (starting at 3:30 pm) to benefit Our Space Rocks, a creative outlet for children whose parents are battling disease), and features acts including Berlin’s band Hybrasil with Christian McNeill, Andrea Gillis, Abbie Barrett and Ali McGuirk, who’ll also sit in with Club d’elf with Duke Levine (find lineup info here). Sunday also brings Danish electropop star MØ to House of Blues (link here to my recent interview) and accessible alt-rockers Vertical Horizon to City Winery.