Amanda Rogers is young — we don’t know how young — and she’s beautiful and she sings deliriously sad, immaculately pretty songs at the piano. Can you tell we’re in love already? Her debut album, The Places You Dwell, is just out on the tiny indie label Immigrant Sun — an imprint probably best known for putting out an unplugged Saves the Day EP — and among the few details we’ve been able to glean is that she occasionally duets with the dude from onelinedrawing. If emo nation wants to crown Rogers as its official Tori Amos, that’s fine by us. Her singing reminds us of a cross between Ida’s Elizabeth Mitchell and Evanescence’s Amy Lee; her keyboard playing displays a powerful left hand; and her songs are direct without being simple. Her only area date is this Friday at Flywheel (413-527-9800) in Easthampton.

It’s not every day that we can state definitively that a band has slept its way onto a tour. And we’ve never even heard of a rock band sleeping its way onto a book tour, which is sort of like tipping a stripper with food stamps. And yet, here we are: a tour by former Rollerderby zinester Lisa Carver to promote her The Lisa Diaries (Black Books), a compendium of her columns for the online-intellectual-smut mag Nerve. And what are the Texas Governor — no, not the one in the White House, but the drugstore-cowboy one-man band featuring once and future Elevator Drops man Dave Goolkasian — doing aboard? "The reason they’re on this tour," Carver writes online, "is the singer had sex with the author." But did he make the book? You’ll have to ask, but the other band on the bill, Clown, will be performing a set entirely based on the Diaries. The Texas Governor’s new disc, The Experiment, will be out later this summer. In the meantime, catch Carver, the Governor, and Clown at the Bedroom Theatre (617-HAR-DCOR) in Jamaica Plain Friday, and at AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence on Monday.

Those Canadian party animals Sum-41 sure seem to have a thing for Boston bands: just back from a Japanese tour with Waltham skate-pop kids Damone, they show up Wednesday at the State Theatre (207-780-8265) in Portland with Virgin-signed punks the Explosion. It’s a boomers-and-shroomers week at the Tweeter Center (617-931-2000) in Mansfield, with grateful survivors the Dead shuffling in Sunday (see Ted Drozdowski’s jam band feature in Arts) and Santana arriving Wednesday. The Dead are also at the Meadows Music Centre (203-265-1501) in Hartford Saturday. Elsewhere, Me’Shell NdegéOcello drops by the Iron Horse (413-584-0610) in Northampton on Saturday as a prelude to her spot at the Globe Jazz Festival finale on Sunday at the MDC Hatch Shell (617-929-8756) in Boston, where she’s joined by the Herbie Hancock Quartet and the Arturo Sandoval Septet. The Dixie Chicks soiree tonight (Thursday, June 19) at the FleetCenter has been sold out for months, but country fans still have time to catch Willie Nelson Sunday at the South Shore Music Circus (781-383-1400), and Monday at Higher Ground (802-654-8888) in Winooski, Vermont.