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The Hot Ticket: Your Guide to Concerts on Sale

Want to grab the best concert tickets going on sale this week? Check out our new weekly guide.

The internet comes with its pluses and minuses. One advantage is that it provides lots of information you wouldn’t otherwise find. The negative is that sorting through all those bytes can be overwhelming and dang near impossible. This can be especially true with tickets to great concerts. One day you’ll hear that a show you’re particularly excited about is coming to town. The next day you hear that tickets already sold out, and you didn’t  even know they’d gone on sale.

With that in mind, we present the Hot Ticket, a weekly guide appearing every Tuesday that will let you know which concerts are going on sale in the days ahead. Read on for this week’s goodies:

Everybody’s favorite nerdy/adorable indie rocker, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service, is embarking on a short solo tour this spring. One of his stops is the 9:30 Club on Thursday, May 10. You know there will be a crush to see the musician who held such influence over Seth Cohen of The O.C., so be ready when tickets go on sale at 10 am this Saturday, March 3 at the 9:30 Club Tickets.com site (scroll down that page till you see Gibbard's name). Opening are Johnathan Rice and David Bazan of Pedro the Lion. LISTEN: “Soul Meets Body,” Death Cab for Cutie.

Irish folk troubadour Damien Rice (admit it, you think he’s kind of dreamy, too) is coming to DAR Constitution Hall Friday, May 25. Tickets cost $39 (excluding Ticketmaster charges) and are up for grabs on Ticketmaster’s site this Friday, March 2 at 10 am. LISTEN: “Rootless Tree.”

Can I in good conscience recommend attending a Jimmy Buffett concert? Hey, anything that involves drinking margaritas and sitting on a blanket under the stars can’t be all bad. You too can be part of the Parrothead experience for Buffett’s show at the Nissan Pavilion on June 28 if you get tickets when they go on sale this Friday, March 2 at 10 am. Seats run $36.00 – $126.00.

Reminders: Amazingly, tickets for both Ted Leo and the two TV on the Radio shows at the 9:30 Club haven’t  sold out. If you want to experience Leo’s frenzied pop-punk on March 29 (his live show is exhilarating) or TV on the Radio’s intense and atmoshperic post-punk on April 18 or 19, get thee to this site, where you can snap up the remaining tickets. Ted Leo is $15, and TV on the Radio is $20. LISTEN: “Me and Mia,” Ted Leo. “Wolf Like Me (live on David Letterman),” TV on the Radio.