Thursday, March 15   8:00 p.m.
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  Kid Beyond - Mothership
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Singer. Beatboxer. Songwriter. Live looper. Bad-ass Buddhist soul-shouter. With Kid Beyond, there are a lot of layers to the story.

Chances are you've already seen Kid B – that online video of him in his kitchen, making insane beats with his mouth and live-looping them into full-on songs. The one that got passed from blog to blog, and then into your inbox – under the heading, "You've got to check this guy out."

That's the first few layers right there. The guy produces mind-blowing sounds with his mouth – hip-hop and techno beats, turntable scratches, synthesizers, violins, harmonicas – then loops and manipulates them using a foot-pedal connected to a laptop, and, as one journalist put it, "Just as you realize you are in the presence of a bona fide virtuoso, he begins to sing along."

Clearly, the Kid is on some next level. Set aside your foggy memories of late-80's Fat Boys videos, "brrr-stickum" and all that. Think alt-pop, trip-hop, dub, breakbeat, drum-n-bass, trance. Start thinking songs, not just cool microphone tricks.

Sure, the Kid's got jaw-dropping skills on that mic, no question. That's what led him to your inbox, to all those breathless cold-calls from Keane, Imogen Heap, VH1, NPR, BT, JJ Abrams. But for Kid B, that's merely a means to an end: "I want to hook you with this unique thing I do, and that's when the real work begins. It's cool when people come away impressed, but my goal is to connect on a deeper, more emotional level."

And connect he does. Muscular, bullet-headed, he prowls the stage like Henry Rollins at a revival meeting, converting every last audience member through sheer force of will. Journalists tend to describe Kid B's shows in quasi-spiritual terms: "Transcendent." "Fiercely charismatic." "Truly mesmerizing." "You're in the presence of a higher power."

It helps that the guy can sing his ass off – combining soaring, passionate rock acrobatics of a Thom Yorke or Bono with the throaty-raspy pipes of a Memphis soul shouter. And then there's his songwriting, which weaves Buddhist philosophy – compassion, oneness, transcendence – into deep, danceable grooves.

He fuses musical genres as deftly as a DJ mixes cuts. At Joe's Pub in New York, the in-house DJ led into Kid B's set with some tight hip-hop dub; after Kid B was done, he pumped Radiohead. That's Kid Beyond: halfway between Kid A and Kid Capri. And he likes it there: "What genre is Gorillaz? What genre is Gnarls Barkley? They're putting alternative, hip-hop, and dance in a blender. Whatever that genre is, sign me up."

Being a musical omnivore has landed him a ridiculously diverse assortment of opening gigs – jam bands, hip-hop acts, DJs, electronic, rock, even metal – and as a result, a diverse and intensely loyal worldwide fanbase.

How does a Jewish kid from Staten Island NY grow up to become Kid Beyond? Well, it helps if you're a "born mimic," raised on a "steady diet of classic rock" – Zeppelin, Beatles, Rush, The Police. Pretty soon he's beatboxing Bonham in biology, The Cars in chemistry. In his teens, he stumbled upon the ability to throat-sing like a Tuvan; he was in the shower at the time. And then he got the funk: Public Enemy, De La Soul, James Brown, P-Funk, the Meters. Once hip-hop arrived, it all clicked for the Kid. "Music made entirely from samples, no instruments... well, that's what I'd been doing my whole life – all these different instruments with my mouth."

At Brown University, he found an outlet for his unique talents in an a cappella group, and then moved to San Francisco to start the all-vocal funk-rock band The House Jacks. They drove around the country in a Winnebago, opening for everyone from Run-DMC and LL Cool J to Ray Charles and James Brown. The band signed with legendary hip-hop label Tommy Boy Records, who quickly made their intentions clear: "They wanted us to be a boy band." Burnt out on the music business, Kid B left the game entirely.

He found inspiration in the intense self-inquiry of Buddhism, and the radical self-expression of Burning Man. A silent meditation retreat at a forest monastery in Thailand gave him his first taste of the interconnectedness of the Universe. At Burning Man, he got a jones for pumping techno grooves and a crystal-clear vision of a musical path uniquely his own: "I sing, I write songs, I beatbox... What if I could combine them all?" So he forged his live-looping setup: laptop, foot-pedal, microphone. He keeps the doodads to a minimum – only what fits in a small suitcase – and the laptop to the side, so the technology doesn't wall him off from the audience.

It's this powerful human-ness – not just a human beatbox, but a human being – that's so palpable in Kid Beyond's music: "I find that my songs are populated by these 'love warriors' – these fierce, funky warriors for love, and they're struggling to keep their hearts open and compassionate to it all. Whether it's in a relationship, or in the Iraq war, or a dance floor, or a monastery in the forest... they manage to find it."

Making his debut EP, Amplivate – the first all-vocal pop-electronica album – the Kid faced some unique challenges: "My hunch was that some of the major aspects of my live show just weren't gonna be as impressive if you weren't seeing it happen." So he threw impressive out the window and used the studio as its own instrument. "I wanted to make a record that people would dig even if they didn't know I did it all with my mouth. The songs needed to stand on their own."

And they do. His cover of Portishead's "Wandering Star" is a Timbaland-style stutter-funk collage that preserves the dark, sexy vibe of the original. "Deep Inside" is a lush, Thievery-esque downtempo meditation on love, loss, and letting go. The Buddhist-blues anthem "I Shall Be Free" pairs Kid B's raw, soulful lyrics with dub-drenched bass and skittery electro-hip-hop beats. "Mothership," which one review called a "frantic drum-n-bass / dancehall barnburner," is an infectious shout-out to the Oneness.

It's enlightenment you can shake your ass to. As Kid B puts it, "George Clinton said, 'Free your mind and your ass will follow,' and I think that also goes in reverse. I reserve the right to be a monk and a monkey. That's one of the things being 'Kid Beyond' means to me – I get to be childlike and transcendent at the same time."

Free your ass, and your mind will follow.