Grupo Frontera fills the Maverik Center Sunday, Copperton throws its own party, and Friday hits 101

Grupo Frontera plays the Maverik Center on Sunday night on the Triste Pero Bien C*brón Tour, named for the song they cut with Myke Towers, and behind their third album, Lo Que Me Falta Por Llorar. If the name means nothing to you, the collaborator list will: Bad Bunny, Shakira, Maluma, Christian Nodal, Carin León, Ozuna. Six guys from Edinburg, Texas started this band in 2022 playing norteño-cumbia covers, and four years later they are filling arenas on three continents. This is a bigger deal in the valley than the English-language listings make it sound. West Valley City is where a lot of this crowd already lives, and Sunday night is one of the few times all year the Maverik Center books a show the west side does not have to drive downtown for. The room is loud, the accordion carries, and a Grupo Frontera crowd sings the whole set back at the stage. Two things make the logistics easy and nobody puts them on the ticket. Parking is included in the price of admission, so all four lots are free and first-come, no separate $30 at the gate the way the downtown arena works. And the TRAX Green Line stops at Decker Lake Station, which is right next to the building, so you can skip the lots entirely. On a Sunday with an 8 o'clock downbeat and work in the morning, the train is the move.

The University of Utah dedicated the new Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine on Wednesday and let students into it for fall semester. It is eight floors and 211,000 square feet, it cost $185 million, and it went up over four years on the footprint of Building 521, which had been sitting on that spot since 1962. For the first time in the program's history, medical students are not walking between separate buildings to get from a lecture to a lab to a study room. A $110 million gift from the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation paid for a large share of it.

The Department of Energy awarded $100 million to Waterleaf P1 HoldCo, a subsidiary of the California company Lilac Solutions, to build a lithium extraction and refining facility on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake. It is one of seven projects picked out of a $500 million pool aimed at doubling how much lithium the country produces at home, in a market where China refines more than 90 percent of the world's supply. The part that matters here is the water: the DOE says the process returns the brine to the lake with no net loss. On a lake sitting around 4,190 feet and still falling through the evaporation season, that promise is the whole story and it will be worth watching whether it holds.

The Australian songwriter brings the Creature of Habit tour to the Rockwell room at The Complex on Saturday. Doors at 7, music at 8, all ages, with Zoh Amba opening.

Utah beat Bay FC 3-2 at America First Field a week ago for the eleventh win of the season, which is more than this club has ever won in a year. They are second in the NWSL and back on the field tonight.

Salt Lake lost 4-3 to FC Dallas on Wednesday to close the homestand, which stretches the MLS winless run to six. The Leagues Cup is the other season, and that one is going better.

Utah landed at No. 21 in both preseason polls this month, the AP and the coaches. Camp is done in two weeks and the schedule opens soft and gets loud fast.

An Iranian-American kitchen on Highland Drive doing kabobs, rice and stews, and the stews are the reason to drive over. Order the Khoreshte Fesenjan, the chicken cooked down in ground walnut and pomegranate until it goes dark and sour-sweet, at $23.99. Add the tadig on the side, $14.49, which is the crust off the bottom of the rice pot and comes as its own order rather than as something the kitchen might remember to include. If you want a kabob too, the beef koobideh runs $16.99 and the lamb chops $35.

Sixty-odd vendors set up on the Brighton Resort plaza every Sunday from 10 to 5, June through October, selling vintage clothes, records, jewelry and handmade work. Admission is free and so is parking. It has been running since 2017.

Friday evening at The Depot in downtown Salt Lake City, a 6:30 start for three bands.

Saturday from 9 to 1 at the Sandy Amphitheater park in Sandy.

Sunday from 11 to 4 in Millcreek, free to walk through.

Kiitos Brewing pours its last round at 608 W. 700 South on August 29 and then shuts the doors on the taproom the brewery was built around. The company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization earlier this year, months after opening a second bar in Sugar House at 1533 S. 1100 East, and says it will carry on without the Granary room. This is the same brewery that took home two gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival in 2024, which is the part that makes it sting.

FrontRunner 2X moved into the engineering phase on August 7, which is the last step before the Federal Transit Administration signs off on nearly $1.3 billion. The project is UDOT and UTA laying 26.1 miles of second track across 11 stretches of the corridor, plus one new station, ten more trainsets and a new maintenance facility. Construction runs 2027 through 2030 if the grant lands. The number that matters to anybody standing on a platform: trains every 15 minutes at peak and every 30 minutes the rest of the day, instead of the hour you sometimes wait now.

Parts of Sandy took between 1.75 and 3 inches of rain in about an hour on the evening of August 13, and city crews have been clearing debris ever since. Mayor Monica Zoltanski said nearly every neighborhood in the city was hit and that early numbers put the storm in 50 to 100 year territory. Nearly two miles of 1300 East closed when the water came over the curb between Alta View Hospital and Dimple Dell Park, stranding cars in what neighbors described as a river. The storm drains were built for a different rainstorm than the one that showed up.