It’s Friday, the weekend is here and I don’t know about you but I am ready to cut loose. Bethesda pop-punk band Boardroom Heroes headlines a fantastic night of spastic punk and ska music at Rock & Roll Hotel tonight to celebrate the release of their new 5 song EP New Wage on Sinking Ship Records. The music video for the title track, premiered earlier this week on BlankTV, immediately puts me in the mood to drink 40s, skate and do dangerous stuff with fireworks. Read the interview with the band published today by our comrades at DC Music Download, and catch the entire lineup of bands tonight that includes Centerfield, Walk The Plank and Kill Lincoln.
Hometown Sounds
Showing The World How DC Rocks
Category Archives: video
The Sea Life – Prozac & Merlot (Dresden Sessions)
My love of music videos should be pretty apparent at this point, but these days my favorite ones are well-produced, well-edited live takes. I connect with a song more when I see the musicians performing it and feel their affinity as a band. It’s the next best thing to seeing a live show, without the challenging sight lines, close quarters and oppressive sweatiness (<3 you anyway Bathtub Republic). If you’ve somehow missed The Sea Life‘s rise from prominence to near-dominance in DC’s indie rock landscape, it’s well past time to get on board. While touring earlier this summer in Charlotte, the band took up the offer of The Dresden Sessions to record a live video in exchange for a crash pad for the night, which sounds like a no-brainer win-win situation to me. Jon Weiss’s distinctive woozy guitar sound and performance style come off perfectly here. Catch them late Saturday night at Comet Ping Pong with Paperhaus, BRNDA and a DJ set from Outputmessage.
Church Night’s Rev. Bidet Makes a New (Cat) Friend with BRNDA
Are you ready to get your blessings & light on, DC? Tonight join the Reverend Dr. Stevedore Maybelline Bidet Esq. and Youth Minister Kathy Piechota at the Some Souls Church Night upstairs at Wonderland Ballroom to save your soul and enjoy a communion of “shots & tots”. The service for this evening features sexy witness to faith Bella La Blanc, humorous storytelling from Hillary Scofield and praise band Go Cozy. Here’s a video of Rev. Bidet nuzzling with feline of the Lord CHAZ, appropriately set to “Make A New Friend” by truly blessed DC praise band BRNDA.
Letitia Van Sant – Parts & Labor video
Gypsy Sally’s, one of DC’s finest new music venues, turns 1 year old this week. With a focus on twang, folk and Americana, they kick off their anniversary celebration tonight with a show curated by our buds at Listen Local First. “All Things Local” features many of our songwriting faves: Bobby Thompson, Jackson Edwards, Jonny Grave, Tom McBride, Justin Trawick and today’s featured musician Letitia Van Sant. Splitting her time between DC and her hometown of Baltimore, she frequently tours with Tom Liddle, David McKinley-Ward and Will McKinley-Ward as The Bonafides. Watch a live performance of her and David singing “Parts & Labor”, title track from an upcoming release, and don’t miss her playing solo at Gypsy Sally’s tonight!
Wale – Golden Salvation video & new album trailer
At noon today DC’s highest profile rapper Wale released the trailer for his hotly anticipated The Album About Nothing. The three minute video has Wale recounting his personal growth over the last year that featured a number of high profile beefs and meltdowns. The new release’s title harkens back to Wale’s notable 2008 release The Mixtape About Nothing and features extensive collaboration with Wale’s obsession Jerry Seinfeld himself. While we wait just a bit longer for a release date, check out Wale’s most recent music video “Golden Salvation”, from the 2013 release The Gifted.
Asheru – Make Magic video
DC rapper & educator Asheru‘s most recent album Sleepless In Soweto shifts most of its focus from his hometown to South Africa, working closely with artists there to craft lyrics and sound to represent both locales. While “Funky DC”, the last video of Ash’s we featured, celebrated the revitalization of U Street’s musical legacy, “Make Magic” takes us to the Soweto area of South Africa’s largest city Johannesburg. Directed by Asheru and Didier Ganza of So Afrika Entertainment, the video shows both traditional African Zulu scenes and pretty amazing contortions from street-level Pantsula dancers. Mark your calendar for Thursday September 11th when Asheru performs with dancehall band Explosion Negra from Columbia at Tropicalia.
Andy Zipf – Promise & Purpose video
As I’ve seen NOVA-based musical acquaintances perform over the past couple of months, whispers percolated of a big thing coming for them in the fall, but none would spill the beans. Today beans were splashed all over social media with the announcement of the Magnificent Intentions Music Festival October 17th-19th. Clarendon’s Iota, long the home base of DC and especially NOVA’s singer-songwriter crowd, hosts the 3 day showcase featuring Justin Jones, Olivia Mancini, The Beanstalk Library, Derek Evry, Margot MacDonald and more TBA. Much like July’s In It Together Festival highlighted the punk and indie rock house show scene and brought a lot of media attention to it, Magnificent Intentions should elevate the status of these talented musicians to larger DC audiences often hesitant to cross the river.
Andy Zipf put a long solo career as singer-songwriter on pause to assemble The Cowards Choir band with two of the best percussionists in DC, Ben Tufts and Adam Neubauer, and The Beanstalk Library’s Ryan Walker on bass. Zipf’s luminous tenor vocals remain the highlight of the music, which you can and absolutely should catch tonight at Vienna’s Jammin’ Java playing alongside Eliot Bronson. Check out this gorgeous video of Zipf performing Promise & Purpose from his 2011 solo album Jealous Hands, captured live two years ago by OurVinyl.tv.
Beyond Modern – Facedown video & new song Fall Through
DC hip-hop fans have been waiting all summer for Mick Marx and Sur Jazz to drop new music as Beyond Modern. Back in June the duo dropped this sizzling music video for “Facedown”, asserting their rising status as sex symbols over a classic 2 Live Crew sample.
While they continue to assemble their debut full length release Distorted Reality, this morning Beyond Modern debuted a new song to keep the party rocking. “Fall Through” is a glitchy and melodic club banger featuring NYC’s Justin Rose and fashionable DC songstress Alison Carney.
Tom Goss – Fancy (Iggy Azalea cover)
While we await another viral sensation from singer Tom Goss to rival last year’s feel-good mega-hit “Bears”, he occasionally drops live acoustic cover songs that really show off his performing chops. Today Goss released his newest video, a cover of recent #1 smash “Fancy” by young sinner/rapper/model Iggy Azalea that everyone but me probably knows by heart. I had to look it up on Wikipedia because I haven’t listened to pop music on FM radio in years. But I’m totally down with Goss’s acoustic rendition, performed using a Boss RC 30 loop pedal and the iPad app iMaschine, with helpful video inlays to show how the magic is done.
And with that, like a big chunk of DC, Hometown Sounds is taking off the month of August. Enjoy the reduced traffic, plentiful parking spots, and hot restaurant tables with little wait. New DC music podcasts, videos, DJ gigs and more are coming this fall! Peace!
ACME – California Girls / Numbers Game videos
DC in July is all about seeing live music performances indoors and outdoors, but the music video action has been pretty quiet lately. ACME breaks the lull with a two-in-one video for California Girls and Numbers Game, two feel-good summer singles you should totally grab for free from their SoundCloud while they’re feeling generous. Filmmaker Nigel Lyons, recently profiled as the go-to music video director for local bands by our buds at DC Music Download, crafts the visuals for each song around the striking beauty of model Ashlei “Smokei Grey” Gray. Catch ACME playing this Thursday night at the cheekily named Fort Loko for the kickoff night of DIY house show bonanza In It Together Fest.
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