Hospital originally was going to be a straight-up concept album about, well, dying, but once all the songs were put together, the lyrics didn’t really work with the idea. What did work was opening the album with tunes that were pop-based — almost electroclash — and pivoting to experimental, sometimes borderline-spooky songs about halfway through. The album moves from lyrics and concepts based in the real-world — addictive behavior, for example — to more abstract vibes.

“My mind inevitably gets fixated on negatives and I find it very difficult to notice the positive aspects of life, which is why the themes of my music are usually so depressing,” says the 28-year-old Falls Church, Virginia, resident. “I guess the only positive message of this album is that maybe the process of dying will be interesting and weird and therefore maybe not something to dread all that much.”

That said, it might not be totally evident throughout the album’s bleeps and bloops, which sometimes are purposefully funky (“Because God Is Dead And Everything Is Sex,” “.22”) or soulful (“Monochromatic”). Euphrat, 28, explains that Hospital is “basically 100 percent sample-based” — sometimes the “samples” are of his own music, i.e. recording a strummed note and going from there — and made to “sound as synthetic and fake as possible.”

Hospital started to come together when Euphrat, who has been making music under the Timmy Sells His Soul moniker for about a decade now, was looking back at material that he had set aside a few years ago. The songs had fresh appeal, and he decided to give the album another shot. It was probably inevitable that it would have a noticeable structure: Euphrat says he’s recently been obsessed with “conceptual coherence” and maybe a little too interested in looking at things from a “form-based standpoint.” (He’s been relatively prolific, too: In April he released the LP Money Always Wins.)

Euphrat, who digitizes books for a living, moved to the D.C. area from Tucson, Arizona, about six years ago in search of like-minded music-focused folks. He’s now in a handful of bands, including Tired All The Time and Narkotronik. “I rarely get a weekend to myself,” he says.

That adds a special kind of value to Timmy Sells His Soul, he says: “Basically whatever I visualize I can try to bring it into reality without other people interfering with it.”

The Maryland resident’s second album with D.C.-based collaborator J. Forté, Supersonic Sons, comes out Oct. 14, and the first song released — the bouncy, percussive “Cabin Fever” — is the perfect entry point for a concept album about an intergalactic explorer.

Not only does it tell the story of a bummed-out space traveler and fit within the album’s overall narrative, but it also has another meaning for the duo: Forté had been working from home at the time of writing lines like “The pressure’s building on the outside/The pressure’s building on the inside.”

“I thought he wrote the song about being trapped in his apartment, teleworking, and how he just wanted to not be teleworking,” Gendron says. It was unintentional, but Forté acknowledged later that the thematic overlap made sense, Gendron says.

In the same way that astronauts have to improvise to meet certain challenges, Sun Machines was the result of some adaptation. Gendron has been a rock drummer much of his musical life. But after resettling in Japan around 2010, that had to change.

“It was so silly — I brought my drums to Japan with me,” he says. “Like, in hindsight, like, what did I think I was gonna do with those drums?” The combination of paper-thin walls and the fear of disturbing neighbors severely limited his instrument options. So he started playing around with synths, guitar, bass and programmed drums.

He returned to the U.S. and formed Sun Machines — initially as a home-studio-only project — with Forté. They wanted to record something entirely on tape. And at first, they were swapping ideas via analog tapes. Eventually modern technology — iPads and the like — found its way into their arsenal.

The songs that Gendron had worked on while in Japan didn’t actually make it on the band’s first album, Human Subjects. They were set aside in favor of a slightly different path. But when it came time to make Supersonic Sons, he came to the table with loads of pre-formed ideas. All said, about half the tracks off Supersonic Sons are versions of what one could call Gendron’s “Japan songs.”

“It’s amazing that it’s all pretty cohesive,” Gendron says, reflecting on the gap between songs written in a foreign land, half a decade ago, and those written more recently.

Though living in Japan was really cool, Gendron says, it’s always a bit weird to start over somewhere else.

“I’m realizing that maybe, over there, I kinda felt like a space traveler or, you know, an alien,” he says.

Likewise, when explaining his time in the Navy — where actual astronauts remarked on how similar the submarine was to a spaceship — he notices the running thread.

“I don’t know if that also influenced my ideas — like getting in a capsule and kinda going and disappearing for extended periods of time,” he says. “I never even really gave that much thought, but I think that probably had something to do with it, too.”

So Principato added his friend/schoolmate/roommate Jesse Paller (who is also in June Gloom) on drums. They played the track as a duo for some time, even entering it into an NPR Tiny Desk Contest. Still the audience feedback was the same: Make it even bigger. Principato describes the public reaction: “‘OK, this is cool [but] is there more? Like, what is this?’”

The duo Boon added more personnel — Drew Sher on guitar and keyboard, and a rotating cast of bassists. Principato guesses that “Hunger” went through about six or seven iterations (though just two recorded versions) to get to where it is today — a shimmering track that soars and dips through four minutes of deep interpersonal analysis that belies its emphatic vocals.

When describing the meaning of the song, Principato turns meditative.

“The hunger that the song is talking about is just sort of like, people have hunger for things emotionally, and there’s many roles that you play in different relationships,” Principato says. “And it’s sort of like, how much of it is real, and how much of it is something you’re doing to adapt to a situation?”

Putting the meaning into words is somewhat tough for Principato. “The main thing I think it talks about, and the reason why I think it’s confusing for me to talk about, is because it’s a confusion,” he says. It’s about parsing out needs from relationships both romantic and platonic. And it’s definitely not about one person in particular — Principato explains that whenever a song is about “a person” it’s really probably more about up to three people, sometimes including himself.

Principato’s clearly working through some stuff here, but that doesn’t mean all his inspiration came from within.

“A lot of the lyrics I sort of drew from weird places. There’s a line in the song that’s, ‘Are you sleeping or not talkative?’ And I remember as I was writing the song, a few years ago, I was at this bar and I just saw this guy texting this to someone and it struck me as this really weird, sad text message [and] my brain then assumed that whoever he’s talking to had no interest in talking to him and he was looking for a reason why, when maybe there wasn’t one,” he says. “I think that’s a big theme that runs throughout the album — and also this song is an acceptance of something, adapting to reality, even if it’s kinda sh***y.”

The album to which he is referring is the 10-track There’s No Saving This House, made at his and Paller’s shared home (Kokomo Studios) and mixed by Rusty Santos (who has also worked with Animal Collective and Prince Rama, among others). The album is finished, though there is no release plan just yet — the band is looking for someone to put it out.

Though Kokomo Studios sounds amazing to hear Principato describe it — the band recorded different parts of songs in different rooms throughout the house, including the attic and the bathroom — it’s really in the band’s past. Principato and Paller are transplanting themselves to New York City; by the time you read this, they’ll have left D.C.

Principato says this isn’t the last D.C. will hear from Boon, however. He gives the kind of promise one can expect from a newish band and a recent college grad: “We’ll be around, though. I think.”

Stewart Mostofsky saw the same post, and had the same general idea. For about a week, Schmidt and Mostofsky planned their respective events separately, but a mutual friend put them in touch, and they joined forces.

The first Fields, in 2014, was a kind of haven for local weird-cool music kids — the lineup at the Susquehanna State Park event included Baltimore stalwarts like Dan Deacon and Lexie Mountain Boys. It was such a hit — and such a draining experience for its organizers — that there was no festival in 2015.

But this year, it’s back, Friday through Sunday at the same site, which is off Interstate 95 near Darlington, Maryland. If the 2014 gathering was somewhat of a haven, the 2016 version is a full-on sanctuary, with more than 70 musical acts (including Deacon again, along with Future Islands, Juliana Huxtable and many more) performing.

“We’re dreamers and we’re doers and we just can’t do it any other way.”

This isn’t just a music and camping festival, the founders are quick to point out. For Schmidt, bringing in other artistic elements was of the utmost importance. This means visual and sound installations, theater, film, poetry, performance art and dance. And both Schmidt and Mostofsky like to tout the event’s “wellness” activities — including yoga, herb massage, tarot and Reiki-attuned candles.

“The multi-sensory, immersive, integrative aspect of kind of wandering around and there’s just arts everywhere” is the dream, Schmidt says. “Like you’re camping out there and you’re suddenly a part of this new world and it’s just all around you, that was really an inspiration for me and that’s something I really wanted to bring to the table.”

The two founders had somewhat overlapping reasons for wanting to plan a festival. For Schmidt, it was attending similar events and not loving the tunes, but loving the camping and overall atmosphere.

“I remember thinking ‘OMG it’s so amazing, camping out in nature,’” Schmidt says. “It’s like a vacation with a ton of other people with shared interests and you’re all kind of making this new home for yourself for the weekend and I think there’s something really beautiful about the communal aspect of it.”

Mostofsky grew up going to sleepaway camps and credits his astrological sign — Sagittarius — for his love of all things nature. (Schmidt says there’s a lot of Sagittarius in her, too.)

“The sense of community that would form in those situations was very powerful and definitely left a strong impression on me,” Mostofsky says.

Both Schmidt and Mostofsky were deeply entrenched in the Baltimore music and art scenes before planning their first Fields Fest. Schmidt, who works by day as a freelance writer of educational content, co-founded DIY space The Soft House. Mostofsky, a neurologist by trade, has run Ehse Records for over a decade.

When asked if it was hard managing all the aspects a multi-sensory festival, the pair laughs out loud before the question is finished.

“Sorry to laugh out loud — it’s so hard to juggle this,” Schmidt says. “Yeah, it’s crazy.”

No other way

Schmidt and Mostofsky say it helps that they’re totally in sync in one important area.

“We’re dreamers and we’re doers and we just can’t do it any other way, and yes that means sometimes taking on too much and sacrificing in certain ways,” Mostofsky says.

Now that they’re into their third year of running the event, they know exactly what kind of tone they want to set.

“The vibe is one [that is] both celebratory as well as thoughtful, sort of at the same time,” Mostofsky says. All the artists are at the top of their game, he says — it’s basically high art.

Schmidt is a little hesitant to use that phrase, but she basically agrees.

“I think there’s something more humble and gentle and loving,” says Schmidt. “But at the same time very inspiring and transformative.”

The Fields Festival runs Aug. 19-21 at Ramblewood Campgrounds, located in Susquehanna State Park in Darlington, Maryland. Tickets are still available on the event’s website.

“I think I just really like snails, and then that just rhymes,” says Lindsey Jordan, the band’s singer, guitarist and guiding force. “We were originally called ‘Snail Male,’ like m-a-l-e, but we realized that was kinda dumb and didn’t really make any sense, so we just changed it to the regular spelling.”

Snail Mail didn’t have much of a public profile until October 2015, when it played Baltimore’s U+N Fest, but it already has a debut EP, Habit (listen below), released this month on Sister Polygon Records. Jordan is just 17, and she still has one more year left at her high school in Ellicott City, Maryland. Being so young and yet being a regular at local shows has required some flexibility at home.

“It’s kinda weird because I have a really cool mom — I drive my car to D.C. to go to shows and stuff and she’s not really too overbearing or anything,” Jordan says.

Jordan says the songs on Habit are largely about love — and one person in particular, although she won’t specify who — as well as trying to figure herself out. They’re also kind of literal at times — the EP’s penultimate track, “Snail,” is actually about the terrestrial mollusk. Don’t read too far into it, though. There’s probably no biology career in store for Jordan.

“I really wanna say no because this, like, creepy dude came into my forensics class the other day — he was like a forensic anthropologist — and he made me so uncomfortable,” Jordan says. “He had all these bugs in boxes and stuff that he keeps in his basement and was talking about his creepy life as an entomologist and I just don’t want that for myself.”

The band is mostly a solo thing — Jordan writes all the songs. For Habit, she was joined on drums by Shawn Durham, whom she met at a Beach House show in 8th grade, and Ryan Vieria on bass. Ray Brown and Alex Bass, respectively, have succeeded Durham and Vieria.

Jordan says there are advantages to being so young while trying to develop as an artist.

“In a way I almost feel like it’s easier just because I don’t have to actually have real responsibility while trying to balance it,” she says. Then she adds: “It’s gonna get harder.”

Jordan anticipates a full-length album coming pretty soon. Each step forward gets her closer to joining a rich history of D.C. musicians who started young in the punk and indie-rock scenes and stuck with it. Snail Mail already has influential supporters: Habit was was recorded and produced by Jason Sauvage of Coup Sauvage & The Snips and G.J. Jaguar of Priests.

Jordan’s stage persona is still developing, too. She had some chances to work on her craft earlier this month, when Snail Mail did a short East Coast tour.

“We’re just kinda dumb on stage. And usually I lose my wallet and my phone at every show,” she says. “So it’s usually me freaking out and running around and Ray and Alex setting stuff up.”

She’s already learned one thing about having the microphone: Shut up and play.

“I don’t really like to say that much on stage because I really hate long song introductions,” she says. “Like I don’t want to hear it, so I don’t do it myself.”

That could be the motto of DZ Tapes, the D.C.-based record label Isaacoff started in 2011. At the time, he had decided that simply running a music blog — the now-defunct DAYVAN ZOMBEAR — wasn’t enough. He wanted to take it to the next level. And this Saturday the digital-and-tape imprint celebrates its fifth anniversary with a marathon show at local DIY venue Hole In The Sky.

Brett Isaacoff of DZ Tapes (photo: Julia Leiby)

How did DZ Tapes get here? Back in Isaacoff’s blogging days, he says, he kept receiving great submissions from indie artists — “so much so that I really want[ed] to find a way to share the work that was coming around my e-desk,” the D.C. resident says. “So I figured I might as well put out a mixtape.” He launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to put out a compilation. The label followed in its wake.

Now DZ Tapes has several cassettes under its belt, featuring both artists from here and elsewhere. It focuses on bands bringing new energy to D.C. and Baltimore’s underground rock scenes — label alumni include shoegazers Wildhoney and Big Hush, punks Hemlines and the fuzzy Nice Breeze, among others.

Sustaining any project for half a decade is no easy feat — perhaps doubly so considering the volatility of the music industry. But Isaacoff has figured out the formula: keep your expectations low and your planning short-term.

“It’s as hard as you want to make it, really,” Isaacoff says. “I’m just trying to have fun and enjoy myself and help people out.” By booking shows and working with interesting bands, he aims to give back to the scene that gave him — an avid showgoer himself — so much.

Hemlines “All Your Homes,” released on DZ Tapes

Keeping his day job as a business analyst at a solar startup has helped grease the gears at DZ Tapes. “If I could make money off of [the label] I would, but it’s not something that I want to really force,” Isaacoff says. “I feel like blending the lines between quote-unquote business and pleasure might get a little messy.”

A steady path is as good a marker of success as any, though there have been certain high points — like when Rolling Stone published a piece about Speedy Ortiz right before they were to play D.C. house venue The Dougout, a show he booked. “Filled to capacity” isn’t quite the correct phrase for it — the 70-capacity venue was overflowing. “It was an extreme fire hazard, looking back on it,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes’ future remains both certain and up in the air. There’s this weekend’s anniversary show — “It’s gonna be a banger,” promises Isaacoff — and a few more releases slated for the rest of 2016. But for the future-future? Isaacoff isn’t interested in pressuring himself. DZ Tapes is going “wherever it wants to go, really,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes celebrates its fifth anniversary July 9 at Hole in the Sky. 

“It was about the dissonance of knowing somebody’s online persona and knowing them in real life,” says Jesse Paller, the brains behind June Gloom. “When you see how developed and curated somebody’s online persona is, it sort of comes at the expense of what they’re really like.”

Paller wrote the track about two years ago, when this phenomenon was less commonplace than it is now.

“I don’t even think about this stuff pretty much anymore because I feel like that concern has totally blown out,” says Paller, 23. “Everybody has an online persona and it’s just part of life, I guess. But at the time it was kind of jarring for me.”

Coming of age in a time when people are more likely to meet on social media before they rendezvous in person inspired Paller, too.

“I think it has something to do with transitioning from high school to college,” the songwriter says, “and getting all the friends I’ve known for my whole life replaced with people who I just met and didn’t think were interesting but had crazy Facebook presences.”

“URL” — from June Gloom’s forthcoming album, Fake Problems — swells and dips, with enveloping guitars and Paller’s slightly bummed-out intonation. An L.A native, Paller felt drawn to the twang and reverb of surf music, but the musician puts his own moody spin on it. He calls his style “sad surf.” It’s about “being chill but also being sad,” he says with a laugh.

While this song in particular was inspired by the band Speedy Ortiz, he credits another gloomy songwriter for helping him find his style: the late Elliott Smith.

“It’s impossible to shake Elliott Smith out of my songwriting at this point,” Paller says. “I just gave so many years of my life away listening to [him].”

Fittingly, the band name is stolen from a weather phenomenon that is a total bummer — a sheet of drowsy fog that seems to hang around the L.A. region for weeks in late spring and early summer.

“In high school it always got me — we were so excited to finally be done with school and then there’s a few weeks of just fog,” Paller says. “Which doesn’t make any sense, because the rest of the year is sunny.”

The musician remembers being home in Southern California for summer breaks and feeling morose — from fresh heartbreak, weird weather, the works — and going for drives. Those drives were beautiful, encompassing both beaches and mountains. Paller says his music is made for similar excursions: “That’s the ideal listening situation, I think.”

While there isn’t exactly a comparable scenic drive here in the mid-Atlantic, Paller says his “sad surf” could have a transporting effect. “Hopefully the music can take you there,” he says.

June Gloom’s Fake Problems is out July 15 on Funeral Sounds. June Gloom plays June 24 at Kokomo and July 20 at Songbyrd.

Here’s the plotline for Luray’s new video: Jolted awake by a thunderstorm, a young girl comforts herself with a music box that emits a warm glow and the gentle sounds of Luray. No ordinary music box, the device contains secret powers, transporting the girl out of her dark bedroom and into a bucolic field teeming with life. At video’s end, our young heroine is shown rowing a boat on a lake in slow-mo.

“Promise of Lakes,” with all its deep-summer vibes, was filmed in Southern Maryland around Labor Day in 2013. The editing stretched to Christmastime, which was not the ideal season to release a sun-dappled clip, says Luray’s vocalist and banjo player, Shannon Carey. So she put it on pause — for a few years.

“I’ve just been holding onto it and waiting for the right time,” Carey says, “and feeling like it will come.”

That time is now, before Luray embarks on a short tour of the Mid-Atlantic. (The band plays D.C. Tuesday night.) But a lot has changed since Carey recorded “Promise of Lakes,” a highlight from her 2013 album, The Wilder. Luray has since released an EP and prepped a new full-length, and Carey has found herself in new circumstances.

“It does bring up emotions for me to watch something that I made at that time, because a lot has changed for me,” says Carey. “I don’t live [in Maryland], I live in Richmond now. I’m no longer with my husband who I made that with. So, yeah, it definitely is bringing up feelings when I’m watching it.”

That’s not the only thing that’s changed: The young dreamer who stars in “Promise of Lakes” has grown up.

“We filmed this puppy three years ago,” Carey says with a laugh, “so now the little girl is, like, no longer little.”

Luray plays June 7 at DC9 with Citrine and Louis Weeks.

But Flasher isn’t trying to sound retro. In fact, the group hasn’t settled on a particular vibe yet, says bassist and co-vocalist Danny Saperstein.

Released April 8, Flasher’s debut EP “is exciting because it does feel a little all over the place, a little scattered,” says Saperstein (of Bless and Trouble). “That’s probably a product of us still figuring out our sound.”

This chaos is only sonic. Turns out, Flasher is a kind of fated trio.

“We’ve been best friends for a really long time,” says guitarist Taylor Mulitz (of Priests and Young Trynas). “We all work together, [drummer] Emma [Baker] and I live together.” Plus, “Danny’s at the house a lot,” Baker says.

That closeness translated well to Flasher. “Luckily, all of us have a really easy time doing music with each other, which I think is really kind of rare,” says Mulitz. “There’s just something about doing it naturally and never feeling stressful trying to write a song.”

Why another band, though?

“The two bands that I play in do such different stuff that it fulfills completely different things for me — even though I’m playing the same instrument… it feels completely different,” says Baker, who also plays in Big Hush. “It’s really helped me progress. If I was missing one of them, I wouldn’t be the same drummer that I am.”

While the three have basically been Flasher since the first time Saperstein joined Mulitz and Baker onstage — in August 2015 — the band is an infant at best. That’s made clear by something that, in 2016, seems uncommon.

“Up until a week ago,” Mulitz says, “we had no Internet presence whatsoever.”

Flasher plays April 16 at Bathtub Republic and June 3 at Black Cat. The band’s debut EP is out now on Sister Polygon Records.

“My parents are super conservative Christians,” says the songwriter from Rockville, Maryland. “That was kind of my experience and my upbringing — and I was a part of that for a really long time.”

Smith would go on to form a Christian-leaning band called Kindlewood. But her feelings toward religion began to change while studying at the Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas. She felt herself drifting away from her religious community.

That’s the message within “This Fabric,” a song Smith recorded with her new band, Citrine.

The tune is “a declaration of needing to cut ties from a lot of my past and a lot of things that I was afraid about writing about,” says Smith.

“I won’t play that game/Always second-guessing forward motion,” she sings on the dreamy pop track, her vocals complemented by bright electronics and tropical notes. “This fabric is suffocating.”

In contrast to Kindlewood — a group entrenched in the then-trendy folk scene — Citrine sounds like a cousin of ethereal rockers the Cocteau Twins. But Smith says the band takes care to draw from a variety of sources, from Lauryn Hill to Santana.

“I really tried to dig back into what I listened to in high school,” says Smith, “even though I wasn’t really allowed to listen to much outside of Christian radio.”

Smith recognizes that her new direction could be alienating to people from her past, including her family. But her siblings also play secular-ish music: Her brother, Josh Tillman, is otherwise known as Father John Misty, and her other brother Zach records as Pearly Gate Music. These days, Smith says she’s ready to be vulnerable, while exercising her creativity in the process.

Citrine is rounded out by guitarist Galen Smith (Kelci’s husband, who also played in Kindlewood) and drummer Beau Cole. Based in Baltimore, the trio recorded “This Fabric” in a factory that produces bridge supports. The space smells like chemicals, Smith says, and it hums with activity during the week. But Citrine recorded its entire debut EP, April, in one weekend, wrapping in time for workers to return Monday.

The prolific recording session may have benefited from luck — which is apt, given the meaning behind the band’s moniker.

“I picked the name Citrine because I wanted a little bit of luck,” Smith says, “and the crystal citrine is supposed to bring happiness… and good fortune.”

Citrine’s debut EP, April, comes out April 22.