“Let’z” single, Sugg Savage — Half of the freaky-cool duo Akoko, Sugg Savage no longer calls Maryland home. The emcee from Fort Washington recently swapped coasts to soak up sunbeams in Los Angeles. So maybe it’s the spike in Vitamin D that’s fueling her artistic growth spurt. As a solo artist, Savage has embraced a hip-hop/club hybrid that would sound right at home on Azealia Banks’ Broke With Expensive Taste. Her skittering new single “Let’z” finds her vaulting — with Bilesian finesse — from speedy rhymes to fluid vocals. “You know everybody don’t move like this,” goes the bridge, sounding both slyly boastful and 100 percent factual. (Listen to “Let’z” in our playlist, below.) — Ally Schweitzer

Spirit Plots, Spirit Plots — The D.C. trio has been building to this self-titled LP for a couple of years, and anyone who embraced the 2014 EP or the 2015 single will find a plethora of similar guitar-bass-drum vibes within. Don’t be intimidated by the 15-track inventory — most songs come in below 2:00, focusing on hooks where other D.C. bands with similarly precise sonics might choose to dwell too long in a postpunk groove. Obligatory comparison to a ’90s hero: Every corner of Spirit Plots abounds with hints of the wound-up intelligence found in Ted Leo’s peak work. — Joe Warminsky

Romantic Comedies, Foozle — The D.C. trio’s 11-song second LP captures part of the Gen-Y zeitgeist with its self-aware, post-teen angst and a conspicuous use of emoticons — “¯\_(ツ)_/¯” is the title of the closing track. The retro, lo-fi production never feels gimmicky, and the simple lyrics stay just clear of twee. The album cover depicts a half-unpacked apartment; the songs inside reflect this half-opened, half-boxed-up feeling. It’s ultimately an album about the need for — and fear of — emotional intimacy. (Listen to a song in our playlist, below.) — MacKenzie Reagan

“Wait Up” single, Prinze George — What would a montage of the most significant moments of your life feel like? The Maryland group goes there on “Wait Up.” It’s not just the lyrics, though they certainly help (“now we’ve allowed time and space to build a wall and break us”). It’s more so the ephemeral synths, overlayed with vocals that fall somewhere between Phantogram, Adele and Monsters of Men. A subtle beat and reverbed snapping carries you through a tortuous auditory expression of the “what could have been” — all coalescing in the single frozen moment right after you witness a car wreck and realize you’re still alive. Did I mention the song is good? (Listen to “Wait Up” in our playlist, below.) — Courtney Sexton

Young Jefe 2, Shy Glizzy — The Southeast D.C. rapper with close to 800,000 Instagram followers continues to earn praise for his melodic MC style, with Pitchfork calling him “simply a joy to listen to, one of the most distinctive and technically adventurous rappers working today.” Young Jefe 2 smartly plays up his verbal stylings, couching his sing-songy, introspective street tales within spacious beats. He’s due for a pop breakout at some point, but even if one never comes, he’s permanently solidified his position as one of D.C.’s distinct musical voices. (Listen to a song in our playlist, below.) — Joe Warminsky

Citadel, Dagger Moon — Dagger Moon effortlessly blends the pummeling, heavily distorted riffs of a sludge band with the gritty production and intense atmosphere of early black-metal bands. With the shortest track on Citadel coming in at just over six minutes, it’s an album that relies on a gradually increasing sense of anxiety, pushing and pulling the listener through its apocalyptic soundscapes. It’s gloomy, frightening and absolutely fantastic. — Keith Mathias

“Paused Parade” single, Young Summer — “Paused Parade” reminds listeners that the sunniest season brings a lot of rain, too. Gentle, sparse piano and whispers of percussion are paired with Young Summer’s hypnotic vocals to create a cocoon of serenity. The song ultimately builds a cool hideaway for self-reflection. When she sings, “Are you with me? Or are you with me?” … we’re definitely with her. “Paused Parade” will be part of an upcoming EP. (Listen to “Paused Parade” in our playlist, below.) — Teta Alim

“Blood In the Water” single, Prowess The Testament — Tia Abner, a.k.a. Prowess the Testament, grabbed attention earlier this year with the Air.Human|Breath.Divine EP, which instantly established the short-statured MC as a fierce, intelligent voice. She continues to rain down lyrical lightning bolts on her new single “Blood In the Water” (which also appears on the Right Where I Left It EP). Prowess wields Thor’s hammer and anvil, grinds gods into granules and annihilates the false authenticity of D.C. transplants and other pretend veterans, none of whom could walk a mile in her gladiator sandals. Producer P-Tech Santiago’s boom-bap beat frames it all with the excitement of a classic superhero comic. (Listen to “Blood In the Water” in our playlist, below.)— Justyn Withay

Any Day Now, Lee Mitty — What do you get when you take a slight savior complex and mix it with the realism of Baltimore’s woes? You get Any Day Now. The album, which focuses on the duality of vices — in Mitty’s case, the desire to break free of a tough system that also inspires her — is a complex listen. That’s because it also captures the duality and strife within the city itself. On tracks such as “Bang,” “Leave Me Alone” and “Muses,” Mitty puts her realistic, relatable lyricism over beats that are introspective without being heavy-handed. (Listen to a song in our playlist, below.) — Johnthan Speed

Wanted Man, Wanted Man — Forget vaporous subgenre designations and convoluted classifications — the full-length debut by Wanted Man is a rock album, the kind that showcases stellar musicianship and oozes with cool. Bassist John Scoops and drummer Rick Irby anchor each track with airtight rhythms, backing up Kenny Pirog’s guitar and vocals across 11 tunes that touch on everything from punk to surf. — Keith Mathias

Messix EP, Ocobaya — From Mike Petillo and Aaron Leitko, the two D.C. beat-heads behind Protect-U, comes a side project that’s less heavy on the math and more heavy on the psych. Numbers do still matter to them, of course — namely 4/4, as in the root time signature of classic techno and house. Overall, the Messix EP confidently expands the dance-music conversation happening at 1432 R, the D.C. label known so far for its Ethiopian connections. (Listen to a song in our playlist, below.) — Joe Warminsky

“Mrs. Jones” single, Neffy — The wrenching song from Arlington native Mecca Russell, a.k.a. Neffy, was featured on the “New School Free Press Live” series. Give the song a minute. Literally. The first 60 seconds are a slow, sleepy build to a moment of deep, pointed heartache that comes when Neffy hits the first note in the chorus — and it’s pure soul, killing you softly till the end. The video is great exposure, but doesn’t do the song, or the voice, justice. Neffy’s new EP is scheduled to drop in late 2016 or early 2017. — Courtney Sexton

Mirror Image/Mirage, Big Hoax — Hey, really, why shouldn’t a group from Baltimore take a shot at making an Epic American Rock Album? Vocalist and bandleader Luke Alexander likes to take his voice from a whisper to a yelp, and almost all the tunes build from nearly nothing to totally something (with help from banjo, cello and so on). That dynamic befits a band that calls itself Big Hoax and an album title that refers to a mirror and a mirage. The point here is actually realness, and it’s hard to argue that Alexander doesn’t find some at whatever folk-rock crossroads he’s picturing in his mind. — Joe Warminsky

“Summer” single, Innanet James The Maryland rapper’s most recent track belongs in crowded basements and open rooftops, as long as the heat wave rolls on and there’s enough humidity to make skin shine with constant sweat. Repping MoCo, Innanet James brings just enough charm with his flow so that his lyrical foreplay doesn’t cross over the line from teasing to sleazy. “Summer” is meant to be fleeting — a burst of bright, body-rolling fun that shouldn’t last too long. About his upcoming debut EP, James told Pitchfork in an interview: “I want you want to be like, ‘Oh, that’s witty as s–t.’ I want you to see the words.” (Listen to “Summer” in our playlist, below.)— Teta Alim

“Appalachian Motel” video, Greenland — A moody track from the D.C. rock band’s otherwise lively S***ty Fiction album gets an animated treatment that initially seems like a cryptic but largely two-dimensional commentary on notions of romantic and familial relationships. But then it gets really weird. What’s up with all of those long, pointy noses? No face is safe. — Joe Warminsky

Often, Gray’s destination is a punk show. The 34-year-old has been infatuated with hardcore and punk rock since his teenage days in Ellicott City. But after years of traveling to shows, only to be impeded by a staircase or an inaccessible bathroom once he arrived, Gray resolved to do something about it.

In 2014, Gray started a website called Is This Venue Accessible? that provides detailed accessibility information for venues around Baltimore and D.C. Since then, the site has expanded to 26 cities, including Glasgow, Scotland, and Osaka, Japan. Now Gray is taking his project to the next level, launching an app that will serve the same purpose. He expects to debut the app later this year.

Gray’s efforts have sparked a larger conversation about accessibility as a social-justice issue, particularly in regional punk scenes. I recently chatted with Gray about the broader impact of inaccessibility and how his app aims to take the stress out of concertgoing for people with disabilities.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On the true purpose of “Is This Venue Accessible?”:

Sean Gray: I would love to see all venues be accessible, but [Is This Venue Accessible?] is not about changing venues. It’s about providing information that there’s a lack of. If there’s no accessibility information, I have to automatically default to “it’s probably not accessible.”

I took a cab to [D.C. venue] DC9, and it’s my first time going there, and when I saw those steps I just hailed a cab and went back home. The retort for some people would be, “Well, you could just ask someone to help you.” But that’s not as easy as it sounds. For some people they’re comfortable doing that and others aren’t. It shouldn’t be that way. I shouldn’t have to ask for help to go see art. Art and music and culture should be accessible to everybody.

On what accessibility means to him:

When I was a younger teen and in my early 20s, I didn’t really know what a disability was, and I didn’t know how to own that and how that affected me and how the world — the physical world — affects me. I just took the blame myself. ITVA provides information to give you a better guide to go out and actually experience music and art and culture. To me, accessibility isn’t about physical spaces. Full accessibility is about having access to culture and aspects of life that go far beyond getting into a physical building. And I think when you cut that off from a segment of people, it’s hurtful and bad for society.

When I’m not able to get to a show, I don’t just take it as being inaccessible. What that promoter, building or band is saying to me is, “You’re just not allowed to go to this show.” It sounds harsh, but that’s the reality that I and many other people with disabilities live with every single day.

“I’ve been lucky enough to see shows that have changed my life, but I also wonder how many shows I’ve had to miss that could have changed my life.”

On the lack of awareness around young people with disabilities:

Accessibility isn’t really a sexy concept. We’re going through a political election, and I assure you, you will not hear any politician on any side talk about accessibility and disability in young people. You’ve got young people and babies used as inspiration porn, and then you’ve got older people who are disabled, and there’s this gap in between. So there’s this blank space of representation for people with disabilities, and that’s why it’s very rare to see people with disabilities going to shows.

I’ve had promoters or bar owners say that they just don’t see people with disabilities there, and my response has been that you would see people with disabilities at these venues if you actually provided them with the information necessary to come.

On how inaccessibility hampers personal enrichment:

I did a talk at SXSW… and I asked the crowd, “How many of you here can say that you’ve gone to a show that’s changed your life?” Everybody raised their hand. Then I said, “Imagine if the show that changed your life, you weren’t allowed to go to. Not because your parents said you couldn’t go, and not because you had to work, but because you just couldn’t get in. That happens all the time to people with disabilities.” I’ve been lucky enough to see shows that have changed my life, but I also wonder how many shows I’ve had to miss that could have changed my life.

On accessibility as an overlooked social-justice issue:

We live in an age where there are a lot of bands, for good reason, talking about inclusion and oppression, and that’s great. But the thing that always seems to be lacking is accessibility. I saw a drawing once, and it was like a DIY house, and on the front it said, “We do not tolerate homophobia, sexism, racism, ageism,” and everything else, and the way to get into the house were these broken, rickety steps.

On the ambitious goals of the “Is This Venue Accessible?” app:

I’m trying to give the user the total experience of going to a show and planning that out. I want to build an app that I want to use, so anywhere in the world it’s connected to Google Maps, it knows where I am, which venues are around me, which venues have accessibility information, what information I need to make my choice to go to that show. I could have put together an app that just reflects the website, but that’s not the goal. It’s not just about changing attitudes about going to shows for people with disabilities, but making it an experience that is less stressful and less worrisome.

On how punk drove him to make a difference:

Punk has taught me that if nobody is going to do it for you, you do it yourself. ITVA was born out of my frustration of not being able to experience what I love the most — being told that I couldn’t be a part of it. I just wouldn’t settle for that.

When you have a disability, you’re sort of thought of to not be angry, to not be emotional, to not be sexual. There are things that you’re just not allowed to have, and you’re socialized to enjoy the fact that you can just get out of the house — or that you’re alive. In anything that I’ve done, [I’ve been determined] not to settle. It’s OK to be disabled and angry, or to want to see a band and not have to feel like this is a privilege that somebody’s helping you.

I want this site and this app to make people think differently. I think things are changing, and it’ll be a good wake-up call for bands and venues that haven’t thought of this or taken it seriously.

Listen: Sean Gray discusses accessibility on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show

“It’s sort of a meta-reflection on what it means to lose something that you thought was yours, the thing that makes you whole or your masculinity complete,” says multi-instrumentalist Austin Gallas, 26. “Because an obelisk is essentially just a big c**k in the air.”

But as playful as it may be, “Luxor Obelisk” broaches a serious issue in many relationships: an imbalance of power.

“It’s really a love story, exploring what it means to have feelings of possession and ownership over someone, and sort of taking a jab at male possessiveness,” says Gallas, who lives in D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood.

The song showcases the contributions of Gallas and collaborators Erik Sleight (also of Stronger Sex and Br’er) and Ben Schurr (Br’er, Pree) in equal measure.

“Ben has done a lot of really rough industrial noise stuff on it, and Erik was really into crafting a lot of cool fancy synth parts,” Gallas says. “Then I sort of arranged the song and did the vocals, but I think it’s a good all-around display of what we’re up to.”

What they’re up to is using odd instrumentation — like a mandolin played through a series of pedals — to create a blend of deep swooning drones and sparkling synths, hiding a driving dance beat that detonates halfway through the track.

“[The song] really builds up and then eventually explodes in a way that none of the other songs do,” says Gallas. “It starts in one way and then it totally turns into something else halfway through and kind of lets loose.”

Because of the song’s dynamics, Gallas points out that it’s one of their most fun tracks to perform live.

“It allows us to be a bit experimental with the structure,” Gallas says. “It’s not too confined to the logic of the song, so we have a lot of fun with it live. It really gets big and juicy.”

CrushnPain plays May 19 at The Commune.

The fuzz-rock trio’s third LP — released in the fall and generally well-received by fans and critics — sounds like it could have come out in 1974, with crushing guitar riffs, groovy drums and howling vocals.

That said, bass player and vocalist Clayton Burgess is quick to point out that the band from Herndon, Virginia, isn’t trying to recreate the past.

“It’s not about being retro, it’s not about ripping off Sabbath riffs or replicating anything that happened,” Burgess says. “We have the gift of retrospection — so much to pull from and go forward with — and I don’t want to just rehash the past.”

This approach has led to three records unlike anything else coming from the D.C. area: classic doom-metal noise infused with the energy of ’80s punk and wrapped in the macabre aesthetic of horror flicks.

Burgess notes that the horror influence is much more apparent on early Satan’s Satyrs records, particularly 2012’s Wild Beyond Belief. “In the beginning of the band,” he says, “I think it was kind of the totality of the lyrical content — that was the subject matter — whereas now I just feel like it kind of colors the lyrics, acting as my secret ingredient.”

On “Alucard,” the sixth track on Wild Beyond Belief, Burgess bellows, “Archetype of evil dispatched on city streets / Creep in the cathedral, in a casket sleep / Does the fire in my eyes betray my groovy guise? / Stare a little deeper, you’re hypnotized,” channeling visions and revisions of Bram Stoker’s iconic blood sucker.

But Satan’s Satyrs is not a horror-metal band. “We’re not The Misfits,” Burgess says. “It just comes out because it’s kind of my personality. I tried to write a love song and it ended up being about Dracula.” That doesn’t mean that things are all doom and gloom, either, and Burgess says he wants his lyrics to serve as an escape for his listeners.

“I like a little bit of whimsy and fantasy in my music,” he says. “I don’t want it to be just like a [Ronnie James] Dio record which is purely fantasy, but I want to reflect things that I’ve experienced in my lyrics and then let them take on a new life and paint them with this sort of fantastical palette.”

“I tried to write a love song and it ended up being about Dracula.” — Clayton Burgess of Satan’s Satyrs

In a lot of ways, that approach is the defining trait of Satan’s Satyrs — the music is simply fun to listen to. It’s larger than life, aggressive and a little bit silly, which is refreshing in an era when so many metal acts take themselves too seriously.

“We’re at a stage here where music is so compartmentalized it’s ridiculous,” Burgess says, “and it’s not reaching out to people, it’s reaching out to niches. I want my music to be honest, I want it to have nothing to lose, and hell yeah, I want it to be accessible.”

In a lot of ways, then, Satan’s Satyrs’ sound is a direct reflection of the band’s rise from a solo project to being invited to play the 2013 Roadburn Festival by British doom-metal legends Electric Wizard — with whom Burgess currently plays bass and Satan’s Satyrs has toured — all thanks to an unsolicited demo he sent them in 2010.

“It’s just really cool to know that doing something like that — mailing a demo tape unsolicited has changed my life,” Burgess says. “So life can be a bit mysterious sometimes.”

This weekend the two musicians, who play in Northern Virginia pop-punk band American Television, are putting on the inaugural Breakin’ Even Fest at Songbyrd Music House & Record Cafe in D.C.

“As we’ve gotten into our 30s and life has progressed,” Flowers says, “it’s gotten harder and harder to do some of the touring and other things that bands do.” But that doesn’t mean they’re bowing out of music altogether.

Taking place March 4 and 5, Breakin’ Even Fest will feature more than a dozen bands from across the D.C. region, including local favorites Lilac Daze and Loud Boyz, as well as New York rockers Iron Chic and Timeshares.

The fest focuses on tuneful punk rock, a style Flowers says he doesn’t encounter enough in the D.C. scene.

“There’s a lot going on in D.C. already,” the drummer says, “but we saw a little bit of a void in the music that we really like — melodic pop-punk with a little bit of a hard edge.”

D.C.’s biggest punk festival, Damaged City, specializes in a faster and more aggressive side of the music. Flowers says that fest “is really great, but it’s not really the music that Steve and I like.”

To help pay for the event, Rovery and Flowers have arranged a number of local sponsors, including Mobius Records and vinyl-pressing company Furnace Manufacturing, which have each donated merchandise to be raffled off over the course of the weekend. Rovery says each “mystery merch pack,” given away a few times each night, will be worth around $200.

In addition to the ticket prices — an affordable $27.50 for the entire weekend — proceeds from the raffles will go directly to the bands. Rovery and Flowers won’t be taking any for themselves.

“We came up with the name Breakin’ Even is because our goal is to break even,” Rovery says, “but first and foremost we need to make sure the bands get paid.”

Breakin’ Even Fest takes place March 4 to 5 at Songbyrd Music House and Record Cafe in Adams Morgan.

“Whenever we have played with DJs or electronic artists, they have expressed interest in remixing [us], or hearing our music remixed,” says Lobo Marino’s Jameson Price, 31.

It could be because We Hear the Ocean (stream it below), the album Lobo Marino released on D.C. label Bad Friend Records in May, is built on chants and harmonium drones. Their spacious compositions leave ample room for reinterpretation. A remix project just seemed to make sense.

“We come from the folk tradition of music, and part of the folk tradition is having your songs live past you and be transferred to other people,” says Sullivan, 30.

Sullivan’s bandmate hopped aboard. “There’s already this putting it in other people’s hands when you’re doing any kind of album,” Price says. “This is just taking it to the next level.”

So Lobo Marino commissioned a remix album, out today on Bad Friend (stream it below). To do it, they recruited folks they had played with in the past. One of the first people they turned to was Ryan Bowman, who performs under the name DJ Gon.

Bowman’s remix of “We Hear The Ocean, Lift Up The Mountain” is a reverb-heavy drone set to a throbbing beat. His take on the track is undeniably a step away from the source material, but he maintains some its key themes.

“The chorus is this sort of mystical protest imagery that we kind of intended to put in it,” Sullivan says. “The idea is that we’re hearing the ocean asking for us to clean the waterways that come from the mountain.”

To mesh with that, Bowman incorporated sounds that call to mind water and mountains.

“All the samples are all organic sounds from the river, or from wells, as well as some ocean sounds,” says the DJ, 26. “The name of the song also really motivated me to try and use crumbling sounds to symbolize the mountain.”

Price sounds pleased with the results.

“A lot of people say that a song has a spirit,” he says, “and this really turned into ‘our song.’”

But that was the burden foisted upon Martha Hull and her husband, Bob Berberich. In late September, their basement record store in Frederick, Maryland, was overcome by floodwaters brought on by a massive storm.

“We’ve been in the building for about two years and we, personally, have not had any flooding issues,” says Hull, who opened Vinyl Acres with Berberich in 2013. “We have heard that there have been some floods in the past — last time about four years ago, but nothing on this scale.”

The storm on Tuesday, Sept. 29, dumped about five inches of rain on downtown Frederick, impacting numerous stores along the city’s popular commercial strip. But Vinyl Acres got hit particularly hard. Most of the record shop’s merchandise was either damaged or destroyed.

“The water on Patrick Street was so deep that our stairwell just filled up, and the force of that six feet of water just pushed the door right in,” says Hull. “The water hit like a tidal wave, knocking over two 300-pound glass display cases in addition to a whole lot of lighter stuff.”

The store owners can’t put a dollar amount on their losses. They say it’s tough to gauge because the value of used vinyl and CDs lands somewhere between their purchase price and whatever sale price they can get. But it was immediately apparent that the flood had dealt a mighty blow.

Then the shop owners’ luck kicked in.

Hull and Berberich have deep roots in the Washington, D.C., music scene. Hull fronted local legends The Slickee Boys for the band’s first two years, later playing with D.Ceats, Steady Jobs and The Dynettes. Berberich played with The Hangmen, Grin and The Rosslyn Mountain Boys, among others, and he still plays music today. The Slickee Boys, in particular, still have a community of committed fans.

After the flood, the Downtown Frederick Partnership started a GoFundMe page to solicit donations for Vinyl Acres. In just a day, the shop had raised nearly $6,000 for its recovery fund, with a big chunk from folks involved in the regional punk and rock scenes.

Music filmmaker Jeff Krulik, Old Indian frontman Cory Springirth, Danny Gatton biopic director Virginia Quesada, Kevin Longendyke from The Ar-Kaics and Dig! Records and Vintage, Punk the Capital co-creator James Schneider, Mobius Records owner Dempsey Hamilton, WHFS documentarian Jay Schlossberg and ex-Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty were among the donors.

Canty says helping Vinyl Acres was a no-brainer. He relishes traveling from D.C. to buy records in the shop’s neighborhood.

“Frederick is a record-buying Mecca,” Canty says.

A little more than two weeks after the campaign launched, Vinyl Acres reopened. It rounded up some local bands and hosted a reopening party Oct. 17.

Hull calls the GoFundMe campaign “something we never would have thought of ourselves, and it has been like a miracle.” So far, the ongoing effort has raised more than $10,000 with donations from 176 people.

Without the outpouring of help, Vinyl Acres might have seen its last sale.

“This, and an astonishing amount of support, manpower, donations of supplies and salvage equipment — plus actual records — are already what has prevented us from closing for good,” Hull says. “We are so grateful and overwhelmed we can’t even pull together a proper expression at this point.”

Vinyl Acres’ GoFundMe campaign is still accepting donations. On Oct. 30, JoJo Restaurant & Tap House plans to host a benefit for both the record store and Whidden Willow, a Frederick boutique damaged in the flood.

Ally Schweitzer contributed to this report. 

The title track from Masking, the forthcoming album from D.C. ensemble Br’er, could hardly be called easy listening. With throbbing industrial beats and vocals that alternate between screams and moans, “Masking” oozes the kind of discomfort that’s easy to get excited about.

Now Br’er has a new video for “Masking” that, like the song, is equal parts sexy and scary.

Filmed at The Beehive (a D.C. house venue that’s also Br’er’s practice space) and produced by drummer Ben Usie, the video is supposed to be disorienting: There are numerous spliced-together shots of band members’ faces and a strange narrative about a man being kidnapped and slapped in the face with fistfuls of snow.

Rather than try to make sense of it all, kicking back and soaking this up seems like the way to go. Br’er songwriter and vocalist Ben Schurr calls it “an exercise in [the] transcendence of submission.”

Br’er plays an album-release show at The Pinch Oct. 8.

“Boom hazard hazard/Fallout comes my way,” Yandel sings, diving directly into meltdown imagery. She follows up with “Boom hazard hazard/I can’t get away.”

“I was thinking about it as a really great metaphor for a relationship falling apart,” says the 29-year-old Shaw resident, who also plays drums (but doesn’t sing) in Priests. “The chorus is obviously an allusion to nuclear meltdown, so thinking about Fukushima and Chernobyl and when the nuclear reactors melt down — how it’s just unexpected and things falling apart.”

The imagery might not be the most original for a rock tune, but the lyrical content of “Boom Hazard,” which is the fourth track on Gauche’s new cassette, Get Away With Gauche (on Priests’ Sister Polygon label), is unusually personal for the band. Its songs normally revolve around macro-level issues — society’s structure, identity politics — but this one doesn’t move much beyond the intimacies of a single relationship.

And the source of the hazard?

“In the world of that song, I was very big. Too big,” Yandel says. “I had a bigger impact than I wanted to. I wanted to get away from my impact.”

All this is not to say, however, that “Boom Hazard” is a standard breakup song. “I am not your mirror/I do not reflect you,” Yandel sings during one of the rapid-fire verses.

“One of the things the song does articulate well is that there is this feeling that I’ve been coming up against a lot that women tend to be these kinds of affirmative mirrors for other people,” says Yandel. “I’m actually a person with my own ideas, not just a thing for you to confirm your own identity.”

Of course, the kind of affirmation that Yandel is talking about isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, she points out that her closest relationship is currently with her bandmates, and particularly fellow vocalist Mary Jane Regalado.

“Mary sees me as the person I see myself to be and affirms that in me, and vice-versa,” Yandel says. “Ironically, the thing that annoys me that men do, I do to Mary and she does to me, but because we’re equals, it feels less exploitative.”

Within “Boom Hazard,” though, toxic self-affirmation is exactly what leads to a meltdown, because both parties crave the feeling of being valued as people.

“I think it has to do a lot with that sense, or becoming a tool for confirming something about the men who want to date me,” Yandel says. “I don’t want to be that. I want to be a being, too.”

But Walsh isn’t cooking for one: He’s getting ready for the latest edition of Drone Brunch, a now three-year-old event series that combines delicious food with nichey music. In the living room, keyboards and synthesizers litter the floor, and the musicians to which they belong mill about. A show is about to begin.

Two acts from Philadelphia are on the lineup — Hallowed Bells and Charles Cohen — alongside D.C. synth ensemble Br’er. When the show starts, Hallowed Bells’ peaceful twinkling gives way to Cohen’s dense and contemplative aural storytelling, and Br’er shows that it exemplifies Tom Waits’ adage of “beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”

And there were scones.

Drone Brunch started when Walsh “heard from a friend of mine say the phrase ‘drone brunch,'” Walsh says.

Walsh later found out that the idea was never meant to be taken seriously. He says the term’s inventor, ex-D.C. resident Cole Goins — whose former house venue The Cherch hosted the first Drone Brunch in 2012 — told Walsh that it had been a joke he and some buddies had come up with over a few beers.

Charles Cohen performing at Drone Brunch (Photo: Keith Mathias)

“It happened to be a great idea because there’s this tradition of hardcore matinees on Sundays,” Walsh says. Famed New York City club CBGB hosted them for years, and D.C.’s hardcore scene has had its share of daytime gigs. But hardcore isn’t a calming way to wrap up the weekend.

“I enjoy a hardcore matinee,” Walsh says, “but on a Sunday afternoon, I’d prefer something a little less aggressive.”

So drone it was. It’s music built on sustained, repeated sounds — which can be made acoustically, but usually require some electronic manipulation — and the audience for it is decidedly limited. Case in point: On this particular Sunday, the people trickling in mostly seem to know each other, and conversation revolves around which shows everyone has seen recently. This is a crowd that sees a lot of music in D.C.

“Somebody who goes to one show a month isn’t going to make that show a weird Sunday afternoon show,” Walsh says. “It’s sort of a self-selecting group in that way, but it’s certainly not exclusionary and we don’t want to be exclusionary in any way. That’s just kind of the way it works out.”

Hallowed Bells (Photo: Keith Mathias)

Walsh says Drone Brunch and the people who attend it are “a little bit weird.” That’s just his style. “I like the weirdos. They’re my people,” he says.

Now, Drone Brunch isn’t the only music-and-brunch event circulating around D.C.: Northeast space Hole In The Sky recently kicked off its own series of brunch concerts, and Walsh has been working with the venue to host a Drone Brunch there sometime over the next couple of months. If it’s anything like the most recent edition, everyone in attendance is in for a treat — including the edible kind.

But Drone Brunch has no large-scale ambitions. Its purpose is simple. The series is “really just about having a nice time and eating some scones,” Walsh says, “because it rhymes with ‘drone.'”