The band made its debut with 2013 Nites of Midnite, a blistering LP that harks back to Washington’s ’80s hardcore heyday. Since then, Red Hare has been putting together the pieces of a second album. A piece of their new work, a fresh 7-inch called Lexicon Mist, arrives Tuesday.

“We work any way that we can, because we all have jobs, wives, lives, responsibilities, children,” says guitarist Jason Farrell, who lives in Los Angeles. “But this is still something that has meant something to us for longer than it hasn’t.”

On the record’s A-side, “Silverfish,” Red Hare explodes from every corner: Vocalist Shawn Brown barks with sharp clarity; Farrell draws blood from metal-tinged riffs; Dave Eight’s bass growls and drummer Joe Gorelick pops and punches on the kit.

But on the 7-inch’s B-side, Red Hare nods to a band that’s less prone to spontaneous combustion: Lungfish. “Sphere of Influence” pays homage to the deep and droning track from the Baltimore band’s 1996 record Sound in Time. For that one, Brown tones down his typical roar, channeling Daniel Higgs’ distinctive vocal style.

“It’s such a heavy song, not only musically, but spiritually,” says Brown.

The song reflects the personal challenge, Brown says, of “trying to juggle your desires to play music and still work and survive, and in some of our cases, raise a family and realizing that your time is short anyway.”

Lexicon Mist arrives Feb. 16 via Dischord and Hellfire Records.

But the Very Small doesn’t actually drop the “p” word into the tune’s lyrics — it takes a more abstract approach, says drummer Aaron Mann, who wrote the lyrics.

“I tried to think of myself as a camera, traveling through these communities, seeing what poverty really entails,” says Mann, 31.

But the track is confrontational, too. Lyrics like “Now you all look comfortable” criticize complacency on poverty; “Punish the eye sockets” brings to mind the Ludovico technique. Meanwhile, vocal harmonies and a galloping tempo lend a sense of urgency.

While writing the song, Mann says he tried to balance its righteousness with self-awareness.

“I wanted to as much as possible avoid [the song] coming from the middle-class white-guy perspective, or it being too prescriptive,” says the musician, who lives in Hyattsville, Maryland.

“The Worst Form of Violence” originally appeared on The Very Small’s 2014 LP, Zoomed Way Out. But the eight-year-old group decided to release it again this fall as a single, along with a video (watch it above) directed by Nigel Lyons. The video aims to address poverty with interspersed representations of suffering — “both in an explicit sense but also abstract,” Mann says.

The songwriter says it’s all about building awareness.

“If [the song] increases anyone’s empathy,” he says, “that’s a huge reward.”

The Very Small plays a video-release show Oct. 4 at DC9.

“I would always get mildly offended when people would assume all our songs were about girls,” says Bairatchnyi, who sings in the D.C.-based duo. He says he rarely writes about his own experiences.

The Obsessives have a full-length debut on the way called Heck No, Nancy (out Sept. 18 on Near Mint), but the quickest way to get acquainted with the band’s confessionals is via “Old Mountain Bikes,” a highlight from their 2014 EP Manners.

When they first recorded the track, “we thought people were going to think that it was boring,” says Bairatchnyi. Turns out “that was the song that everyone liked the most.”

With a churning tempo and strong hook, “Old Mountain Bikes” speaks from a girl’s point of view. “I write a lot of songs from the perspective of my younger sister,” says Bairatchnyi. The song’s imagery splits focus between his sister (at the beginning) and his dad (at the end). But when it comes to the tune’s message, Bairatchnyi says that listeners should take their own meaning from it.

“There’s definitely a message there, but I don’t like spelling it out for people too much,” the musician says.

The Obsessives plan to expand their sound on Heck No, Nancy — and true to their name, they’re already writing their next record.

Listen to “Bored,” a track from The Obsessives’ forthcoming LP:

Turns out no — the electronic-pop tune is just about recording as a solo artist.

“I feel like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, just like, sitting here pressing all these buttons,” says Cruzie Beaux’s Kristina Reznikov, 28, who named the song after the classic film’s one-man band, Bert. (The misspelling of “Dyke” is intentional, she adds.)

“Mrs. Dick Van Dike” (listen below) sounds remix-ready, riding on the tempo of its piano hook and dipping into valleys of ambience. Mixed by Mat Leffler-Schulman of Mobtown Studios, its mellow vibe diverges from Reznikov’s relatively energetic first batch of songs, released as Demo 1. Though Reznikov worries she’s not sticking to her sound, the new track still unearths an uneasiness beneath her wailing vocals.

That tension might be familiar to fans of Reznikov’s previous work with Drop Electric. Reznikov left D.C. indie-rock band in mid-2014, but she says writing alone hasn’t been a difficult adjustment.

“It’s relaxing for me to sit in my room for five hours and play a beat,” Reznikov says.

Outside of a band, the songwriting process comes from the same place it always has: a compulsion to write. The Cleveland Park-based musician says her songwriting itch can get so powerful, it reaches “the point that even when I’m talking to people, I’m just thinking about a song that I’m writing,” she says. “It can get pretty annoying.”

If all goes according to plan, Cruzie Beaux will release her debut full-length this winter.

Cruzie Beaux plays Saturday at Fête De La Musique DC.

“We are doomed, doomed, doomed,” Kristina Reznikov seethes at the track’s start, giving way to a few somber piano notes. Soon there’s a burst of energy as a mass of sirenlike guitars explodes, and just before the three-minute mark, a chorus chants its way into the mix. (Listen below.)

The song had more modest beginnings. “‘Rival Churches’ was a song that started with me on piano, just writing, messing around,” says drummer Ramtin Arablouei, 32. “I brought it in to share with everyone, and they just thought that the chorus for this should be really loud.”

Reznikov — who handled vocals, guitar and keys before she left Drop Electric in 2014 — says she had a thing for dramatic vocals at the time. “While we were writing Lost In Decay, I was having a good time ending tracks with choirlike vocal layers,” the 27-year-old writes in an email.

To flesh out the choir, Drop Electric called in some friends. “We had a studio in our house and just brought in pizza, so we had, like, 20 people stand in a circle, and one person could hear the track and everyone is singing along with them in a group,” says Arablouei, who lives in Wheaton, Maryland. “It was really powerful.”

“Rival Churches” was the first song Drop Electric wrote for Lost In Decay, its crowdfunded third album, out May 26. (The band first planned to release it this week, but bumped it when Record Store Day-related delays pushed back the vinyl edition.) Recorded at the band’s studio in Bethesda, the record sounds more accessible and concerned with beauty than the six-year-old band’s previous material. It’s intense and emotive, fleshing out its sometimes ambiguous lyrics with expansive waves of guitar, keys and thunderous percussion.

Even with occasional forays into ambiguity, the lyrics on “Rival Churches” — like other songs on the record — coax a personal narrative out of a context of oppression.

Arablouei says the album’s lyrics speak to Reznikov’s experiences as a lesbian who attended Catholic school and the “challenges it posed for her identity.” (After Reznikov left the band, Anya Mizani stepped in on vocals, guitar and keys.) They go hand in hand with the band’s larger objective not just to criticize powerful institutions, but to look at how they change people.

“It’s not just a matter of being angry at the big other,” Arablouei says. “It’s about what [impact] these things, these societal issues and pressures…have had on our lives.”

Drop Electric plays an album release show May 16 at Artisphere.