American Television is a pop-punk band. That will be clear from watching this video, even with the sound turned off. It’s got jump kicks, NOFX T-shirts in youth large, old-school Vans, a burrito, gang vocals and a singer — Steve Rovery — who appears to have earned his doctorate degree from the Milo Aukerman Institute of Advanced Pop-Punk Studies.

Helmed by Mike Watkins, the quirky video smacks of the kind of pop-punk schtick that hasn’t been around since people were buying Bowling For Soup records. In it, American Television books a show and charges into an intense regimen of preparation and promotion. The band’s members hit the gym, practice obsessively and crush Tex-Mex food — only to wind up playing to an empty room. No one shows, even though the gig’s both all-ages and free.

Perhaps that’s the picture of true optimism: perfecting songs only to play them in a void.

“Optimist” appears on American Television’s forthcoming digital-only EP, Let’s Play Two. The band plays Aug. 15 at St. Stephen’s Church with Boardroom Heroes, The Rememberables, Canker Blossom and Six Foot Machine (and hopefully people show up).

And with that explanation from Makeshift Shelters bassist Phil Edfors, one of D.C.’s most promising bands has dissolved.

Makeshift Shelters, the praiseworthy pop-punk four piece that just this year released its debut LP, Something So Personal, to considerable critical acclaim, has called off a string of dates planned for this summer — including a mainstage slot at this year’s In It Together Fest in D.C.

The band’s prospects for staying together seemed tenuous: Singer Ella Boissonnault moved to Boston last year to attend Berklee College of Music, where she’s double majoring. Edfors and guitarist Andrew Clark talked about moving to the Northeast to focus on the band, but both are now planning to attend Husson University in Bangor, Maine.

Plus, Edfors writes in an email, “money sucks, s**t is stressful and we no longer feel a connection to our music.”

So it goes. Another band seemingly on the precipice of bigger things — with a new record deal and reported interest from even bigger places, including indie tastemaker Topshelf Records — is no more.

Right before the band announced its split, it debuted a music video for the song “Lighter Fluid.” Check it out below and remember the good days.

Today Bandwidth premieres “Grayest Places,” the seventh track from the band’s LP out Feb. 24 on Broken World Media. The song is perhaps the album’s best snapshot of what Makeshift Shelters is at the moment: a band that’s now entrenched in the world of indie pop, but still attracted to midtempo drums and punk riffs. Vocalist Ella Boissonnault layers yearning, defiant lyrics and sustained melodies over driving beats and post-punk guitar that’s both jagged and punishing. It’s the band’s cornerstone approach, executed with finesse and clamor.

Stream “Grayest Places,” above. Something So Personal is available for preorder now before its official arrival.

D.C. acts Baby Bry Bry & The Apologists, BRNDA and The Sea Life have more or less cornered the city’s market for noisy, oddball pop that delves into all varieties of other stuff, from The Sea Life’s hazy lo-fi to Baby Bry Bry’s throwback garage punk. They’ll be playing with kindred spirits What Moon Things, the “dreamo” ensemble based in New York.

For Sunday’s show, the bands and their cohorts at The Sea Life’s label Chimes Records will release an eight-song cassette (plus a download card) with two new songs from each of the bands. The label produced 200 tapes for the show, which will be given out free to the first 200 folks who turn up. All these bands plus a tape for $15? Not bad.

“All of the bands on the bill this Sunday are buds, so our excitement about finally getting to play together made us want to make the show feel as special to the audience as it is to us,” says Baby Bry Bry frontman Bry (Bryan Gerhart). A tape giveaway is also a pretty good way to fill up a club on a Sunday night.

Today Bandwidth premieres four songs from the limited-run tape — one from each of the bands. But don’t let that excuse you from hitting up the show this Sunday and nabbing your own copy.

Warning: Some explicit language.

Baby Bry Bry & The Apologists, “Reluctantly Inspired”

BRNDA, “Serious Band”

The Sea Life, “Let Me Out” (Live Demo)

What Moon Things, “Insturment”

‘Overflowing’

In February, the songs on Overflowing will also appear on Makeshift Shelters’ debut LP, Something So Personal, a collection of songs that have been under construction since Virginia natives Boissonnault, Andrew Clark and Phil Edfors began playing together in 2013. The EP’s three tunes foretell an LP that could bring much bigger things for the band, which formed with the stated goal of playing genteel music.

“I got a call from Phil,” says Clark, who plays guitar. “He said, ‘I hate heavy music. Let’s start a chill band.’”

Both Clark and Edfors cut their teeth in the local punk scene. Their new drummer, Nate Patsfall — who joined in late 2014 after a previous member quit — has a penchant for grindcore. Punk is in their blood. But it felt like time for a change.

Their idea was to start an airy slowcore band like Codeine. They hijacked the name Makeshift Shelters from a droney Gregor Samsa song. But the budding ensemble’s songs weren’t turning out droney. They were louder and faster than what they intended, and Edfors says he couldn’t sing. It dawned on them: “We need someone who is actually good at music to do this with us,” the bassist says.

Boissonnault came from a different musical world: Her parents guided her towards piano lessons, and classical music eventually became the backdrop to her aspiring dance career. By the time Boissonnault was performing in public, she tended to play more coffee shops than DIY spaces.

“From the very beginning, we wanted to do the band correctly with the purpose of being able to get it to as many people as possible and have it be sustainable.” — Makeshift Shelters’ Andrew Clark

But Makeshift Shelters began in a DIY space. Clark and Edfors approached Boissonnault at a basement show after she played a solo set under the moniker Ella Sophia, and after a couple of drinks, Edfors and Clark jovially suggested they all start a band together. When they did, they quickly started to drift from their slowcore aspirations.

Clark says Makeshift Shelters has been called emo before. That almost makes sense; all of its recordings — including its first EP, released last year — have been affiliated with Broken World Media, the label run by Derrick Shanholtzer of emo flagbearers The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die. Their labelmates and future tourmates — including Soda Bomb, which shares a bill with Makeshift Shelters tonight at The Commune — all hail from that musical neck of the woods.

“I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it,” Clark says about the emo label. “I’m not 100 percent apprehensive about it because, whatever, I can see a connection. But that doesn’t seem like the kind of music we’re playing.”

But it hardly matters — not with songs this strong. Clark and his bandmates seem ambitious, too, or at least committed to the idea of not messing up.

“When we started this band, it was based on the idea [of], ‘Let’s make music that we’re really passionate about that feels cathartic, but let’s do this band right,’” Clark says. “From the very beginning, we wanted to do the band correctly with the purpose of being able to get it to as many people as possible and have it be sustainable.”

Doing music full-time would be a boon, too, Clark says. “We all work s****y part-time jobs. I’d rather not if I could one day.”

Yet obstacles emerge on the road to success — and between these band members, there are highways. Both Boissonnault and Patsfall live in Boston now, attending the Berklee School of Music. The band has made it work so far. But with Clark and Edfors traveling regularly to New England for practice and shows, it’s not ideal.

“They’re — not upset, but annoyed with me because I want to finish school. Getting my degree is super important to me,” Boissonnault says. Edfors nudges her about it. “You should drop out. What’s wrong with you?” he says, half joking. But she’s just finished her first semester. “It’s important to me to stay,” she says.

They won’t be separate for long. Edfors says that he and Clark will probably move north this year, to be closer both to their vocalist and the East Haven, Connecticut, scene where Broken World Media and their studio are based.

D.C.’s punk — or pop? — scene would be wise to exploit the band’s proximity while it can.

After its LP drops, the band plans to tour over Berklee’s spring break and book some shows over the summer. After that, who knows?

Northern Virginia still feels like home, says Boissonnault, an Alexandria native. She says the Boston scene feels fake to her, and getting a show there can be a pain — it’s got a million colleges, and everyone’s in a band.

But Makeshift Shelters sounds ready to rise above. Responding to a question about the band’s larger ambitions, Edfors says, “I want to play amphitheaters. I want to play Verizon Center.”

I wasn’t kidding, I reply. “I’m not, either,” Edfors says.

Makeshift Shelters plays with Swings, Soda Bomb and Colorful Kid tonight at the Commune.

Ten minutes later, Scharbach swapped the frisbee for a microphone. He bounded onstage, pumped up to play D.C.’s Fort Reno summer concert series for the third time with his group, GIVE, D.C.’s most boundary-pushing hardcore band. It would be another three months before the band released its debut LP, Electric Flower Circus.

After ample time in the studio, a wait at the pressing plant and many dollars spent, that record finally arrived today. (Stream it below.)

In a scene that tends to adhere to a dress code of jorts and black T-shirts, GIVE is all sportswear and trainers, sometimes even Oxfords and selvedge denim. Its sound lives outside of the confines of D.C. hardcore, too: The five-piece skirts the classic faster-louder formula, referencing ’90s alt-rock just as often as it borrows from early Dischord.

Scharbach says he would be proud to say GIVE springs from D.C.’s rich punk heritage. But part of the band’s aesthetic seems inherited from Haight-Ashbury instead of the District. Its art and song titles emit a whiff of patchouli: A white flower logo adorns its 7-inch singles, which come with names like “I Am Love,” “Flowerhead” and “Petal Pushing.” Electric Flower Circus looks utterly psychedelic. No stern faces and black X’s here.

“In the hardcore punk scene we came up in, the imagery was a lot darker,” Scharbach says. But he felt drawn to more positive symbols, like the flowers of the paisley 1960s and Britpop 1990s. That imagery became “a floral foundation we just built off of,” he says. “Flowers became our thing.”

“In the hardcore punk scene we came up in, the imagery was a lot darker,” says GIVE vocalist John Scharbach. “Flowers became our thing.”

In a city both enriched and constrained by its legendary hardcore scene, GIVE seems respectful of the past, but not handcuffed to it. The 13-song Electric Flower Circus aims to further stretch its oeuvre—and the limits of hardcore.

The record won’t sound unrecognizable to fans; it still weds the pounding pace of Fugazi-bred hardcore with a little Lungfish and the band’s other myriad influences. But this time, the guitars sounds cleaner, and Scharbach does, too, in a way: he sings more and growls less. Some moments on the album even enter dancey territory. The frontman says that from his close vantage point, it’s tough to identify what’s different on this record. But eventually he describes Electric Flower Circus as “more rock-and-rollish” compared to the band’s previous stuff.

GIVE’s sound isn’t the only thing getting a rethink on Electric Flower Circus: The LP also marks the band’s return to self-publishing after a string of rendezvouses with other labels. GIVE dropped the full-length on its own imprint—the appropriately crunchy-sounding Moonflower Records, which only has one prior release: the band’s 2009 12-inch of demo recordings. After that EP, GIVE dropped five 7-inch singles on five labels, all run by the band’s friends in the scene.

Not that GIVE is done with other shops. In fact, it’s now collaborating with two of the heftiest labels it’s worked with yet. Big-deal hardcore label Revelation Records plans to release Sonic Bloom, a five-song GIVE EP, which the band recorded and mastered at legendary Arlington studio Inner Ear over the summer. Then there’s its single due out on top Boston hardcore imprint Lockin’ Out. Both releases, expected to come out this year, will include material from GIVE’s full-length as well as some exclusive songs.

Working with big hardcore indies hasn’t always interested GIVE. The band says it was approached by some in the past, but they never felt like a good fit. For one of the most eclectic bands in hardcore, hopping on a label with a bunch of other hardcore acts didn’t seem ideal. “We never wanted to be boxed in like that,” Scharbach says.

“We don’t want our band to be on iPhone cases,” says GIVE drummer Gene Melkisethian. “We don’t want our band to be a product.”

Plus, some of those bigger labels could have pushed GIVE in a more commercial direction, which the five-piece has never felt comfortable with, according to drummer Gene Melkisethian. “We don’t want our band to be on iPhone cases,” he says. “We don’t want our band to be a product.”

Revelation and Lockin’ Out seemed different. Melkisethian says he’s known the folks who run Lockin’ Out for years, and Revelation’s distribution network and name recognition made it hard to pass up. But GIVE didn’t want to put its LP in anyone else’s hands. For that, they wanted creative and financial control. “We knew that if we financed it, we could put more money into it than a label would,” Melkisethian says.

Besides, the band sold about 1,200 copies of its self-released 2009 EP, and they felt confident they could do it again. Electric Flower Circus hasn’t been cheap—when we talked over the summer, GIVE had spent about $5,000 on the record, most of it earned from touring—but the creative and economic freedom that comes with going DIY seems worth the money, Melkisethian says.

“That’s kind of the tradition in D.C.,” says the drummer. “We think it’s a good thing.”

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

The frenetic D.C. punk band still plays the same brand of breakneck songs found on its debut EP—the kind that charge through post-hardcore and punk blastbeats. The group still screams lyrics and blares its songs to crowds of sweaty kids in basements.

But McLaughlin—one of two guitarists in the band and a veteran of D.C.’s punk and hardcore scene—says he can see changes creeping in. They come from the group’s two years together, which have given Joy Buttons’ members time to get comfortable with each other and find a sound of their own. It doesn’t hurt that those players have been performing music for years, and they all sit in the middle of a D.C. rock-music Venn diagram: Singer Brandon Moses also makes tunes with Laughing Man and Paperhaus, bassist Matt Dowling splits his time in Deleted Scenes and The Effects, guitarist Erik Sleight plays in Br’er and McLaughlin shares his talents with Typefighter and new band Polyon.

“They know how to write a song and know how to be in a band,” says McLaughlin.

That could explain the maturity found on Joy Buttons’ new EP, Other, released Tuesday. Its four songs sound punk, but they’re melodically sophisticated, more in line with the pop-punk label McLaughlin applies to the band.

“It’s a little bit more evolved, soundwise,” McLaughlin says of the release. “We spent a little more time honing the songs. We’ve gotten to know our sound a little better.”

There’s no clearer example of that growth than the record’s title track. “Other” opens with a hip-shaking drum line that backs subtle bass and reverb-laden guitar—a combination that could find a home on the dreamiest of pop tracks. But by its midway point, the song devolves back into punk sludge, with Moses wailing a kind of dark philosophy: “Is this life as simple as good and evil?/Make yourself your enemy, come full circle.”

The pretty beginning and the noisy ending was the whole idea for the song, McLaughlin says, and it’s something the band didn’t attempt during the rush to put together its first EP, last November’s Arkhipov. Now, “Other” stands as a signpost on the way to progress—an indicator of an already good band getting better together.

Brazilian artist and musician Xavero had spent the last six months in D.C.’s Brookland neighborhood taking part in an informal punk-rock exchange program. While the mononymous artist lived here, he spent his time learning English, befriending some of the scene’s elder statesman and for the first time in his life, fronting a D.C. punk band.

That band was Sem Hastro, a temporary group that would nevertheless make a mark on the city’s vibrant, growing hardcore scene. Technically, Sem Hastro disbanded when Xavero went back to Brazil. But it left behind a demo recording that rises from a thick, primordial punk-rock sludge.

In a local hardcore scene that tends to follow in its forebears’ footsteps, Sem Hastro stands out. Over the demo’s five songs, punk bleeds into blastbeat hardcore. The tempo slows. Guitar solos abound. Its spirit resides in a time and place other than 2014 D.C.—maybe the West Coast, sometime in the 1980s, alongside The Circle Jerks and Black Flag.

The songs are also in Portuguese.

“It’s funny,” says Xavero, sitting under a streetlight outside of The Dougout on one of his last nights in D.C. “A lot of people started liking the band because I was singing in Portuguese.”

Sem Hastro’s story is really the story of Xavero, a 24-year-old punk rocker who began swapping emails with local hardcore band Coke Bust from his home in São Paulo more than two years ago. A bassist in his own straight-edge band, Disease, he had contacted Coke Bust vocalist Nick Candela to try to persuade the group to play his city. Later, when Xavero and a friend visited Berlin for an art exhibition—Xavero was invited to paint—they stayed in Europe for the summer and eventually caught a Coke Bust show in Prague. The musician and Candela became fast friends. When Coke Bust finally made it to Brazil in January, they crashed with Xavero.

“In Sao Paulo, we were just hanging out, having a good time after the tour ended,” says Candela, who also goes by Nick Tape. Afterward, Coke Bust invited Xavero and his friends to visit D.C. during the festival Candela and bandmate Chris Moore booked: Damaged City. “It was an insane opportunity,” Xavero says. “I’d never been to America. I really wanted to go.”

In April he came. He had a six-month visa, but just a few English words to work with. When he flew into New York and turned up at Union Station a few days before Damaged City, he called Candela but struggled to say where he was or what he needed. Candela managed to get the message and pick him up. When festival time came, Xavero helped out onsite, selling hot dogs to punk kids.

Even with the language barrier, Xavero made friends. He settled in. As the day of his return flight neared, he realized he wasn’t ready to leave. He asked Candela—who he had taken to calling “Nicktape,” like it was one word—if he could stay on his couch in Brookland.

So Xavero stayed, even while Coke Bust went on tour. By the time the band got back from their West Coast jaunt, Candela had come up with an idea: Let’s start a punk band.

Back in Brazil, Xavero plays in Disease and tinkers with a few smaller projects. But in those bands, he plays guitar or bass. He called his new band Sem Hastro—an intentionally abstract band name that has no English translation—and decided he would sing. In Portuguese.

“It wouldn’t make sense if I were singing in English,” Xavero says. “It’s not my language. It’s hard to write in English. We listen to a lot of Crudos [the legendary Chicago punk band that sang in Spanish]. We knew it would be cool.”

First Sem Hastro wanted to play straight-ahead punk, Xavero says, the songs slower-paced and melodic behind his ghostly, guttural screams. But with the band’s lineup—which included Candela, scene mainstay and Sick Fix member Pat Vogel and Coke Bust’s James Willett—a distinct D.C. hardcore influence crept in.

“It’s the most punk band either one of us has ever been in. But it’s still hardcore.” —Nick Candela

“It’s the most punk band either one of us has ever been in,” Candela says, referring to himself and Xavero. “But it’s still hardcore.”

The next steps felt easy, Xavero says. They wrote a few songs, practiced four or five times and played their first show at the end of July. The band was a quick hit, says the singer—possibly because they sounded so different.

Six months can fly by. The band played its last show—for now—at the Rocketship Sept. 15. The following week, Xavero boarded a plane.

Under the streetlight outside of the Dougout, Xavero says he doesn’t want to leave. He has friends here now. His English sparkles. He wants to keep pushing with Sem Hastro and see where it goes. But he can’t, he reasons. Overstaying a visa is a mess he doesn’t want to make.

But he’ll be back, Xavero pledges—as soon as March of 2015, when Disease plans to tour through here. Candela says next time, they’re going to work on finding a legal way for him to stay permanently. Until that day comes, the band will be waiting.

Photos, top to bottom: Sem Hastro at the Slam Pad by Michael Andrade; Sem Hastro at the Rocketship by Ron Akins.

“We have a surplus of bands and we’re running out of space,” says Mike O’Brien, an In It Together Fest co-planner who operates his printing business out of Hole In The Sky. Bands’ overwhelming interest in the event—which runs July 31 to Aug. 3 at numerous local venues—stands as a testament to the months of work O’Brien and his fellow organizers have put into what may be D.C.’s first sweeping, multivenue DIY festival.

But while the folks from Hole In The Sky and fellow DIY space The Dougout have handled many of the event’s logistics, much of the heavy lifting—like booking the shows—has been the work of the larger community. O’Brien says the idea was to bring together the city’s diverse and sometimes disparate arts spaces under the banner of a major DIY festival—so participating venues were given dates to work with and told to book the shows they wanted to see.

The result is an eclectic mix: a mishmash of straight-ahead punk rock, spacey fuzz pop, singer-songwriter crooning and various styles in between.

“That is a product of the structure of the fest that we set out from the start to make sure happened,” O’Brien says. He told the venues, “Do whatever you want. We’ll support you in promotion and make sure people know about [the shows].”

Getting the word out clearly has not been a problem. At the moment, roughly 10 bands are waiting to see if they can land a spot in the fest. O’Brien says he and the other organizers are kicking around ideas to fit them all in, including adding new venues—like record stores—and shoehorning them into the already beefy lineup.

Organizers have posted the festival’s most up-to-date schedule on the In It Together Fest website (see the flyer below). So far it includes 17 events at 16 venues—and it’s not all music: There’s an Alley Cat bike race, a drone brunch, a skate showcase, and a centerpiece event Aug. 2 at St. Stephen’s Church. But as O’Brien says, more happenings could be tacked on in the coming days. The heavy lifting might not be finished yet.

Click the image to see a larger version:

That’s not to say the single, released today on The Sea Life’s Bandcamp page (and available on cassette), is somehow weak or ineffective; far from it. The song beats back its demons by casting shadows, brightening occasionally with light, ringing guitars. It all sounds held underwater until the tune breaks to the surface with a flash of psychedelia and distortion.

“Did you take your meds today?” creaks singer Jon Weiss before offering some dubious medical advice: “Don’t forget the wine.”

The Sea Life plays tonight at Black Cat with Humble Fire and Sun Club.