The Frederick band’s eponymous full-length album, out Friday on New Jersey’s Black Numbers label, is the result of four years of shows and self-released EPs. Their woodshedding tends to be purposeful and ongoing, agree drummer/singer Matt Henry and guitarist/singer Evan Braswell. It helps that they’ve known each other for most of their lives and developed the kind of brotherly bond that keeps the sensibility intact.

“We’re all pretty picky — because we’re all such music-history nerds — about what we want out of the sound of the record,” Braswell says.

The 10-song Lilac Daze crackles with life: Songs such as “Shark Bait,” “Glow In The Dark” and “So Confused” have the kind of immediacy associated with Superchunk, Jawbreaker, Velocity Girl and other acts that sprung from edgy punk scenes but had broader sonic ambitions.

Lilac Daze isn’t coy about its primary reference points — Green Day, for example, gets repeated shoutouts on the band’s bio page. Henry says that for him in particular, the ’90s thing was baked-in.

“My mom loved to call into radio contests. She always won all sorts of CDs and videos … and my dad’s a huge music fan as well,” Henry says. “Even though I was like, in third grade, my mom was like, ‘Hey, I won this Weezer CD’ or ‘I won this Smashing Pumpkins CD.’ I kind of had all that stuff embedded in my brain, even at that young age.”

The band’s third member, bassist/singer Patti Kotrady, wasn’t an old friend, but she was a catalyst: Henry and Braswell met her at shows around D.C. and Maryland, and Lilac Daze essentially formed around her in late 2012 as she learned to play bass and write songs.

“At first, it was a little hard to fit into their musical process since they’ve done it together for so long … but Evan and Matt were great about making sure I had equal input when we first started,” Kotrady says.

A lot of Lilac Daze is about relationships, but the storytelling tends to be oblique. Kotrady’s “Lonely Eyes,” for instance, has a sensuous edge (“Thigh to thigh, hand in hand, I passively listened to your plans”), but it’s a collection of scenes more than anything else.

“Ultimately, it’s about being in a tough situation and reaching out for others’ company when that isn’t what’s best for you,” says Kotrady. “So you end up being with people who don’t really care about you, or vice versa.”

“Wrought Iron Fence,” by Braswell, is about wandering around a church alone and drunk — “realizing I still don’t know what I want out of that aspect in my life,” he says, noting that he wasn’t raised with religion. And Henry, the group’s only married member, credits “Jack O’ Lanterns” to finding proper perspective on childhood memories.

“This sounds so cheesy, but when I started dating Nicole, who’s now my wife, it was like, ‘OK, this is actually the time of my life,” Henry says. “Like, right now is the best time.”

And for now, all three members say the band’s interpersonal dynamic is fruitful. If there’s any tension, Braswell says, it’s because he and Henry “kind of act like little kids most of the time.” It’s not unusual for Kotrady to get the last word.

“One time we were in the car on a really long drive, and my feet smelled so bad that she made me pull over to buy new shoes,” Henry says. “We didn’t really get in an argument. I was just like, ‘OK, my feet smell really bad.'”

Lilac Daze plays an album release show Oct. 14 at the East Street Arts Center in Frederick, Md. The band also opens for La Sera on Oct. 20 at Songbyrd in D.C.

The set started off with a solo Corgan playing a few acoustic numbers before being joined by guitarist Jeff Schroeder for a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and a sublime version of “Mayonnaise.”

The rest of the band, including original Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, joined the duo for a plugged-in mini-Siamese Dream set that included “Rocket,” “Soma” and “Today.”

Liz Phair opened the show, prepping the crowd for the night of ’90s nostalgia with a killer set that focused on her first three albums. Whip-Smart‘s “Supernova” sounded particularly fab.

Liz Phair

Billy Corgan

All photos by Kyle Gustafson

But the new album from this rough-hewn, ‘90s-influenced troupe — Personal Life, out Feb. 5 on Exploding In Sound — takes a chance on the mundane.

“A lot of this album is a little weird, because it’s sort of about the smaller moments as opposed to big, epic or romantic topics, like break-up songs,” says guitarist and vocalist Sam Rosenberg. “It’s more about, like, different jobs that I’ve had, or just little things like that — like walking to 7-11 to go get Cheez-Its.”

After some personnel shakeups and shifts in sound, Two Inch Astronaut — named after the phenomenon of an astronaut’s spine lengthening about two inches in space — has taken a decidedly down-to-earth approach.

But that doesn’t mean the group, which has become one of the D.C. region’s most promising bands, is thinking small. What started as an acoustic guitar and cello duo is now a full-fledged rock trio, composed of Rosenberg, bassist Andy Chervenak and drummer/vocalist Matt Gatwood. And now, they’re using a studio. A real one.

A whirlwind weeklong recording session with J. Robbins at his Baltimore studio, Magpie Cage, produced Personal Life. Previously, the trio had messed around in a friend’s “makeshift basement studio,” Rosenberg says. This new approach, though intense, came with some surprising benefits — like barring the band from overtinkering with its songs.

“We were just totally immersed in [the recording] for a week, and you’re done before you have a chance to get sick of it,” Rosenberg says. With more time to mess around, he adds, it’s too easy to lose perspective. “Before long, nothing sounds like anything.”

The band’s creative process has also changed. Previously, Rosenberg would bring skeletal demos to the band, who would work together to flesh them out through practice. This time, they worked more collaboratively, writing songs together and taking some of the pressure (and spotlight) off Rosenberg, who also writes songs under the name Mattress Financial.

Feb. 7, Two Inch Astronaut celebrates the release of Personal Life at D.C.’s Black Cat. It’ll be the latest in many local shows over the years; Two Inch keeps its calendar packed. But still, Rosenberg is leaving his mind open about what could happen. The vibe could depend on the day, the band’s state of mind, the weather.

“As many shows as we’ve played,” Rosenberg says, “as soon as I think, ‘All right, I’ve kind of got an idea of what this is like, how this is gonna go,’ the next show is just completely different.”

Two Inch Astronaut plays Feb. 7 at Black Cat with Hemlines and Laughing Man. Listen to Personal Life, below.

If he’s made peace in his work life, Barlow’s personal affairs haven’t gone as smoothly. Defend Yourself followed the end of the singer’s 25-year marriage, and the aftermath was bound to inform Brace The Wave, his first solo record since 2009’s Goodnight Unknown. But then, Barlow has always written songs with a sore heart and an eye on damage done, so why should his new work be any different?

Brace The Wave keeps Barlow’s sound stripped to its barren bones, an approach suited to the pleas and confessions therein. When he sings, “I’ll leave you alone, but don’t go” in “Wave,” his voice seems to emanate from down the hall, as if the listener is just seconds away from closing the door. Elsewhere on Brace The Wave, the 49-year-old examines the aging process (“Pulse”) after taking a few moments to purge his guilt (“Redeemed”) and shame (“Nerve”). But arguably Brace The Wave‘s best moment surfaces in “C&E,” which explores the idea of pain as a prelude to rebirth — a topic well-suited to a singer who never stops looking inward in search of growth and truth.

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

“Friday night!” the group bellows on the track. Their vocals sound overwrought; their synths sparkly. But this is no anthem for weekend warriors.

“It was a Friday night home invasion,” goes one verse. “Male, 6’2″ and Caucasian. Cause of death: strangulation.”

D.C.’s only murder tale to be paired with dance pop (in recent memory, anyway), “Friday Night” is giddily gruesome — and now it has an equally bizarre video, premiered on Bandwidth today.

Like the group’s earlier video for “New Empire,” the “Friday Night” visual is basically a potpourri of vintage footage, only this time, most of it looks pulled from the ’80s and ’90s. If the video has a main character, it’s a nuclear-green Pontiac Stinger — described by one YouTube user as “the most ridiculous concept/future car ever” — that cruises the beach dispensing sexy fun.

There’s not really a narrative here, though. Brutalism member Gavin Holland says he and bandmates Ben Bruno and Zach Carter just scoured the Internet for “the weirdest vintage yet action-oriented footage” they could get.

“Some of it is thematically relevant, but we also have imagery we just enjoy,” Holland writes, “like dudes surfing and ’90s robot CGI dinosaurs.”

Carter points out that while the video might seem random, it actually stems from Brutalism’s core philosophy.

“Brutalism has always believed that if you’re going to be murdered in your own home, you might as well go windsurfing first,” Carter writes. “We consider this a bedrock aesthetic principle.”