Bossalingo – Les Feuilles Mortes
Drop Electric – Higgs Boson
Hailu Mergia and the Walias – Eti Gual Blenai
East Ghost – Tobacco Teeth
Golden Looks – Chisenbop
Anchor 3 – Hunter
Cigarbox Planetarium – Tiny Dream Car
Suzanne Brindamour – In the Sky
The Kings of Crownsville – Lies
Fall Seattle – Boyhood
Andrew Grossman – Where Did It Go Wrong?
G-Flux – Champagne Instrumental
Rootbug – Close Call
Baby Bry Bry – What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Nasar Abadey and Supernova – Eternal Surrender
Dawit Eklund – Litchi Juice
Cigarette – Crown
Iritis – Caravan
Echo Broke Alone – All That’s Left Is Broken
Animal Collective – The Softest Voice

The song (listen below) comes from the D.C.-area slocore band’s latest release, Chapel Sounds. It’s part of Organechs, a series made up of six mini-albums from other musicians — mostly from New York — and compiled by music publisher JMC Aggregate. The tapes are tied together with a visual piece: an illustration of a girl morphing into some sort of demonic corpse, or vice versa. A panel of the girl’s transformation covers each tape.

“Window You” lingers on sleepy legs. Howard, 25, describes it in terms of a kiss, but it feels more like the musical equivalent of Ambien.

There are a lot of different types of kisses, so perhaps the band was going for one of those half-awake embraces that happens right between midnight and first light. It lacks urgency or fire, opting to rest on agreeable melodies and gentle yet incoherent singing that melts into the guitar lines.

Asked about the origins of the band’s ideas, Howard and his bandmates say, “Listen to the snow fall between your God and mine.” (Likely a reference to Galaxie 500. Correction: Make that Yoko Ono. These kids are older souls than we thought.)

That’s exactly what “Window You” feels like: mundane and expected, but pleasant. It’s nothing to fight against — but also nothing to fight for.

Cigarette performs June 18 at Tropicalia.

This week’s Sound Advice playlist starts with feedback and ends with a throwback: fuzzy Vancouver band Weed (July 3 at Rock & Roll Hotel) starts us off, and we close with a classic from UGK, the Port Arthur, Texas, duo that launched rapper Bun B (who’s at Echostage July 3) into the upper crust of hip-hop’s Southern underground.

In between, we’re all over the map from Gaithersburg to Nairobi to Hangzhou: MoCo hip-hop star Logic plays a hometown show tomorrow night, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (see our photos) wraps this weekend after some must-see performances from Kenyan and Chinese artists including pipa virtuoso Wu Man.

Hear them all in our playlist, below.

Having trouble loading the playlist on your iPhone? Try whyd’s mobile app.

Plus the band—which plays Comet Ping Pong Saturday night—makes the kind of snotty protopunk that D.C. listeners already have a soft spot for. (The Ar-Kaics call their sound “troglodyte teenbeat ’60s-style punk.”)

The band’s forthcoming self-titled LP follows a string of fuzzy releases on a few different labels, including Windian. But this one sounds a little less grimy than those earlier slabs. Blame that on some kind of spooky magic, maybe: Engineer Jeff Kane recorded the record at what bassist Timmy (Tim Abbondelo) calls a “mystical rock ‘n’ roll retreat” in Northern Virginia.

Not that the album is any less punk for it. “[I] learned these songs the week before we recorded the LP,” Abbondelo writes in an email.

The album’s catchy, angsty first single (stream it at the top of this page) is “No No No,” written—like most of the band’s songs—by frontman Kevin Longendyke (also of The Shirks). It comes across as kiss-off from a loner who’s ready to extend his middle finger to the world. Longendyke wasn’t available to chat when I reached the band via email today, so here’s how Abbondelo describes the tune: “I think it’s about alienation or something. Maybe overcoming everyday adversity? You’d have to ask Kevin.”

Abbondelo says to also expect a promotional video for the single, made in cooperation with Richard and Jonathan Howard of Cigarette, the D.C. slocore band that sometimes includes The Ar-Kaics’ Johnny Ward.

So what can we expect from the rest of the album? “Raging punkers and eerie and achy, really beautiful ballads,” says Abbondelo—with one disclosure: “I wasn’t around for any of the writing process,” he clarifies. “That said, I think it’s the greatest.”

The Ar-Kaics’ LP is available for preorder at Windian Records. The band plays Comet Ping Pong Saturday, June 14 with White Mystery, Joy Classic, and DJ Baby Alcatraz.

The comp includes tracks from The So So Glos, Saintseneca, locals Cigarette and Two Inch Astronaut, and critical darlings Speedy Ortiz (among others), most of them recorded by student engineers this year, says WVAU General Manager Maxwell Tani. “We used to do full band setups, but because we are located near offices and classrooms, we decided to ask most of the bands to record stripped down versions of their songs,” Tani writes in an email. “What that means is that we’ve gotten some really interesting stuff, which is different from what you may get when seeing some of these bands in concert.”

Tani says the sessions—arranged by Events Director Mike Creedon—have already brought visibility to the station, which is run primarily by student volunteers. Of course, it hasn’t been too tough to persuade students to get involved. “It’s an opportunity to learn or practice a skill while producing great content for our stream and website, and meeting awesome bands, so we tend to get a lot of people wanting to help out and be a part of it,” Tani writes.

So far, the general manager’s favorite recording has been the version of “Everything Revival” that The So So Glos played in the studio. “They slowed it down just a bit and played without cymbals. It’s such a catchy song to begin with, but by kind of eliminating the cymbal crashes and distortion, it really emphasized the hooks.” He adds that Natural Child came by earlier this week and “absolutely KILLED”—but were recorded too late to make this compilation. They’re saving it for next time. (It’ll also eventually go up on the station’s Soundcloud page.)

As far as Tani knows, this is the first time the station’s operators have come together to work on a project of this kind. “This is the first time we’ve really made an effort to consistently reach out to local and touring bands for in-studio performances,” he writes. “We realized that we have the equipment to put them on, and the people who could do a good job running them. We just had to get organized and be willing to put in the effort.”

Listen to the compilation:

Stranger in the Alps, Aaron Tinjum and the Tangents, and The Low Bends
Friday, April 4 at the Velvet Lounge, $8

Local indie-folk act Stranger in the Alps released its debut album in December and has been playing in DIY spaces since then—until now. I’m not clear on whether this will be a solo performance or if main man Steve Kolowich will have guests recreating the album’s rich harmonies, but either way, these downtempo tunes are just the right speed for a Friday night after a long week. This is an all-D.C. bill with singer-songwriter Aaron Tinjum and the Tangents and Americana band The Low Bends.

Cigarette, Margy Pepper, and Olivia Neutron-John
Friday, April 4 at Paper Sun, donations accepted

D.C. ambient shoegaze quintet Cigarette embraces the area’s DIY spaces, and this is another one: Catch the band’s ethereal tunes at this Columbia Heights house, along with Olympia noise-pop trio Margy Pepper and D.C. bedroom-pop act act Olivia Neutron-John (yes, it’s my favorite local band name, too).

Lazapalooza: The Bills and Brews Craft Beer and Band Fest
Saturday, April 5 at Union Arts, $35

Get a jump-start on the upcoming festival season with this all-day fest that joins local tunes and local beer as a benefit for reporter Matt Laslo’s “Bills and Brews” Web series. The ticket price includes all-you-can-drink local craft brews (while supplies last, of course) from your favorite locals: 3 Stars, Bluejacket, Chocolate City, DC Brau, Devils Backbone, Heavy Seas, and Flying Dog. If unlimited booze isn’t enough enticement, there’s also a solid music lineup of U.S. Royalty, Pree, Paperhaus (acoustic set), Marian McLaughlin, Beyond Modern, Margot MacDonald, Laughing Man, and The North Country, with DJ sets by Brett and Ra Ra Rasputin.

Cavale, JoyCut, Pleasure Curses, Furniteur
Saturday, April 5 at the Dunes, $10

Cavale calls itself post-punk, but the D.C. duo’s fusion of electronic beats and eerie vocals sounds more like uptempo trip-hop. Devise your own description at the pair’s debut-album release show, which also features Italy’s darkwave electronic duo JoyCut, D.C. synthpoppers Pleasure Curses, and the first show from Furniteur, the new pop collaboration between Brett and artist Brittany Sims.

David Klinger
Sunday, April 6 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, free

Luce Unplugged is a concert series that pairs musicians with art: They select some pieces from the museum’s collection and perform after a staff-led talk about those pieces. This week’s performer (note the 1:30 p.m. start time!) is David Klinger of the experimental indie band Frau Eva, which is currently on indefinite hiatus.

All That Remains, Darkest Hour, Wilson
Wednesday, April 9 at the 9:30 Club, $20

If you’re wondering which one of these shows is not like any of the others, you’ve found it. Massachusetts metal band All That Remains has its own followers, but I’d like to highlight opener Darkest Hour, a local metalcore outfit that formed in our Virginia suburbs in the mid-’90s. The quintet has definitely worked its way up over the years, and it’s great to see them on the big stage on a national tour. Catch them here, because their next area stop is at Jiffy Lube Live for Mayhem Fest in August, where they’ll be sharing the stage with Ice-T’s metal project Body Count (I’m not joking).

D.C. Music Salon: DC Jazz, Deeper than Duke
Wednesday, April 9 at Shaw Library, free

Hankering for a music event that won’t require earplugs? This is for you. For this edition of the D.C. Music Salon, WPFW DJ and jazz scholar Rusty Hassan will show an excerpt from the documentary “7th & T” and discuss D.C.’s rich jazz history beyond Duke Ellington, touching on national musicians (Charlie Byrd, Billy Taylor, Frank Wess) as well as lesser-known locals and the clubs they played in.

These and other show listings can be found on ShowListDC.