Kill the One You Love

With floaty songs like “Pegasus” and “Never Age,” University of Virginia grads Lindsay Pitts and Cliff Usher tapped into a sound sweeping cool music blogs at the time: teary electronic pop indebted to British record label 4AD.

It was a somewhat engineered choice, as Usher told Washington City Paper in 2013. Pitts and Usher had been getting nowhere with their previous band, indie-folk act Birdlips. Reinventing themselves as GEMS, with a sleeker style and trendier sound, nearly guaranteed the musicians a bigger audience.

Now GEMS seems closer to the break it’s always wanted, with a publicity firm, a record deal and a formal debut — Kill the One You Love — expected out Oct. 30. The pair has already released two songs from the LP: “Living As A Ghost,” premiered in August by NPR, and “Tangled Memories,” a single the band dropped today.

But while Kill the One You Love will come out on D.C. imprint Carpark Records, GEMS is no longer a D.C.-area band: Pitts and Usher recently relocated to Los Angeles, the city that seems to have displaced New York as the No. 1 destination for D.C.’s aspiring music stars.

For local fans of GEMS, the duo’s departure may feel like a betrayal — but the same couldn’t be said of their new music. It’s as morose and pristine as ever.

GEMS plays U Street Music Hall Oct. 23 with Autre Ne Veut.

GEMS is that special group for me, a former hometown band about to be discovered by everyone else. These two have had a vision for their breathy, explosive sound and they’re dedicated to it. The dreamy duo of Lindsay Pitts and Clifford John Usher has left D.C. and moved to LA, and I’ve just heard “Living as a Ghost,” the first song from Kill the One You Love, their debut album. It’s the culmination of a process that we in D.C. have watched. They are a twosome meant for each other, with Usher’s guitar and electronic production punctuating Pitts’ soaring, swirly shimmer.

Kill the One You Love will be out Oct. 30 on Carpark Records.

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Some of this year’s most unforgettable local songs didn’t come from comfortable experiences. They sounded fed up, and particularly urgent in a year marked by growing inequity at home and multiple slayings by police in places that didn’t feel far away.

In one of the year’s rawest rock songs, Thaylobleu cranked up its guitars to tell a personal story of police harassment. Chain and the Gang and Jack On Fire assailed gentrification with wit and hyperbole. Punk band Priests declared everything right wing. Two remarkable hip-hop works channeled frustration and fatalism among young black Americans: Diamond District’s Oddisee cried, “What’s a black supposed to do — sell some crack and entertain?”, while Virginia MC GoldLink rapped about all the glorious things he imagines happening to him — when he dies.

Not that peace and love felt impossible in 2014: In a touching song released two years after his death, Chuck Brown sang of a “beautiful life” enriched by the warmth of community. Promising newcomer Kali Uchis made us kick back with a soulful number steeped in giddy infatuation. Experimentation thrived in D.C. music: Young artists built on the region’s strong punk pedigree and expanded its boundaries. Mary Timony’s band Ex Hex embraced a classic sound and made one of the country’s best rock ‘n’ roll records. Local bands with shorter but distinctive resumes — like Laughing Man, Two Inch Astronaut and Deleted Scenes — sounded better and more creative than ever before. A Sound of Thunder and Gloom reminded us that the D.C. area is still a reliable producer of top-notch metal.

As expected, Bandwidth contributors faced hard choices while making this list of the year’s best local songs, and not only because it’s our first one. Up until deadline, we were still hearing new D.C. songs we wanted to include. But in a place where mounting wealth has created a challenging environment for art, that’s not a problem, really. It’s a testament to a music scene that perseveres despite long odds. —Ally Schweitzer

Warning: Many of these songs contain explicit lyrics.

But that’s what we get in the new Dazed and Confused-presented video for “Sinking Stone,” which is better described as a short action film with all the clichés of a Bonnie and Clyde remake, directed by filmmakers Alex Lee and Kyle Wightman, aka BRTHR. For this six-minute piece, the directors roped in the grill-wearing, outfit-coordinating twins who aren’t originally from Atlanta (they grew up in Chattanooga)—and if you saw Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, you’ll recognize them right away.

In the video, GEMS’ Lindsay Pitts and Clifford Usher make up the soundtrack to a young couple’s series of bad decisions—drugs, guns, more drugs and more guns—but they don’t make a cameo, which may be for the best.

GEMS plays U Street Music Hall Nov. 13.

Last night the band premiered a song from that in-progress release. It’s called “Scars,” and it’s got all of the beautiful, delicate elements of what has become GEMS’ signature sound.

The band begins a short tour with Hundred Waters on June 22. No D.C. dates have been announced yet.