Lance Neptune – Pyxis
Scythian – Columbus Stockade Blues
the Sobel 4Tet – Modo
The Mind Set – Hemlock Smoothie
Go Cozy – Our Best Reflections
Jonny Grave – Worried Life
Q and Not U – We Heart Our Hive
Kali Uchis – Speed
David Wright and the Wright Touch Horns – Wherever It Takes You
Jon Camp – Interrupted Transmission
BOOMscat – CATCHME
We Were Pirates – Into Thin Air
Brûlée – The Wagon I’m On
Tree Surgeons – The Bridge
Iritis – Theory
Exit Vehicles – Circular
Sherwood Gainer – 404
Pupils – Take The Time To Tell Them
Dale Holmes – Unchained Melody
Save the Arcadian – Walrus

“The waves come, you gotta ride it if you wanna stay afloat,” Uchis purrs on the sultry track, her vocals lightly processed.

Working with Diplo — the founder of trendy record label Mad Decent who rose to fame after starting Philadelphia party Hollertronix and collaborating with M.I.A. — seemed inevitable for Uchis, who caught the DJ/producer’s attention long before she dropped Por Vida.

“Diplo kept asking me who styled my ‘What They Say‘ video,” Uchis told Dazed in 2014. “I was like, ‘No, that’s just my clothes!'”

Diplo also co-produced Uchis’ Por Vida track “Melting.”

“Wave” appears on the extended version of Major Lazer’s Peace Is The Mission.

The coda on her debut EP Por Vida, Kali Uchis‘ slow jam “Loner” sounds like the long sigh that follows a final, bruising heartbreak.

“‘Cause I was a loner until I met you, and I let you in after the persuasian, mind games, manipulations,” Uchis laments on the song, sounding spent. “That’s why I’d rather be a loner… I don’t even wanna know you.”

In song’s new video — co-directed by Uchis and premiered today by Dazed — she pouts in a series of saucy outfits, shown poured over a bed, strutting around a gloomy scrapyard and sipping a milkshake at an empty lunch counter. It’s very 1950s Los Angeles, seen through a 1970s lens.

As the ex-Virginia resident tells Dazed, “I was inspired by mermaids, call girls, the actress Mia Farrow, the film Scarface and the director Quentin Tarantino.”

The Alexandria-reared vocalist and visual artist — who says she’s working on a followup to this year’s Por Vida — is shown flipping through vinyl at Joint Custody on U Street NW and 14th Street NW shop Som Records.

“I think a lot of my friends thought I was a weirdo or thought I was trying really hard to be different because I listened to old music and stuff. They’d be like, ‘Why are you listening to that? Where did you even find that music?'” Uchis says in the video. “But the heart wants what the heart wants.”

Watch the whole video up top.

The video — co-directed by Uchis and WIISSA — premiered on Fader Tuesday, with Uchis telling the outlet, “I was inspired by Quentin Tarantino, freedom, revolution, euphoria, nature [and] unity.” (She forgot to say hot pants.)

Hours after Uchis debuted the video, her fans started fervently debating what the singer and Instagram star smells like. One guy asked if the Colombia native “smells like horchata.” Someone responded, “I feel like she smells like purple shampoo.” It got more creative after that.

“Something tells me that @KALIUCHIS smells like Jamba Juice and money,” offered one fan. “PERSONALLY,” posted another, “I THINK @KALIUCHIS SMELLS LIKE CINNAMON TOAST CRUNCH WITH ALMOND MILK.”

My best guess? Kali Uchis smells like clean clothes right out of the dryer. Specifically: hot pants.

That’s what I asked Bandwidth’s contributors to help me do last month. Our writers sent me their picks for their favorite D.C. music of 2015 thus far, and the result was this extremely awesome playlist (stream it below).

One limitation, though: I had to pick songs that have been uploaded to Soundcloud. As it turns out, not everybody puts their music on the service. A lot of rock and punk bands, in particular, use Bandcamp, and some artists — for reasons my under-30 brain is still struggling to understand — don’t even put their songs on the Internet for free.

So this playlist still isn’t as exhaustive as I wanted it to be, but it’s still pretty freaking great. Give it a listen on your computer or chosen mobile device, and be sure to chide us in the comments, on Twitter or via email for missing your favorite D.C. music of the year. (Seriously! Send me your nominations — we want to hear it all.)

For more coverage of D.C. music, follow Bandwidth’s Track Work series.

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

Image, clockwise from top left: April + VISTA, Kali Uchis, Young Rapids (partial image), Ras Nebyu, Prinze George (partial image), Visto.

Por Vida isn’t as obviously funk-driven as her earlier collaboration with Snoop Dogg, “On Edge,” or the Bunx-produced “Real”; she takes numerous opportunities to slow down and croon (“Melt,” “Call Me,” “Loner”) but still delivers subtle, satisfying pop tunes (“Rush,” “Ridin Round”). Reggae-inflected single “Know What I Want” feels like the EP’s centerpiece. Production comes courtesy of Bunx, Alex Epton, Caleb Stone, Kaytranada, BADBADNOTGOOD and Tyler, the Creator.

Stream Por Vida, below.

Fader also premiered a new self-directed teaser video for the EP, featuring a snippet of “Lottery” — listen to that here — and the previously unreleased single “Call Me,” reportedly a collaboration with Tyler, the Creator. The video is classic Uchis: Loads of vintage style and pastels (those furry heels!) crossed with a smidgen of illicit activity (stacks of cash, carefully ironed on an ironing board).

Washingtonian magazine recently featured a short interview with the rising singer in which she says she’s relocated from Alexandria, Virginia, to Los Angeles. Makes sense: The sunny metropolis has been her aesthetic home since she debuted as a high school senior with her scrappy mixtape, Drunken Babble.

Bandwidth interviewed Uchis back in April, and at the end of the year we named her funky single “Real” our No. 2 favorite local song of 2014.

Today Vogue premiered the track (apparently in the works for a while now) and talked to Uchis about where her head was with this one. “I sampled ‘Oh Honey‘ by Delegation because they dedicated that entire song to glorifying a woman’s loyalty. No one seems to really care about that anymore,” she tells the magazine. “[But] I still have hope in loyalty, in having love that is stronger than pride.”

Kali Uchis’ funky single “Real” made Bandwidth’s Top 25 of 2014, and we interviewed the rising vocalist back in April. Listen to “Lottery,” below.

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.