Old Software – Medieval Techno Dance-Off
Dan Harris – End of the World
Big Sky Conspiracy – Tornado
Lance Neptune – Circle Rose
Ben Dransfield – One Too Many
Dammit Eugene – Said My God
Theater of Soul – Dance Happy Remix
Low End String Quartet – Shut Up and Listen
Gus Voorhees – The Man of Kent and Step Back
Sweetnova – Soldier
Ben Williams – Moonlight In Vermont
Nerftoss – Big Wish
Atoka Chase – Tick Tock
J.R. Flynn – Across the Campfire, Part I
Benoit & Sergio – Bridge So Far
Louis Weeks – Calder
Terri Bocklund & Curr Kowalski – Isabelle
Brian Forehand – Sit Back
Redline Graffiti – Beauty Mark 1
Middle Distance Runner – The Fury

Sam Phillips – Differences
Tom Espinola – Gold Rush / Cherokee Shuffle
Alex Byrd – Jamais Vu
Wytold – Move On
Aaron Agre – Know-Say
Body Thief – Twin Flames
Mark Meadows – Know NowThe Rail Runners – The Takeback
June Gloom – dealer
Memphis Gold – Serves Me Right
Otis Infrastructure – Tearerdowner
The Soul Searchers – If It Ain’t Funky
Tideland – Desolate
Le Loup – Morning Song
B Side Shuffle – Gauntlet
Waltz Brigade – Strange Names
Mary Chapin Carpenter – Willie Short
Beach House – Lover of Mine
M.H. & His Orchestra – Cobblestone
Louis Weeks – Clementine

Iritis – Monster
Justin Jones – You Saved Me
Protect-U – Down the Tubes
Fugazi – Recap Modotti
Mark Meadows – Once Upon a Purple Night
The Greatest Hoax – Opus no. 13
Mimi Loco and the Drama Queens – Let It Die – 2015 Remix – Take 2
Ricky Eat Acid – Driving Alone Past Roadwork At Night
Troy and Paula Haag – 27
John Hogge – Shanai
Beach House – Myth
Jonathan Parker – King of the Hill
The Funk Ark – Mind Meld
Future Islands – Tin Man
AXB – Quantum Chill
The Mean Season – Kurtz
Matt Chaconas – Spear
Domingues & Kane – Wko 205
PLOY – Beyond the Plain
Noah Berman + Louis Weeks – radius i

Chopteeth – Weigh Your Blessings
Koshari – Into Shreds
Sligo Creek Stompers – Cuckoo’s Nest
Brian Whitmer – Kelly’s Lament
Peals – Belle Air
Young Rapids – Ugly
Five State Drive – Dry Clean Express
Teen Mom – Kitchen
Diamond District – Streets Won’t Let Me Chill
M.H. & His Orchestra – Cobblestone
Hailu Mergia and the Walias – Muziqawi Silt
The Caribbean – Echopraxia
Sara Curtin – A Little Again
Louis Weeks – Calder
GroundScore – Here We Are
Drop Electric – What Now, of Paradise?
Jonathan Parker – Sundown
Domingues & Kane – No. 5
Lo Fang – Invention No. 11
AXB – Quantum Chill
Wale – Love Hate Thing (Tone P Instrumental)
Elikeh – The Conversation
The Sweater Set – Lost At Sea
Warren Wolf – 427 Mass Ave

“It has a sort of negative connotation — of amateur bar bands,” says the leader of Virginia indie-rock troupe The Beanstalk Library. He doesn’t think the term represents the high-quality music coming out of the D.C. region.

So when Walker talks about the Magnificent Intentions Music Festival — a two-day concert he and bandmate Brian Pagels host in Arlington and D.C. this weekend — he calls the lineup “D.C.-area,” not “local.” He contends that people here shouldn’t care about these performers because they’re local — they should care because they’re good.

“We realized that there were a lot of bands and acts in the D.C. area that were making really good-quality, original music that’s largely not known outside of the area,” says Walker, 36. “We wanted to put on a festival that puts a spotlight on all that.” 

Now in its second year, the Magnificent Intentions festival takes its name from Charles Dickens’ famous quip that D.C. is a “city of magnificent intentions.” Walker says the moniker refers to something he considers scarce in the regional music scene: big dreams.

“One of the things I noticed growing up… is it didn’t seem very much of a hallmark for [D.C.-area] bands to have ambition,” says Walker, who lives in Arlington. “There are a few exceptions, but I’ve noticed a lot of bands… start to get some buzz outside the area, and then they break up.”

Or local artists who want to go national — like dream-pop duo GEMS and rappers Logic and GoldLink — simply move elsewhere.

When it kicks off Friday evening at IOTA Club & Cafe in Arlington, the Magnificent Intentions festival will host about five hours of music that Walker considers not just local-good, but all-around good. Fairfax singer-songwriter Jacqueline Pie Francis opens the bill, followed by several rock bands with promise, including rough-edged groups Short Lives and Spirit Plots and pop rockers Lighting Fires.

Saturday’s lineup at DC9 skews even poppier, with sets from producer Louis Weeks, the jaunty Title Tracks and polished rockers Middle Distance Runner, among others. (The El Mansouris had to cancel.)

“If you’re into what’s going on on a national level musically, these are things that are not of lesser quality than that,” Walker says. “In some cases, these are acts for whom ambition is not a bad word.”

The Magnificent Intentions Music Festival takes place Dec. 4 at IOTA Club & Cafe and Dec. 5 at DC9. Photo by Flickr user John Athayde used under a Creative Commons license.

Today I can add another Weeks composition to that list: the second single from haha, called “Antelope.” (Listen to an exclusive stream below.)

The slightly eerie “Antelope” is a big shift from the upbeat “Fire.” It starts off as a hushed guitar-and-voice piece that grows dramatic with creeping woodwinds and percussion. The lyrics are complex, leaping between scenes of an avalanche, a lion hunting an antelope and a romantic relationship. Those images — like the rich harmonies — end on an unresolved note, like a Pynchon novel set to music.

“There’s a tinge of darkness and also a kind of sweet hopefulness to it,” says Weeks, who made his full-length debut with the stirring shift/away in 2014. “It’s easy for me — sometimes too easy — to assign myself the role of the lion, or the antelope, or the avalanche or the pine trees… What I aspire to, is the mental discipline and courage to live in the song’s other images: the hazy and muted interactions that acknowledge the subtle ways that we change our world and each other.”

Based in D.C., Weeks recorded “Antelope” and the rest of haha last June in Baltimore, Maryland. He worked with guitarist Noah Berman, drummer Matt Honor and woodwind player Ethan Helm, describing their sessions as “a particularly group effort.”

“Originally the song was a kind of quiet solo guitar idea, but Matt and Ethan and Noah had great ideas of how to explode the song at about the two-thirds mark. The woodwind part, particularly, made us all sit up and say, ‘Wow.'”

Haha officially drops June 2. “It’s an album in two halves,” says Weeks. “‘Antelope’ is a good example of the themes and aesthetic of the second half of the album.”

Weeks says that the enigmatic title is meant to evoke “the challenges and joys of connecting with another person… The word ‘haha,’ to me, is a great example of that. It’s an attempt to communicate an incommunicable expression.”

Louis Weeks plays Howard Theatre May 28.

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.

Pattern Matching comes from Mount Pleasant resident Steve Kolowich, Stranger In The Alps’ sole songwriter. He’s exceptional at capturing that young-but-weary Gram Parsons style of songcraft; yet as steeped in the 1970s as Pattern Matching sometimes sounds, producer Louis Weeks (who also contributes synthesizers, vocals, guitar and an egg shaker) brings a contemporary sheen to Kolowich’s gently twangy compositions.

Kolowich says he wrote much of Pattern Matching while flying. “For a lot of us, being in an airplane is the closest we are to dying,” he told Bandwidth in a 2014 interview.

Stranger In The Alps’ new LP is streaming today on Soundcloud and Bandcamp, and arrives later this week on iTunes and Spotify. Listen to it below.

Stranger In The Alps plays Black Cat Feb. 8.