Logikbomb – The Heights (aka: Her Lips)
Suzanne Brindamour – The Arrival
Den-Mate – For Free
Lungfish – Constellations
Wye Oak – Dogs Eyes
Screen Vinyl Image – Edge of Forever
Jonny Grave – Afraid of the Dark
Brûlée – Driftin’
Fat Kneel – Solaris
Marvin Gaye – What’s Happening Brother
Oddisee – In Your Eyes
Sansyou – Best Ones Choose You
AXB – Flea Markets
The Sea Life – Prozac & Merlot
Lance Neptune – Umbrella Girl.
Beautiful Swimmers – The Zoo
G-Flux – Cumbia Cosmica
Bucky’s Fatal Mistake – Hello
Aaron Gage – Vinayaka
They’ll Have Dreams – Walk to Freedom

Jonathan Parker – Colin’s Song
Troy and Paula Haag – Maybe It Was Me
Lands – Polyonymous
We Were Pirates – Transmorgified
Birds and Buildings – East Is Fort Orthodox
Elijah Jamal Balbed – Lament For Booker
Justin Jones – So Much You’ll Never Know (make me the moon pt. 2)
Le Loup – To the Stars! To the Night!
Wytold – Folk Song of the Steel People
Three Man Soul Machine – Golden Thread
Akua Allrich – I Can’t Stand the Rain
Thievery Corporation – Indra
Marvin Gaye – Right On
Ephemeral Sun – Prism
Greenland – East of Eden Center
Bobby Thompson – Be Your Love
Miss Shevaughn & Yuma Wray – Election Year Blues
Beautiful Swimmers – Swimmers Groove
Hailu Mergia – Shilela
Annette Wasilik and the Wonder Band – You Are Free

Patuxent Partners – Washington County
ZOMES – Ruminants
Supper Club – Chambray
Fort Knox Five – Swinging On a Rhyme (Instrumental)
Tomás Pagán Motta – Love In Her Lies
Justin Jones – Miracles
Kev Brown – Always (Instrumental)
Be Still, Cody – Wrong Right
Buildings – Everything Is Possible
Lifted – Silver
Sun Machines – Mono Mind
Derek Evry – Wake Me Up
Iritis – Pedal
A Tale Of – Oh, We Owe This to Ourselves
Nitemoves – Ashe
The Petticoat Tearoom – Kundalini
Jonathan Parker – CO86
Girls Love Distortion – Sleepwalking
Dawit Eklund – Lies Are Chic
Masego – I Do Everything (More For Cruisin’)
Otis Infrastructure – Furniture
Oooh Child Ensemble – Diko’s Groove
Extra Golden – It’s Not Easy
Kev Brown – Party People Dedication (Instrumental)
Marian McLaughlin – Your Bower
The Greatest Hoax – Opus no. 28
Marvin Gaye – What’s Happening Brother
Aerialist – Naiad
Wanted Man – Interlude
Baby Bry Bry – Slumzzz
April + Vista – Theme In Adagio
Stranger In the Alps – Love/Afraid
Swings – New Year

“I sang for my girlfriend in high school, and she was like, ‘You actually have a good voice. Do you know that?'” the 27-year-old songwriter says. “I was like, ‘No, I actually don’t.’ Because everybody in my family thinks they’re Beyonce.”

If Trent had lingering doubts about his singing chops, let’s hope he’s cast them aside, because hundreds of Bandwidth readers have just named him the best D.C. entrant into NPR’s national Tiny Desk Contest.

Filmed in his Columbia Heights apartment, Trent’s submission, “Don’t Know/Cross,” won our regional competition in a landslide. The clip features just the singer, his soulful guitar playing and an original song about indecision in love.

“I never win anything,” the Georgetown University graduate tells me. He says the last time was during “some sort of casino night right after prom” at his Atlanta high school.

“I put my name in the drawing, and later that night, I found out that I won a PlayStation 4,” says Trent, who performs under the name Rich Daniel. A couple of weeks later, he won a spot to hang out on the field before a Braves game.

Since then, he says, “it’s just been a 10-year luck drought.” Until this week.

While studying international politics at Georgetown, Trent taught himself guitar, and performed occasionally on campus. At a 2010 concert, he delivered a silky performance of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” followed by Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish.”

“Marvin Gaye has been, arguably, the biggest musical influence on my life,” Trent says. “Him, Al Green and Sam Cooke.”

But Trent never made a career out of music. Since he graduated from Georgetown six years ago, he’s split his days between a job at an education nonprofit and a couple of part-time bands. Now he wants to focus on his creative side.

“I’m just about playing all the time,” he tells me, taking a break from busking in Dupont Circle. “I’ve kind of been half-assing it for a while now and I’m just tired of it.”

That’s why Trent is — oof, it hurts! — moving to New York. He left for Brooklyn this morning.

“When I’m traveling and situated in new environments, I write more,” Trent says. “The creative juices are always flowing when I’m in transit.” He hopes to record an EP while living up north.

But the singer plans to visit the D.C. region, where he still has friends and family. And he’ll be back to do a special project — to be announced — with WAMU 88.5’s Bandwidth.

“Hopefully,” Trent says, “this is just the beginning of a lot of good things to come.”

Nationwide this week is called Banned Books Week. At the D.C. Public Library, it’s called “Uncensored.”

Banned Books Week was established in 1982 to raise awareness of books that people want off the shelves. It’s not an issue limited to the McCarthy era — even now, parents, leaders and various interest groups rally to censor or remove books from libraries for all kinds of reasons. But the D.C. Public Library widens the scope of Banned Books Week, looking at any form of expression that’s been challenged, including music.

That’s why the library has made a playlist for Banned Books Week two years in a row, says Maggie Gilmore, a librarian in DCPL’s adult information services division. This year, the D.C. Public Library Foundation asked her to compile a list of songs with a dual theme: censorship and D.C. music.

Gilmore consulted her fellow librarians for ideas and solicited input from attendees at August’s D.C. Record Fair at Penn Social. This is the resulting playlist, streamable via Spotify and YouTube, below:

Bad Brains, “Banned in DC”
Chain & the Gang, “Free Will”
Parliament, “Chocolate City”
Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, “Run Joe”
The Evens, “Wanted Criminals”
The Cornel West Theory, “DC Love Story”
Ice-T, “Freedom of Speech”
Coup Sauvage & the Snips, “Don’t Touch My Hair” (JD Samson Remix)
Minor Threat, “Straight Edge”
Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl”
Unrest, “Malcolm X Park”
The Blackbyrds, “Rock Creek Park”
The Roots with Wale and Chrisette Michele, “Rising Up”
Diamond District, “March Off”
Marvin Gaye, “Got To Give It Up”

The playlist comes across as a celebration of outspoken music — not hard to find in this town, Gilmore says.

“[D.C.] is a natural environment for people to discuss political issues,” Gilmore says. Plus, she says, the city’s constantly shifting population can aggravate local tensions.

“With D.C. having so many people moving in and out of the city, there’s always been tension in the various groups that are represented in D.C.,” Gilmore says. She cites D.C.’s signature funk sound as an example. “Go-go has always been challenged by those who may feel it’s obtrusive — and maybe not even the music itself, but the social scene around go-go.”

The playlist debuted at last Friday’s opening party for “Uncensored: Information Antics,” the library’s new exhibit in honor of Banned Books Week. The show remains on view at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library through Oct. 22.

Gilmore says “Uncensored” and this playlist are part of the library’s larger efforts to document and support local expression in all forms. DCPL’s D.C. Punk Archive has been in the works for a year now. Gilmore coordinates the library’s series of punk-rock basement shows, meant to highlight its punk collection. After this, the library focuses on archiving go-go, then jazz, Gilmore says.

“Trying to highlight local music, [D.C.’s cultural] history and current artists — that’s one of the main goals of the basement shows, to provide a space for bands to play,” Gilmore says. “So this was an opportunity to continue on that.”

Related: WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show airs a segment on Banned Books Week Tuesday at 1:32 p.m. Can’t tune in? The segment will be archived on kojoshow.org.

Warning: Some songs contain explicit lyrics.

Via Spotify:

“Blurred Lines” topped the charts in 2013. At the time, there was much speculation about the similarities between Gaye’s classic and the new song. Nonetheless, it was wildly successful.

According to court evidence, Thicke and Williams earned more than $5 million from the song’s success. Rapper Clifford “T.I.” Harris Jr., who raps on the song, made more than $700,000. Harris was cleared of any wrongdoing.

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

Show host Jay Bruder—a human encyclopedia of D.C. music history—will spin nothing but pre-1970 D.C. music for two hours starting at 7 p.m. The show is also a celebration of sorts: It kicks off Bruder’s third year on Bluegrass Country’s airwaves. “I always dedicate the anniversary show to Washington-area artists,” Bruder writes in an email. Accordingly, he plans to crisscross the region Sunday night, focusing on local music of all genres recorded in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

Here’s a sampling of the songs Bruder plans to play this weekend:

Terry and the Pirates, “What Did He Say”

“This is one of the hottest rock and roll records ever cut in Washington,” Bruder says. “It features a kicking back beat, honking sax and a screaming guitar break. The suburban Maryland band from the late 1950s was a prototype for hundreds of local garage bands that followed in their footsteps.”

The Rainbows, “Mary Lee”

Recorded for the Harlem-based label Red Robin in late 1954, “Mary Lee” by The Rainbows was “one of those records that never charted at the time of release, but in the ensuing decades has become a standard among vocal-group fans,” Bruder says. He adds that the song was meant to taunt a member of the ensemble, whose girlfriend was named Marion Lee. Over the decades, The Rainbows drew in a number of talented locals, including Don Covay and John Berry—but rumors that Marvin Gaye sang with them don’t hold water.

Sunday, Bruder also pledges to feature some rarely heard a capella gospel by The Silvertones, a group that recorded for Lloyd’s Novelty and Curio Shop on Massachusetts Avenue NW during the 1940s. (Bruder’s website, dcrecords.org, has more background on the record-cutting variety store.) Don’t look to the Internet to find Silvertones recordings: As Bruder says, “You’ll need to tune in to hear this one, because it is not on YouTube.”

Hometown Special airs Sundays from 7 to 9 p.m. on WAMU’s Bluegrass Country, 105.5 FM. Image by Flickr user Martin Thomas used under a Creative Commons license.