Here’s the plotline for Luray’s new video: Jolted awake by a thunderstorm, a young girl comforts herself with a music box that emits a warm glow and the gentle sounds of Luray. No ordinary music box, the device contains secret powers, transporting the girl out of her dark bedroom and into a bucolic field teeming with life. At video’s end, our young heroine is shown rowing a boat on a lake in slow-mo.

“Promise of Lakes,” with all its deep-summer vibes, was filmed in Southern Maryland around Labor Day in 2013. The editing stretched to Christmastime, which was not the ideal season to release a sun-dappled clip, says Luray’s vocalist and banjo player, Shannon Carey. So she put it on pause — for a few years.

“I’ve just been holding onto it and waiting for the right time,” Carey says, “and feeling like it will come.”

That time is now, before Luray embarks on a short tour of the Mid-Atlantic. (The band plays D.C. Tuesday night.) But a lot has changed since Carey recorded “Promise of Lakes,” a highlight from her 2013 album, The Wilder. Luray has since released an EP and prepped a new full-length, and Carey has found herself in new circumstances.

“It does bring up emotions for me to watch something that I made at that time, because a lot has changed for me,” says Carey. “I don’t live [in Maryland], I live in Richmond now. I’m no longer with my husband who I made that with. So, yeah, it definitely is bringing up feelings when I’m watching it.”

That’s not the only thing that’s changed: The young dreamer who stars in “Promise of Lakes” has grown up.

“We filmed this puppy three years ago,” Carey says with a laugh, “so now the little girl is, like, no longer little.”

Luray plays June 7 at DC9 with Citrine and Louis Weeks.

That could be partly why Sandcastle Man, the forthcoming EP from Carey’s atmospheric group Luray, sounds so exploratory. Its concept is inspired by someone drummer C.J. Wolfe encountered on a trip to South Africa: a man who made his living building sandcastles and posing for photos with them.

Carey wrote lyrics to accompany Wolfe’s music for the song. She says it’s a fable about finding one’s way back home while facing trials, and describes the work as a metaphor for her own journey from her native Wisconsin.

“I know I can always go back to real home,” Carey says, “but there’s the part of you that wants to see the world and be an adventurer while also trying to find where you fit in.”

A former D.C. resident who now lives in Richmond, Virginia, the singer and banjo player debuted in 2013 with a serene release called The Wilder. Her second full-length, out in 2016, promises to chart new emotional territory in the aftermath of her breakup with her husband.

“The first record was more about trying to find myself as a creative person,” Carey says, “and [the next] one is more about relationships.”

Since her first album, Carey has built a new set of important relationships — with the people now in her band. She says she met Wolfe halfway through his music studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and became acquainted with bassist Brian Cruse and guitarist Scott Burton through Bon Iver trombonist Reggie Pace. (Carey’s brother Sean also plays in Bon Iver.) They bring fresh elements to her sound, including notes of jazz and the mbira, an African finger piano Wolfe brought back from his travels.

Carey’s family members and friends contributed to her first album, but she wanted to find musicians to play the songs live with her.

“I still write the songs, but they do all of the instrumentation,” Carey says. “I bring a song a practice or send it to them and they write their parts and then we all work on it together.”

Recorded at D.C.’s Rock & Roll Hotel, the EP — out Nov. 17 — includes a “space-agey” remix of the single, courtesy of Snow Panda. (Stream the remix below.)

“The whole thing sounds really trippy, but really interesting,” Carey says of the remix. “We told Snow Panda to have total freedom with the strong and do what he thought sounded cool. It’s really different from what we normally do, but really fun. Kind of whimsical.”

Luray performs Nov. 8 at 2206 1st St. NW in D.C.

“Whenever we have played with DJs or electronic artists, they have expressed interest in remixing [us], or hearing our music remixed,” says Lobo Marino’s Jameson Price, 31.

It could be because We Hear the Ocean (stream it below), the album Lobo Marino released on D.C. label Bad Friend Records in May, is built on chants and harmonium drones. Their spacious compositions leave ample room for reinterpretation. A remix project just seemed to make sense.

“We come from the folk tradition of music, and part of the folk tradition is having your songs live past you and be transferred to other people,” says Sullivan, 30.

Sullivan’s bandmate hopped aboard. “There’s already this putting it in other people’s hands when you’re doing any kind of album,” Price says. “This is just taking it to the next level.”

So Lobo Marino commissioned a remix album, out today on Bad Friend (stream it below). To do it, they recruited folks they had played with in the past. One of the first people they turned to was Ryan Bowman, who performs under the name DJ Gon.

Bowman’s remix of “We Hear The Ocean, Lift Up The Mountain” is a reverb-heavy drone set to a throbbing beat. His take on the track is undeniably a step away from the source material, but he maintains some its key themes.

“The chorus is this sort of mystical protest imagery that we kind of intended to put in it,” Sullivan says. “The idea is that we’re hearing the ocean asking for us to clean the waterways that come from the mountain.”

To mesh with that, Bowman incorporated sounds that call to mind water and mountains.

“All the samples are all organic sounds from the river, or from wells, as well as some ocean sounds,” says the DJ, 26. “The name of the song also really motivated me to try and use crumbling sounds to symbolize the mountain.”

Price sounds pleased with the results.

“A lot of people say that a song has a spirit,” he says, “and this really turned into ‘our song.’”

There’s a streak of shoegaze, a trace of ’90s alt rock and a whole lot of Neil Young with Crazy Horse on Empty Light, and Avers reduces them to a pungent mixture on album highlights “White Horses,” “The Only One,” “Harvest” and “Girls With Headaches.” Recently, the band stopped by WAMU to pummel out two of those with unsparing force.

Hear Avers’ catchy “Girls With Headaches” above and brooding “Harvest” below.

Subscribe to Bandwidth’s channel on YouTube, and don’t miss our awesome playlist of every Bandwidth session to date.

Photos by Rhiannon Newman

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.

Arlington resident, Electric Cowbell label founder and former Tropicalia booker Jim Thomson was also one of Gwar’s founding members. He fell into Brockie’s clan in 1984 while a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, and went on to help start the group. “You felt like you were some sort of co-warrior with Dave,” Thomson says. “He was an art-school misfit.” Monstrously costumed and constantly over-the-top, Gwar loved to skewer politics and religion and spray copious blood on its fans, and it became Richmond’s most famous band. Brockie continued to live in Richmond, and remained a major presence in the local scene.

Thomson toured with Gwar for the last time in 1989, but remained in touch with Brockie over the years. He gave permission to Bandwidth to publish his memories of Thomson, which he posted on Facebook earlier today.

I first met Dave Brockie at a surprise birthday party for him in ’84. I had just moved to Richmond to go to VCU after high school. I kept hearing about Death Piggy and Dave Brockie. His vibe was already larger than life. When he walked in the door of his apartment on Harrison [Street], everybody piled on top of him. Everybody seemed to love this guy. I didn’t know him, but I piled on, too. Seemed like the right thing to do.

I thought he was too cool for me, but we naturally became friends and fellow pranksters together. When he came out to check out my band, I thought it was the coolest thing. And he was so supportive. He had a way of inspiring you. He was very local. Very punk rock. The kind of punk rock that was real. It was how you lived it. Make your own scene.

We lived and sort of squatted in the Richmond Dairy together. We jammed for hours together. Dave was an entire cosmos of spirit and boundless energy. He always had a sketchbook or notebook nearby. Constantly creating. It made you feel like you should be doing something, too. We played together in probably the most unlistenable band ever called Armpit. We had an absurdist trio called Deranged Deranged that we always talked about doing again. There was MILK. There were the GWAR years. Then it was just years of going along running into Dave here and there, sharing war stories, new projects, even until the last time we spoke on the phone a few months back.

He was one of the biggest peaceniks I ever met. His fascination with war was more or less one of horror and amazement that humans could do that to each other. He was truly a soldier for art and creativity. He helped me to revise my thinking. In many ways he shaped me and others around him. The scene. The community. Richmond. He was just inspiring and fun to be around. You knew when Dave entered the room. He was a fire starter. A provocateur. He seemed immortal. He called me brother. I love him and miss him deeply. I’m thankful for his friendship and his spirit. That’s for keeps.