Fields Burning – The Light On The Water
Jon Lanou – Minneapolis
Incredible Change – Pleasure Cruise
June Gloom – get free
Smoke Bellow – Middling 1
Little Hunts – Refractory
Terrill Mast – See You Around the Moon
Paul Swartzel – My Father Knew Colonel Sanders
Steiner – Twisted and Broken
Shortstack – Though I Turn Grey
airøspace – Bloody Rose (prod. Ichiro_)
Michael Preston – Changes Made
Troy and Paula Haag – Virginia
Jon Camp – Christian, This World Is Yours
Aaron Agre – Lion of Fallujah
Redline Graffiti – Junior June
Sunwolf – Let It Out (instrumental)
Kid Claws – Link
FAR EXP – Write to Brag [Ardamus, RNL, Fleetwood – prod. by Vintage]
Sri Rama – Dendeliens

Aaron Leitko – Flip Flops (This Can’t Happen)
Yoko K. – take off
Fellow Creatures – Seance (Shuka)
Drop Electric – What Now, of Paradise?
Detox Retox – Dispatches from the Chernaya Rechka
Waltz Brigade – Strange Names
nick tha 1da – circular drizzle
Jonathan Parker – East Lorain
Abu Jibran – Not Good Enough
Sunwolf – Velvet
Extra Golden – Ilando Gima Onge
Once Okay Twice – I Have An Illness
Restoring Poetry in Music – Luba
Little Hunts – Nocturne (Part 2)
The Wine-Dark Sea – Breaking Through the Cracks of Our City
Night Kitchen – Salt Water Taffy
The Shifters – She’s So Fine
igloo two – the big ego scene
Aquarium – Slow Space
Tone P – Chandelier (Instrumental)

James Wolf – Haa
The Black Sparks – Anticlap
K-Loe Black – Whoooah
Birds and Buildings – East Is Fort Orthodox
Smoke Bellow – Conscious Heads
Benoit & Sergio – Bridge So Far
Honey Pot Canoe – Sink or Swim
Logikbomb – Greenline to Ana
True Womanhood – The Monk
Outputmessage – Pillars (Will Eastman Remix)
The Orchid – A Fading Memory Of A Better Time And Place
Beauty Pill – Copyists
Young Summer – Waves That Rolled You Under
Sunwolf – Let It Out (instrumental)
Dmerit – Audobons
The Torches – Elephant In the Room
Dupont Brass – All Blues
The Moderate – Drugs/Young Men
Tom Espinola – Wildwood Flower
maxine – since i lost you

Foozle –
The Internal Frontier – Gravity
Daniel Barbiero & Chris Lynn – …and the Trees As Gnomens On a Plane of Snow
Cynthia Marie – Song for the End
The Iris Bell – Globe
J.R. Flynn – Across the Campfire, Part I
Masego – Small Talk (TrapScat T0 Cali)
Rock Creek Jazz – Mojitos
The Black Sparks – Rocketbird
The Funk Ark – Doom Buggy
Matt Rippetoe – Green Apples
Beau Finley – The Sky Is Falling
Outputmessage – Lungs
B Side Shuffle – Tappy McFunkington
Sunwolf – Big Feelings (instrumental)
A Shrewdness of Apes – Summer Job
Birds and Buildings – The Dumb Fish
Sam Hesh – Shadows
Sun Machines – Mono Mind
Golden Looks – Hey Say

Brian Settles – Understanding
Baby Bry Bry – Slumzzz
Sri Rama – The Dragon From Naples
Mathrat – Gravity Waves
Jan Knutson – Amsterdam
Infinite Adolescence – 80’s
The Acorns – X-Country Skier
Jason A Mullinax – Goodbye, Earth!
The Orchid – The Astronaut (Escape Velocity)
Sunwolf – Velvet
East Ghost – Architect
Decahedron – Movement A
The Rail Runners – Get Off the Tracks
Country Gentlemen – Have I Told You Lately That I Love You
Sonic Thee – Speaker
The Evens – Shelter Two
Suzanne Brindamour – Barnstormers Approach
Scythian – Last Days of Summer
Lungfish – Black Helicopters
Two Dragons and a Cheetah – Poetry and Light

Redline Graffiti – Junior June
Sunwolf – Let It Out (Instrumental)
Astronaut Jones – Outta Time Chime
FAR EXP – Write to Brag
Sri Rama – Dendeliens
The Dwindlers – Heart Trip
Carni Klirs – The Slowly Turning Heavens (Part 1)
Brian Settles & Central Union – Bison
Gully Waters – Morgan St. NW (Demo)
Poppy Patica – B: itziar
Fulton Lights – Am I Right Or Am I Right
Speedwell – This Is Us
Cheick Hamala Diabate – Prudence
Laurence Baer – Slicing the Crests
Daniel Barbiero & Chris Lynn – Grisaille v.2
The Lower Delta – Delta Rising
Jan Knutson – Blink
The Evens – Cut From the Cloth
New Canada – Breathing Exists
The Grit Pushers – Two Snakes

Redline Graffiti – Beauty Mark 1
Elijah Jamal Balbed – What Matters Most
Griefloss – Void
Lands – Down By the Riverside
Drop Electric – Waking Up to the Fire
Fulton Lights – Breathe In, Breathe Out
Astronaut Jones – Turkey Grease
Justin Jones – Christmas Night
Bossalingo – Django
Anchor 3 – False Start
The Greatest Hoax – Opus no. 18
Dr Neanderthal – Introduction
Sunwolf – Big Feelings (Instrumental)
The Dwindlers – Pickering’s Hyla
Atoms Apart – Turnaround
Fellow Creatures – Expectations
Sri Rama – Beastles
The Grey A – In Remembrance
June Gloom – Get Free
Cheick Hamala Diabate – Fatou (Sol Power Remix)

It might seem like a potentially lame question — it applies to any garage band with the slightest pop tendencies, really — but it cuts to the core of Sunwolf. The D.C. group features three guys in their 40s who are lifelong rock listeners and longtime performers, but in many ways, they’re still figuring things out. In short: Young band, literally older souls. The results are consistently compelling on Sunwolf’s debut full-length album, Follow The Dreamers, which is out now digitally and will see a vinyl release in the spring.

Guitarist/vocalist Tom Bunnell says the recording process was, if anything, a learning experience.

“Making this record made me realize that we were kind of invested in a deeper way,” Bunnell  says, “and that was a surprise to me.”

Where Sunwolf’s 2014 EP Angel Eyes was agelessly scuzzy, Follow The Dreamers is craftier, with more nods to the British Invasion (“Let It Out,” “Heart Goes Boom”) and riskier rhythms in some spots (“Secada” could be krautrock; “No Sugar” and “Dreamers” have Manchester in their blood). Those sonic upgrades weren’t necessarily planned, Bunnell says. Band members recorded the album in drummer Jerry Busher’s basement studio on Ingleside Terrace NW, and they kept things focused out of respect for his housemates. (Busher has since moved.)

“There would be evenings where we’d have to go over there and play acoustic, you know, with brushes on the drums … but it actually helped us a ton in terms of getting a little more ‘songy’ about the songs compared to the EP,” Bunnell says.

The overall smallness of the process also left plenty of room for doubt, too.

“Especially doing it on your own, there’s no one else around, it’s easy to talk yourself out of doing it — there’s a thousand other things you could be, should be doing. But then you start making a record,” Bunnell says. “And it felt really great and exciting, and all three of us were really excited about it. So we just kind of kept going.”

In the end, Bunnell did more singing than ever before. The band’s founder and bassist, Rob “Kalani” Tifford (known for his connections to the 18th Street Lounge crew and for running the now-defunct Gypsy Eyes label), still handles some vocals in his half-wildman style, but Bunnell’s plainspoken tenor tends to be the focal point. They still trade off lines at times, though. The slackerish “Velvet” is a worthy followup to Angel Eyes‘ now-classic “Push It.”

Busher, both as a drummer and as the album’s producer, strove to keep the sound as no-nonsense as possible, Bunnell says. (Busher played percussion and trumpet for Fugazi’s live shows at one point, and was in the Dischord Records band French Toast.)

“It’s funny, the less [Busher] does, the more he’s present in a song,” Bunnell says. “It’s kind of remarkable. I’ve learned so much working with him. He’ll pull way back as a drummer and do things that appear simple, but they’re everything that the song needs.”

Ultimately, the band wanted the album to sound “like a real thing, and not just something that we were doing on Saturday afternoons or whatever,” Bunnell says, chuckling. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Despite the broader palette on Follow The Dreamers, Bunnell says it’s unlikely that the band is headed toward anything truly ornate soon.

“I think for us to have like, a little keyboard part, would be a big breakthrough,” Bunnell says. “That would be like a Sgt. Pepper moment for us.”

Sunwolf plays a record release show Jan. 23 at Songbyrd. The band’s “Big Feelings” is featured on Bandwidth’s 50 Favorite D.C. Songs of 2015 playlist.

Not that Sunwolf is some kind of one-hit wonder. While they were here, the band ripped into another standout, “Let It Out,” which may have to share the throne with “Push It.” It’s a hard one to forget.

After the session, the band sat down with longtime D.C. musician Brendan Canty (of Fugazi, Deathfix and numerous others) for a casual chat. Listen to that lively (and very funny) interview up top.