That could be the motto of DZ Tapes, the D.C.-based record label Isaacoff started in 2011. At the time, he had decided that simply running a music blog — the now-defunct DAYVAN ZOMBEAR — wasn’t enough. He wanted to take it to the next level. And this Saturday the digital-and-tape imprint celebrates its fifth anniversary with a marathon show at local DIY venue Hole In The Sky.

Brett Isaacoff of DZ Tapes (photo: Julia Leiby)

How did DZ Tapes get here? Back in Isaacoff’s blogging days, he says, he kept receiving great submissions from indie artists — “so much so that I really want[ed] to find a way to share the work that was coming around my e-desk,” the D.C. resident says. “So I figured I might as well put out a mixtape.” He launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to put out a compilation. The label followed in its wake.

Now DZ Tapes has several cassettes under its belt, featuring both artists from here and elsewhere. It focuses on bands bringing new energy to D.C. and Baltimore’s underground rock scenes — label alumni include shoegazers Wildhoney and Big Hush, punks Hemlines and the fuzzy Nice Breeze, among others.

Sustaining any project for half a decade is no easy feat — perhaps doubly so considering the volatility of the music industry. But Isaacoff has figured out the formula: keep your expectations low and your planning short-term.

“It’s as hard as you want to make it, really,” Isaacoff says. “I’m just trying to have fun and enjoy myself and help people out.” By booking shows and working with interesting bands, he aims to give back to the scene that gave him — an avid showgoer himself — so much.

Hemlines “All Your Homes,” released on DZ Tapes

Keeping his day job as a business analyst at a solar startup has helped grease the gears at DZ Tapes. “If I could make money off of [the label] I would, but it’s not something that I want to really force,” Isaacoff says. “I feel like blending the lines between quote-unquote business and pleasure might get a little messy.”

A steady path is as good a marker of success as any, though there have been certain high points — like when Rolling Stone published a piece about Speedy Ortiz right before they were to play D.C. house venue The Dougout, a show he booked. “Filled to capacity” isn’t quite the correct phrase for it — the 70-capacity venue was overflowing. “It was an extreme fire hazard, looking back on it,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes’ future remains both certain and up in the air. There’s this weekend’s anniversary show — “It’s gonna be a banger,” promises Isaacoff — and a few more releases slated for the rest of 2016. But for the future-future? Isaacoff isn’t interested in pressuring himself. DZ Tapes is going “wherever it wants to go, really,” Isaacoff says.

DZ Tapes celebrates its fifth anniversary July 9 at Hole in the Sky. 

“Jon [Weiss] and Kevin [Sottek] were sad and smoking a lot of hash,” the garage-punk band writes, telling its origin story via email. Jordan Sanders joined on bass a year later, forming a three-piece. And that name? It’s an indirect reference to a TV show loved by teens in the ‘90s — and probably hash-smokers, too: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But forget its stoner origins and love of Buffy: Witch Coast is serious about being a band. So serious, in fact, it just released a debut album. Burnt Out By 3pm (listen below) is a tidy collection of 12 tracks, compiled on a cassette with a fetching marbled pattern they call “hellfire swirl.”

Asked why they went with a cassette tape, Witch Coast says the choice was easy. “[We] wanted to keep the analog production values intact, and [tapes are] the cheapest medium.”

There’s an out-of-left-field bonus that goes along with the tape, too: a foam finger flipping the bird. (“It is a novelty item,” the band clarifies, helpfully.)

The album was recorded quickly — during a single March afternoon at D.C. house venue Babe City, on a vintage tape machine. Witch Coast recorded live onto a quarter-inch tape they bought on Craigslist. The musicians limited themselves to three takes per track, they say, “in order to capture the raw live power of each song.”

The resulting sound is frantic — and that’s just how they like it.

“The idea was and kind of still is to make this project as minimal as possible,” emails Weiss, who sings and plays guitar. “No extra overdubs or bulls**t perfections that make you claw at your face trying to accomplish [them]; no deep contemplation of what a lyric should mean to me or an audience.” And it’s just four tracks, he says: guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

Witch Coast doesn’t tend to veer into the weeds during the creative process, either. The band sometimes struggles to write new material, “but when we start an idea, a skeleton of a song, we’ll have it finished in 30 minutes,” says Weiss, who also plays in The Sea Life.

“Sometimes we have practices that are these incredible writing sessions,” Weiss adds, “and sometimes we have practices where we’ll all trash our instruments and walk out.”

But there’s nothing wrong with that, the frontman clarifies.

“That’s what Witch Coast is,” he writes. “Mistakes and emotions.”

Witch Coast’s Burnt Out By 3pm is available through Babe City Records.

On last Friday’s show, host Rebecca Sheir — with me in the passenger seat — took listeners on a tour of D.C.’s astonishingly diverse music communities: the thriving local jazz and hip-hop scenes, rarely seen corners of area music venues, a record label bringing Ethiopian electronic music to the District, metal in a dozen flavors and the small universe of music fans thrusting cassette tapes back into the musical ecosystem.

We also talked with attorney Chris Naoum of Listen Local First to find out what his group is doing to push music-friendly policies in D.C. and strolled down memory lane with Positive Force co-founder Mark Andersen — who shared a moving memory from a Rites of Spring show he’ll probably never forget — as well as WAMU Bluegrass Country’s Katy Daley.

Did you miss the show over Memorial Day weekend? No problem. It’s streamable via Metro Connection‘s website and iTunes. Click “play” and get deep.

Photo: Give at Fort Reno, 2014