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

Six years later, the project is back. The short explanation, Clark says in an email, is that “Matt and I missed it!” There’s a new collaborator — Politics & Prose bookstore — and less dependence on a single venue. The first show in the rebooted program will be Sunday evening at Busboys and Poets’ Takoma location, but Clark says future events might be elsewhere.

Sunday’s event will feature author Bill Beverly, who teaches at Trinity University in D.C. and has a new novel, Dodgers. The band will be D.C.’s Soccer Team, which released Real Lessons In Cyncism in the fall.

Byars deserves the “true credit” for sparking the revival, Clark says. The venue might be different, but the goal is the same.

“I still see Story/Stereo as a special opportunity. You get to meet these great writers, people who are going to be tomorrow’s Don Delillos or Alice Walkers. And plus you get to experience a cool band in a really nice, dignified setting,” he says. “I don’t mean ‘dignified’ like ‘fancy.’ I don’t care about fancy. I mean, we take music seriously as an art form and we hold it on parity with literature as a medium. I think the bands can feel that vibe … and they play in a way that reflects that spirit.”

Clark says this is the first Story/Stereo event for which the author and the band are already acquaintances. The others have been “kind of a blind date,” he says.

“Bill is excited about the new Soccer Team album and Melissa Quinley [of Soccer Team] just texted me the other day how much she loves Dodgers. So that’s cool,” Clark says. “Beyond that, I think there is a tactility to both artists’ work … a kind of dry presence and ‘rawness.'”

Clark also reveals that the first run of Story/Stereo had big personal meaning for him. The project sprang from his recovery from open heart surgery in 2008. Audiences probably weren’t aware of what he was going through, he says.

“Stepping onto the Story/Stereo stage to introduce the artists was a physical challenge for me, but I felt I could pull it off. … Speaking for myself, it served as a way to stay active and engaged in the D.C. creative community during a time when I might otherwise have been more reclusive,” he says. “It was a nice way for me to express my passions — writing/art/communication — without any focus on my work. I was happy to feature the work of other people. It felt good.”

Story/Stereo takes place May 22 at Busboys & Poets in Takoma. 

“I hate editing video,” says the musician, who plays drums in D.C. band The Caribbean. “It takes forever.”

But late last year, Byars found himself in need of a promotional device. He had a new EP on the way — the debut of his long-brewing side project, The Jarvik 6 — and he needed to get the word out somehow.

“I thought, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve been told by publicists how important it is to have a video,'” Byars says. So he caved. He hopped online and found a free video editor.

“I found this site — I don’t remember what it’s called anymore, but…it’s got all these templates and stuff, like all the cheap shortcuts you would never advise someone to do,” Byars says. “I started just taking one step at a time.”

Then something unexpected happened: He began to enjoy himself. “It just kept working to my liking,” Byars says.

Soon, he had a simple but stirring video for “Come, Holy Ghost” (watch it above), a highlight from The Jarvik 6, the moody and cerebral EP he made with More Humans frontman Clinton Doggett and musician/engineer Beau Sorenson. The video shows a succession of stark edifices and abandoned buildings that dissolve, one after another, with near-maddening inevitability.

That’s precisely the bleak tone Byars had in mind. “There’s a little desolation [in this song]. I think there’s a hollowness,” the musician says. “[But] I think if you look at it lyrically, there’s a warmth, too, and there’s a longing and a sense of even nostalgia, because Clinton is singing about a kid he knew when his family lived in Africa, who he lost touch with.”

Byars sees The Jarvik 6 as an outlet for his undulatory tendencies.

“I’m very interested in beats. I’m very interested in grooves,” says the drummer, who handles guitar, piano and some vocals on the EP.

But Byars says it may be a while before The Jarvik 6 performs live. The project has existed solely in the lab for nine years.

“We’ve never played live. I wouldn’t know where to start,” Byars says. “I don’t know what we would do to invent or evoke some of those same emotional components… it’ll be interesting to see.”

The Jarvik 6’s debut EP is out now on West Main Development.

Now, D.C. label Bad Friend Records is giving back in its own way. Tuesday marks the release of the imprint’s new remix collection, Deleted Scenes vs The Caribbean vs Tereu Tereu: A Benefit for HIPS. All proceeds will go to nonprofit organization HIPS, which provides services and advocacy for people affected by sex work and drug use.

Bad Friend Records’ co-owner Ryan Little, a member of Tereu Tereu, says the mission of the compilation is simple. “For me, it’s just caring about other humans,” he writes in an email. “Sex workers and prisoners are two marginalized groups that won’t score advocates any political points, so I think they’re important to care about. I learned about that in church growing up — Jesus tended to hang out with prostitutes and criminals.”

Little also has a history of supporting HIPS in particular. “I was part of a HIPS benefit years ago on Exotic Fever Records when I played in the band Pash,” he writes. “Being part of that compilation, which was called This Is A Care Package, taught me a lot about the issues facing sex workers. When I brought the idea of working with HIPS to the bands … they all really felt it was an important issue.”

The album features remixes of songs by local indie-rock acts Deleted Scenes, The Caribbean and Little’s Tereu Tereu — all of them tweaked by the bands themselves.

Some tracks sound like a loose homage to the original recording, like Tereu’s Tereu’s version of Deleted Scenes’ “You Get To Say Whatever You Want,” which turns the guttural slow burn of the original into a four-on-the-floor stomper. Others, like Deleted Scenes’ hypercaffeinated take on The Caribbean’s “Jobsworth,” use the source material as a springboard to something out of this world. “There were no rules!” Little writes. “That was the only way we knew to approach it.”

Tereu Tereu and The Caribbean, along with D.C. guitar experimentalist Harness Flux, play a release show Saturday at Union Arts. The compilation will be available for purchase in advance of its Tuesday sale date, and the show’s $8 admission will also go towards HIPS.

“Bands don’t make much money, period. Most begin and end in obscurity,” Little writes. “But if you put a little effort into it, playing music can be an inclusive way to bring people together to work on stuff that matters to the community you live in.”

Tereu Tereu, The Caribbean and Harness Flux play a benefit for HIPS at Union Arts on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 8 p.m.

Yet D.C. producer, DJ, and venue co-owner Will Eastman has gone and done that anyway—and it somehow works. Eastman’s energetic remake of “Imitation Air” preserves a few elements from the original tune, and spins the rest into a dizzying, acid-burned floor-filler. It even has drops. Drops!

The Caribbean’s Matt Byars says that’s what the veteran indie-rock band wanted. “We’ve known Will for a while, [and] think he’s an extremely cool, fashionable guy, and wanted him to do something from the new record,” Byars writes in an email. He calls the remix “exactly what we were looking for from Will: something that would sound great in a club with a fantastic sound system (e.g. U Hall) and that, yes, people can dance to.”

The Caribbean has been remixed before—numerous times, in fact. Producer/engineer Scott Solter produced an EP of remixes based on the band’s 2007 album, “Populations.” Byars points out that other tunes from the band’s recent LP, “Moon Sickness,” have been reworked by Brad Laner of Medicine, Jimmy Ether of Headphone Treats, and Mike Shiflet—and more are forthcoming from D.C.’s Outputmessage and Thomas Wincek of Volcano Choir and All Tiny Creatures. Byars says the band is also working on a release for D.C. label Bad Friend Records that includes Deleted Scenes, Tereu Tereu, and The Caribbean remixing each other.

While that’s all in the oven, absorb this transformative take on an already vibrant track.

Buildings, Other Colors, Big Hush, and Howling Void
Friday, March 28 at the Dunes, $10

Buildings is back! The arty instrumentalists—quiet for a while now—typically perform in front of film projections, which makes sense: the band’s proggy math-rock would conjure images even if they weren’t placed in front of your face. Joining the quartet at this Columbia Heights art space are Baltimore’s lo-fi experimental pop group Other Colors, D.C. fuzzy rockers Big Hush, and newcomers Howling Void. (Catherine P. Lewis)

Alsarah and The Nubatones
Friday, March 28 at Tropicalia, $8-12

A Sudan-born Brooklyn resident with a background in ethnomusicology, Alsarah takes a somewhat academic approach to performance, which—as she told the Guardian in 2013—occasionally involves explaining to her American audiences what she’s doing onstage. At the D.C. release show of her new album “Silt,” let’s hope she doesn’t have to take too many talk breaks: Songs as funky as “Soukura” don’t need to be unpacked to be loved. (Ally Schweitzer)

Dudes, Blizzard Babies, BRNDA
Friday, March 28 at CD Cellar Arlington, donations only

Young local three-piece Dudes is the band every rebellious, punk-rock kid wanted to form when they were 17. The songs on the band’s debut recording, “Greatest Hits,” stick to simple and sassy, with lots of funny interplay between co-vocalists Francy Graham and Luke Reddick. That pair—charismatic as they are—will probably wind up on a magazine cover (e-magazine cover?) one day. But before that moment comes along, let’s just enjoy hearing them scream dumb, profane lyrics at each other, most of which are unquotable on this family-friendly blog. (AS)

Warning: This song contains explicit lyrics.

The Day of the Beast, Vitality, Death Penalty
Saturday, March 29 at the Lab, $8-10

D.C. isn’t exactly famous for its metal scene, but there’s a huge variety of heavy bands in the greater D.C. area. This show features three bands who play on the faster side of things: death/thrash band The Day of the Beast hails from Virginia Beach, with thrash openers Vitality (from Frederick, Md.) and Death Penalty (from Northern Virginia). In true D.C. fashion, this show is hosted at Alexandria DIY space The Lab, which is affiliated with the Convergence Church—so leave the booze at home. (CPL)

Dead Heart Bloom, Tone, Cavallo, Talk It
Saturday, March 29 at DC9, $10

Dead Heart Bloom is based in New York City, but is a D.C. band at heart, featuring two core members of the late D.C. band Phaser. Dead Heart Bloom continues down the path of Phaser’s shoegazy psychedelic pop and has released a series of excellent EPs over the last six months. This is a co-headlining show with D.C.’s post-rock guitar army Tone and also features Brooklyn instrumental band Cavallo and ex-Eggs project Talk It. (CPL)

The Jet Age, The Caribbean, Early American
Saturday, March 29 at Comet Ping Pong, $10

This show celebrates old bands with new releases: Longtime indie rockers The Jet Age have just released their newest album, “Jukebox Memoir,” which features guest vocals from Swervedriver’s Adam Franklin and Ride’s Mark Gardener. Those two guys probably won’t be at the show (alas!), but fellow old-school experimental pop band The Caribbean will be, playing songs off their newest album, “Moon Sickness.” (CPL)

Cosmonauts, Black Sea
Monday, March 31 at Black Cat Backstage, $10

California label Burger Records is micro-famous for peddling a slackerly, California-flavored kind of fuzz pop, and noisy Orange County band Cosmonauts has a natural place in the family tree. But it’s also more Loop- or Spacemen 3-driven than many of its Burger buddies, and that’s pleasantly evident on its 2013 full-length, the melodic-but-chunky “Persona Non Grata.”

This is more of an awards show than a concert, but we also recommend:

TMOTTGoGo Honors at Howard Theatre
Thursday, March 27 at Howard Theatre, $20-25

Since the mid-’90s, there’s been no better source of information on D.C.’s go-go scene than TMOTTGoGo. Tonight, the go-go news resource hosts another installment of its annual honors show, which recognizes some big names in the local scene. Among them: noted keys player and go-go celeb Sweet Cherie, photographer and poet Thomas Sayers Ellis, Rare Essence bassist Funky Ned and saxophonist Donnell Floyd, E.U. drummer Ju Ju House, and musician and activist Jason Lewis. Informally recognized all night, of course, is the music that TMOTTGoGo has been championing for nearly 20 years. (AS)

These and other show listings can be found on ShowListDC.