Disc Image – Icheb
Wes Swing – In a Station of the Metro
Soccer Team – Mental Anguish Is Your Friend
Fat Kneel – Hoarse Siren
Tony Kill – Being Considered [EP]
brushes – Mary
Tone – Bright Angel Falls
Rex Riot – Birds and Bees Feat. Misun
Melanie’s Magic Mellotron – Parasite
Wytold – Summersaults
Jail Solidarity – Lights Out
Joshua Rich – Rain
airøspace – Ikigami, the Ultimate Limit (prod. Budamonk)
Stephen Allen Kochersperger – The Quest
ᴇʟᴅʀ. – Glitter Gloo
Pax Musicana – Sixteen Nights
Fort Knox Five – Swinging On a Rhyme (Instrumental)
Smoke n’ Mangos – Birds
STROMA – Not My Chair
Tomás Pagán Motta – Love In Her Lies

Dr. Nittler’s Elastic Soultastic Planet – Faux Patina
Outputmessage – Try Again
DC Improvisers Collective – Unified Conspiracy Theory
Mbandi – Fairy Tale
The Grit Pushers – Song 5
True Womanhood – The Monk
David Marc Alterman (performed by Astrid Walschott Stapp) – Octagon
Luke Denton – Montana Sky
Nancy Joie Wilkie – Which Way To Go
Judah – Drums Don’t Lie
Brian Wilbur Grundstrom – For Whom the Bell Tolls Opera – Act 1 Scene 3
Strange Times People Band – Aye Tu
Urban Verbs – Subways
WonderChurch – A Head In a Lion’s Mouth
Western Affairs – Iowa
Gordon Withers – 2.9
Tomás Pagán Motta – I Need a Woman
Blacksage – Make Out Interlude
Sansyou – Let It Expand
Miyazaki – Apparition

Logikbomb – One For yU
Young Rapids – King of the Hill
Dubpixel – Through My Window
SlimKat78 – GhoolyLude
Benoit & Sergio – Your Darkness
Young Summer – Taken
John W. Warren – La Noche Triste (The Moon’s Lullaby)
Cynthia Marie – Sometimes Broken
Bunny Man Bridge – Parker Brothers
Beauty Pill – I’m Just Gonna Close My Eyes For A Second
The Orchid – Don’t Be Afraid; We’ll Be Together
Kenny Mac – Feeling You (feat. 210)
Outputmessage – Minuscule
Foozle – TV Wrestling
Super!Silver!Haze! – Train to Berlin
True Womanhood – A Diviner
Frau Eva – Morrissey Smiling
Tomás Pagán Motta – It’s Tough Letting Go
Matt Rippetoe – BOINK (reprise)
Moonlight Mask – The Nightingale

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

That’s what I asked Bandwidth’s contributors to help me do last month. Our writers sent me their picks for their favorite D.C. music of 2015 thus far, and the result was this extremely awesome playlist (stream it below).

One limitation, though: I had to pick songs that have been uploaded to Soundcloud. As it turns out, not everybody puts their music on the service. A lot of rock and punk bands, in particular, use Bandcamp, and some artists — for reasons my under-30 brain is still struggling to understand — don’t even put their songs on the Internet for free.

So this playlist still isn’t as exhaustive as I wanted it to be, but it’s still pretty freaking great. Give it a listen on your computer or chosen mobile device, and be sure to chide us in the comments, on Twitter or via email for missing your favorite D.C. music of the year. (Seriously! Send me your nominations — we want to hear it all.)

For more coverage of D.C. music, follow Bandwidth’s Track Work series.

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

Image, clockwise from top left: April + VISTA, Kali Uchis, Young Rapids (partial image), Ras Nebyu, Prinze George (partial image), Visto.

On the sixth track from Motta’s self-titled album, out Tuesday, an acoustic guitar and vocals are quickly joined by a string arrangement, building toward a shapely, spectacular peak.

The 32-year-old songwriter, formerly of The Petticoat Tearoom, says the song emerged from the beginnings of romance.

“What I was feeling at the time was going through a new relationship, and sort of judging the person,” he says. “Judging in the sense that you’re diving deep into somebody and unlocking things, and in turn you’re unlocking things in yourself.”

When writing, Motta felt driven by the notion of space. “Space so that the listener can create things for themselves,” says the Mount Vernon Square resident. “I think with that song, we accomplished a lot of space. And there are swells, like a parabola of mood and sound.”

Motta says his songwriting is also dictated by a compulsion to improvise. “I’m sort of notorious for having one or two rehearsals, and then embracing the improvisational quality of performance,” he says — and that wouldn’t be possible without his collaborators. “I play with incredible musicians. They know the melody and the structure, and then I’m free to go where I want to go on stage.”

Recording the entire album live at WrightWay Studios in Baltimore, none of the players Motta recruited had met before. He recorded his parts on his phone before passing them off to Joseph Martone, who collaborated with Motta on the string arrangements and plays upright bass on the record.

After transposing the string arrangement onto the initial recording, Motta distributed the track to the rest of his players — violinist Audrey Hamilton, cellist Devree Lewis, pedal steel player Dave Hadley and percussionist Michael Scerba — then “we jumped in the studio and recorded it live in, like, an hour,” says Motta. “It was quite an experience.”

To Motta, the song’s most important feature may be the fact that it leaves itself open to interpretation. “Even though this is an extremely structured song, the listener is going to arrive at their own conclusions,” he says. “That’s what I love about songs.”

Tomás Pagán Motta plays March 13 at Rock & Roll Hotel. He’s currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund his national tour.