Today the rising talent took his erotic yogi vibe to another level with “Namaste,” his new video with Australian singer Emmaline and Domani Harris, the 14-year-old son of hip-hop megastar T.I.

Directed by Minista Cinema, “Namaste” shows Visto perched on a mountain with Emmaline and Harris looking their most pious in the background. Elsewhere, he’s immaculately attired on a wicker throne — flanked by his Hippie Life Krew cohort Pinky KillaCorn — dispensing messages of self-empowerment.

“You gotta show love to everybody, and bow to the god in everybody,” Visto advises at the top of the track. “But you gotta make sure you bow to the god in yourself first.”

Looking quite godly himself, Visto stands to gain some new converts with “Namaste.” Check out the video up top.

That’s certainly the case with “Smoke It Down,” the single the Hippie Life Krew honcho premiered this afternoon via Hot New Hip Hop.

“Oh, we’re going to smo-oh-oke it down,” he coos on the track, summoning nearby ladies to his zone of chillaxation. “Won’t you bring your friends around?”

There’s nothing hard-hitting about “Smoke It Down”: It’s straight-up cookout tuneage, except the smoke it’s giving off isn’t coming from a charcoal grill. (Also: I may have to retroactively add it to Bandwidth’s new playlist of D.C. summer songs.)

Listen to “Smoke It Down,” produced by The Democratz, below.

Photo via Visto’s Facebook page

The 27-year-old describes “KillaCorn music” as a personalized mixture of gangster rap, jazz and especially D.C.’s homegrown go-go sound. She got her start rapping over go-go. But before she started freestyling, the MC involved herself in after-school arts programs, performing West African dance and taking part in musicals like The Wiz and Once On This Island.

Pinky KillaCorn

“I’m everywhere, doing everything and there’s nothing you can do about it,” KillaCorn says.

That explains her unique stage name, which she devised after a talk with her producer. Learning that corn appears in food and even fuel, KillaCorn (who chose not to disclose her legal name) did some research, and found out corn comes in basically everything. She decided she wanted to aim for the same kind of ubiquity — to become as universal as corn.

But the rapper wants to do it on her own terms. “As long as I don’t look like everyone else,” she says, “then I’m cool.”

With candy-pink hair and a bright smile, KillaCorn does stand out. Her relaxed but driven vocal style caught the attention of Virginia rapper and singer Visto, who had spearheaded an informal group called the Hippie Life Krew. A fan of the long-locked, weed-loving vocalist, Pinky happily ganged up with him.

Warning: Explicit language.

Visto and KillaCorn’s highest-profile collaboration yet arrived this year: a hooky, laid-back single called “What Hippie What” that found KillaCorn clarifying who she is — and who she is not.

“Hol’ up, hol’ up naw, see Pinky ain’t no bad b***h,” she raps in her raspy tone. “Boo, I’m a goddess, a hippstress, a savage.” (In Hippie Life Krew parlance, “hippstress” is the feminized version of “hippie.”)

KillaCorn says she has more work on the way with Visto, but her latest release isn’t a song, it’s a video. Today she dropped the visual for her single “Tequila,” coinciding with National Tequila Day.

Warning: Adult content (and tequila-induced vomit).

Originally released in 2014, “Tequila” has the makings of a party staple. KillaCorn’s flow sounds steady but mellow, like she could do it in her sleep. It’s not her strongest lyrical work — “What’s your preference? I prefer tequila straight up like an erection,” she raps — but the track’s occasionally lackluster verses are redeemed by its hypnotic production.

Between the partying and peacocking, KillaCorn hasn’t shied away from serious subjects. Last year she did an introspective tribute to Michael Brown — the 18-year-old killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri — on a track that sampled a witness’ account of the shooting.

But KillaCorn’s main objective is to spread the love.

“I want everybody to love themselves, be themselves, improve themselves,” she says. “I want to inspire anyone I can inspire to love themselves. That’s a big problem in the world because everyone’s trying to fit in.”

Pinky KillaCorn appears at D.C.’s Pure Lounge on Friday, July 24.

Top photo: Screenshot from Pinky KillaCorn’s “Tequila” video

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.

In the last video from Virginia crooner Visto, he took to the woods, surrounding himself with natural elements: earth, air and fire. Now he’s returned with another visual that swaps the nature for something more high-tech.

The new video for the Hippie Life Krew member’s club-ready track “Shinobi” (also the name of a Sega video game series) is the brainchild of Minista Millz of the Maryland-based Catwalk Studioz, and it finds Visto using some Matrix-style widgets to plot the seduction of a woman who’s with another man. It’s another example of Visto’s ability to keep his fans guessing.

“There’s no one direction for my art,” Visto writes in an email, “and we just thought that a futuristic hippie coming to take your girlfriend was just cool.”

Visto hopes to release a new project by spring, but in the meantime, he says he’s got more music and videos on the horizon.

That would be “on fleek,” a term popularized by Vine user Peaches Monroee in a June video clip. “On fleek” has come to mean chic, put together, manicured — and Visto has his own interpretation. “My definition of ‘fleek’ is just being on point — being top-notch in everything you do,” writes the singer and rapper in an email. “In my song, ‘fleek’ is beyond outward appearance. I notice the girl that ‘cherishes love and light.'”

But the track itself — produced by D.C.-based beatmaker, DJ and engineer Kid Cannibal — is what gave Visto the idea for his lyrics. The track feels lighthearted, blending a breezy guitar build-up into an electro-pop hook while maintaining some hip-hop elements (throbbing bass, handclaps). “Honestly, the production inspired the song,” Visto writes. “It just makes you feel on fleek!”

For the video, Visto abandons what he calls the “superficial club video with models and bottles,” trading them for green (including the smokable kind) and a fireside party. It’s “showing a group of friends simply having a great time,” Visto writes — and it lent him an opportunity to show off “the diversity and individuality” of his posse, the Hippie Life Krew. (See Bandwidth’s recent coverage of Pinky KillaCorn, a crew member.)

Visto has always straddled the line between singer and rapper — see his previous singles “Shinobi,” “Witcha” and “How That Pxssy Taste” — and his versatility is on full display with “On Fleek Tonight,” finding him in much poppier territory.

“People seem to expect ‘different’ from me, so that pushes me to experiment with sounds and styles,” Visto writes. “I don’t worry about trends — they don’t last. Universal feelings do. And that’s my aim for my style, my sound and my career.”

As a kid growing up in Northeast D.C., Antoine Williams played AAU basketball. “I thought I was the man,” says Williams. “I had crazy handles. But in basketball, you find out there’s someone like you on every block.”

As his basketball aspirations faded, Williams began to focus more on developing his rap career, since he had already grown a decent following under the name Fatz da Big Fella. “I saw that people listened to a lot of the things I said,” he says, “so I thought, ‘Why not put it on a track?’ I knew I had a gift.”

These and other autobiographical details find their way into “Grew Up,” the opener from Fatz da Big Fella’s new Fatz Sinatra mixtape. But the track—which also features D.C. singer Frank Sirius—doesn’t just reminisce on Fatz’s youthful hoop dreams. He takes it as an opportunity to get real about his upbringing. His first verse starts: “My childhood was [messed] up, 20 people, one house/Four sleeping in one room, two folks on the couch.”

Fatz says he wanted the song—and the tape—to tell an extremely personal story with grit and honesty. According to the MC, it’s a first. “I never really exposed my life,” he says. “It was time to grow up and talk about the struggle. People see the glitz, glamor and the way I do things, but I came from nothing.”

Fatz didn’t always think rap was his calling card. But after he saw Wale, Tabi Bonney and Raheem DeVaughn make national waves, it began to sink in that D.C. artists could make their mark outside of the region. Wale, who appeared on Fatz’ 2012 Heart of a King mixtape, reemerges on the Sinatra track “Talk About It” with New York rapper French Montana. The new tape also features rising D.C. rapper Shy Glizzy (on “Miami Vice”), local crooner and rapper Visto (“On Who”) and perpetual superstar-in-waiting Phil Adé (“Celebration”), also from the D.C. area.

“I wanted those soulful, heartfelt songs,” Fatz says about Sinatra. “It’s easy to talk about the club life and the things you see on TV, because people don’t wanna tap into when they were at their worst. [But] let me talk to the person that’s going through something. There’s more people struggling than people winning.”