“It was time for us to leave,” emails Peter Lillis, a Babe City resident who runs the label’s publicity. According to Lillis, Babe City met the same fate as dozens of D.C. house venues before it: The property at 22nd and N streets NW is being “gutted and flipped and sold for big money,” he writes.

Lillis says he and his roommates have moved to a house near Fort Totten Metro. (For privacy reasons, he asked Bandwidth not to publish the address.)

After Babe City began hosting basement shows last fall, the spot became one of D.C.’s most reliable hosts of underground, rock-skewing bands, putting on at least a few gigs a month. Raucous New Paltz punk duo Diet Cig played there twice this year; pop-rock Virginians RDGLDGRN packed the basement in July.

When Jon Weiss (of The Sea Life and Witch Coast) and Erik Strander launched Babe City Records, the house became its headquarters.

But the location — in one of D.C.’s most expensive neighborhoods — felt temporary from the beginning, Lillis points out. “As much as we love it, [Babe City] was never meant to be our permanent home,” he writes. “We quickly outgrew the space, with five people living in a three-bedroom house, and many bands operating out of our living room and basement.”

Moving elsewhere promises to be a money-saver. “We were happy to move to a more comfortable (and cheaper) home up in north D.C.,” Lillis writes.

The second incarnation of Babe City hosts a kickoff show Dec. 27 featuring Babe City act Den-Mate, San Francisco’s Sports and a solo version of Maryland’s Go Cozy. Donations will be taken at the door.

In true punk-rock fashion, the residents of Babe City exited Dupont with little pomp and circumstance, Lillis says. “We packed and moved in the middle of the night with a 24-foot U-Haul,” he writes. “It was an experience.” 

Babe City II hosts its first show Dec. 27. See Facebook for details.

“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.

Atlanta indie-rock outfit Semicircle joined the lineup late after a cancelled gig at DC9. They shared the bill with a solid lineup of locals, including post-rock ensemble Polyon, a new band from Typefighter and Joy Buttons member Ryan McLaughlin; Witch Coast, which released one of the best D.C. EPs of 2014; pop-punkers Qualms, featuring members of Big Hush, Sad Bones and The Bowlcuts; and headliners The Obsessives, a two-piece indie-rock band worth paying attention to this year.

Despite blistering cold weather, eventual snow and a Super Bowl halftime performance from the talented Katy Perry, more than 50 people came out for the Dougout’s birthday. Maybe this time next year, they’ll be celebrating another one.

Semicircle

Polyon

Witch Coast

Qualms

The Obsessives