“I was right in front of these huge glass windows,” says the musician, who plays a six-stringed electric cello. He had just talked to some patients about “what they were going through and how much the music meant to them,” he says, “and I just felt like I was channeling that whole kind of feeling and experience.”

The artist — full name William Wytold Lebing — also conducts weeklong workshops through a recreational arts program administered by the USO Warrior and Family Center for military members receiving medical treatment at Walter Reed. Playing for wounded veterans and their families for two years revealed a world Wytold didn’t know much about — it bridges a gap between the generally progressive arts community and more conservative military types, he says — but it’s also changed the way he composes music.

Wytold’s most recent album, Fireflies, Fairies & Squids, reflects his artistic shift. On this record, he says, “You can slow down and take everything in, and I think that mindset and my decision to put out that kind of gentler music was shaped by all of these experiences at Walter Reed.”

The song “Let the Light In” stemmed from that day in the America building. It represents a change for a musician who calls his earlier work “progressive classical” with live looping. Today his compositions are quiet and otherworldly — a departure from the classical/hip-hop fusion on his album Biggie, Beethoven, Busta, and Bach, not to mention his performances alongside the National Symphony Orchestra and superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

In the workshops, musicians, poets and visual artists offer veterans hands-on opportunities for creative expression. For Wytold, that might mean an introduction to playing the ukulele, or a workshop he calls “music theory demystified.” Some workshop participants have gone on to show their visual art or perform the guitar or cello they’ve learned.

“When you see people who aren’t talking to anyone and are shifty-eyed and jittery, and by the end of the week, they’ve come around to singing an original song, it’s such a rich, powerful experience,” Wytold says.

For some former soldiers, making art provides unexpected inner peace. According to Wytold, some have told him, “this is the first beauty I’ve found in the world since I deployed.”

Wytold performs an album-release show Dec. 17 at The GallÆrie pop-up gallery in Mount Pleasant. It will include an exhibition by self-taught mixed-media artist Joe Merrit, a Marine Corps veteran whose work came out of workshops at Walter Reed.

“Things,” a bright and bouncy dance track, adds a new color to Oddisee’s production palette — but the song’s energy belies its lyrical content. It’s a confessional that finds the Maryland-born, Brooklyn-based rapper-producer wrestling with his status, summed up by a nod to The Notorious B.I.G.‘s “mo’ money, mo’ problems” mantra. Much of Oddisee’s career has been marked by that dilemma, and here, he likens it to a horror-film cliché: He’s unable to resist the urge to run towards the screams.

Still, Oddisee’s words have an equivocal quality to them. The third verse opens with a declaration that “we just want to matter more,” and in that moment, it becomes unclear whether “we” means underground rappers — or something else altogether. In fact, that entire section can be read as a demand for equity on multiple fronts. Perceived invisibility is, after all, a sentiment shared by any who are outcast. As the U.S.’s legislative tides turn — Oddisee explicitly engaged the possibility on March’s Alwasta EP — The Iceberg figures to stand as some of his most politically charged work. In those terms, the alternate reading of “Things” feels especially penetrating.

The Iceberg comes out Feb. 24 via Mello Music Group.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

That’s the premise of their collective, Dope Music Village — a play on the letters that represent their stomping grounds, the DMV. It’s meant to support all forms of art and bring together artists and fans alike.

“It’s like, ‘Let’s build [a platform] that not only we can stand on … but other people we like and respect can stand on with us,” says Brain Rapp, who says he came up with the name at work.

That communal effort plays strongly into the trio’s first collaborative release, You’re Welcome, a project that welcomes others into their village. They join their distinct flows — Brain Rapp rides on steady, cultivated energy; Ezko hits on strong, free-flowing lyrics and Nature Boi matches his own melodic, adaptive production — in a way where not one of them outshines the other. The eight-track release shows a wide and fluid range of moods: from restless, frustrated energy in “Venting” to appreciative affection in “Ms. Amerykah Badu.”

The collective first came together in 2015, when someone said “Dope Music Village” on a track for the first time on Ezko’s Sleep EP.

Brain Rapp and Nature Boi have known each other since they were teenagers. The 20-somethings solidified a working relationship while Nature Boi produced Brain Rapp’s 2015 release Elevator Music, and they’ve even lived together. Ezko came into the mix after Brain Rapp connected with him on Facebook, noticing the younger rapper on music blogs.

“At the end of the day, these guys are my family,” Brain Rapp says.

One song, “It’s Been Lit Ever Since,” came from a phrase Ezko once uttered. Brain Rapp and Nature Boi took it and ran with it. They had to wake Ezko up to record the song.

It’s hard to categorize the hip-hop trio, Brain Rapp says. He jokes that he looks more like a Starbucks barista than a rapper. Brain Rapp’s father is a well-known entomologist, and he studied environmental science at the University of Maryland. Nature Boi has been making music for at least a decade, but he’s a collaborator at heart, and he only recently started focusing on solo work. Ezko — whom Brain Rapp likens to Joey Bada$$ —just tries things out in a freeform way until it sticks.

Together, they don’t ride only wave of hip-hop. They play with R&B rhythms and trap beats, and their subjects flow from politics to weed-smoking.

“Now that I am [older]… I can’t escape the realness and the gravity of the world,” Brain Rapp says. “For four minutes, I would like to not live in that reality.”

The three artists are working on their own projects at the moment, but Brain Rapp hopes to keep shaping Dope Music Village — into a broader collective, perhaps, or even a record label.

But no matter what, he says the focus will remain on spotlighting their music as well as their community’s. That’s what it means to be in a village.

“There’s nobody in my mind that’s up and down 295 the same way that we are,” Brain Rapp says.

Last week, the local imprint released a compilation called Code Red (listen below) that they say will benefit the American Civil Liberties Union. And it isn’t just a statement against Trump, says label co-founder Douglas Kallmeyer. The compilation hits back against corruption in U.S. politics and the financial system.

“Financial greed has enslaved generations to unjust mortgages and student loans. People are struggling and susceptible,” says Kallmeyer. “How can we help those that will suffer the most?” Kallmeyer says the ACLU seemed like an ideal beneficiary, calling the 96-year-old organization “a nonpartisan means to try to fight corruption.”

The nonpartisan part is key. Kallmeyer blames the current political mood on both Republicans and Democrats.

“It seems that any shred of moral value on either side of the aisle is finally gone. It’s insane to me,” says the Annandale resident. “The Democratic party cut their own throats, obviously railroading Bernie Sanders and installing Hillary Clinton.”

At 40 tracks, Code Red contains a vast diversity of expressive styles. Some artists, such as violinist James Wolf, create abstract soundscapes of dissonant tones. Others, like Peoria, Illinois, singer/songwriter Sarah Schonert, take a more intimate and melodic route. But the music overwhelmingly captures a negative view of current events, dwelling on feelings of tension, instability or urgency.

Kallmeyer worked with labelmate Dave Harris to put the call for submissions across social media. They were floored by the resulting enthusiasm.

“We were willing to settle with what we could get in 10 days,” says Kallmeyer. “We had 40 committed artists from six different countries… We probably had responses doubling that.”

Kallmeyer sees a global movement in the works, and he says Verses is ready to rise to the task.

“D.C. and the surrounding area of artistic community [are] mobilizing at a steady pace to respond to the absolute corruption we face,” Kallmeyer says, “and to be heard.”

“‘Mars and Me’ is about the tension we feel between Venus and Mars within ourselves,” says the Mount Pleasant resident. “When one’s self is truly illuminated, we see beauty and horror.”

The track certainly explores two vastly different musical ideas. “Mars and Me” opens on a lovely but anxious note, with minor-key arpeggios buttressing Anway’s soft vocals. The band doesn’t settle into a mood, though. Before long, drums and strings propel the song into another atmosphere.

“Mars and Me” continues Anway’s partnership with producers Tommy Sherrod and Mike Okusami. The three worked together on Brushes’ debut release, Whatever, Again. Since then, they have recorded over 20 songs together and grown into a live quintet that includes guitarist/keyboardists Matt Henderson and Nick DePrey.

“Mars and Me” appears on Grizzly Beach, a split EP with Boston band Today Junior. Unlike Brushes’ more nuanced approach, Today Junior is all about the fist-pumpers. Grizzly Beach features their song, “Lee’s Anthem,” a shout-along ode to believing in yourself.

Once again, the contrast in styles is deliberate.

“One of the things I love most about Today Junior is that they write songs to make you feel good,” says Anway. “Their music connects me to Boston, where I grew up, and to many of the surf themes that have become fundamental to how I write songs.”

Anway and Brushes met Today Junior over the summer and the two bands immediately struck up a friendship. Aside from working on Grizzly Beach together, the two bands co-wrote a song that will appear on a full-length Brushes album out next year.

In the meantime, Brushes and Today Junior plan to embark on a mini-tour of the Northeast U.S. and drop a vinyl release of Grizzly Beach in early 2017.

Brushes, Today Junior and Homeshake Monday play Nov. 28 at Songbyrd Music House & Record Cafe.

“People still think we’re one person,” says Dijon Duenas, who sings and produces in the R&B group. But actually, says co-producer Abhi Raju, “We’re two different people making music with two different backgrounds.”

Growing up in Maryland, Raju says he mostly listened to Indian music and later, rock. Duenas, meanwhile, found his base in R&B and hip-hop. Together, the pair explore the pensive outer reaches of contemporary R&B music. They’ve been gradually tweaking the formula since their 2013 debut.

Raju and Duenas say they have creative clashes all the time. But those battles don’t make it into the finished product — including on their cohesive new EP, Montana (listen below), where Duenas’ wispy, reflective vocals and Raju’s sumptuous co-production sound like a fated match.

“The thing we share in common is immediacy and warmth,” Duenas says. “Whatever that means to anybody else we can’t say, but… warmth means the same thing musically to both of us. I think that’s the most important thing.”

That warmth began to take shape with “Twelve,” a 2013 track with rhythms you could find on an Aaliyah single. (The duo even brought traces of Aaliyah and producer Timbaland to “Baby Girl,” a song they produced for Talib Kweli’s surprise 2015 release, F— the Money.) Their 2015 EP, Stay Up, remains rooted in their influences, but forges a path toward a more spacious sound.

“For our last EP, we were like, ‘Yo, let’s do everything that we can possibly do,’” Raju recalls. “Now we’re more concise with it.”

On Montana, Duenas’ soft singing melts into sprawling, pulsating instrumentals. The five-track release lingers on fragmented emotions, from pettiness in “Ignore” to wistfulness in “Often.” While Stay Up felt mildly nostalgic, Montana sounds like growth.

What started as a hobby for the two self-described introverts has evolved into an “expressive exercise,” Duenas says.

“We don’t want to get caught in just any wave,” the vocalist says. They aspire to make music that’s as “sonically forward-thinking as possible without overthinking it.”

After Abhi//Dijon took a brief hiatus this year to figure out post-grad life and move from Ellicott City to Los Angeles, where they’re focusing on their craft. A top goal: refine their live show.

Onstage, Duenas says, “I never felt like I was representing myself the way I wanted to.” He struggles with anxiety, and he’s felt hampered by preconceived notions of what an R&B performer should do.

“Dijon’s not Usher,” Raju jokes.

“Seriously,” Duenas agrees. “That was the existential thing because, like, I’m not an R&B dude.” So he’s simply decided to perform more honestly. “It’s more about owning up to who you are,” he says.

The cool-but-not-too-cool house and techno tracks — attributed to by Doms & Deykers, her and his surnames — sound unencumbered by life. But life has changed for the Sterling resident: He’s been maintaining his creative energy and his international profile with a new addition at home. The Dutch-born musician and his wife have a toddler daughter, and he’s had to learn how to compartmentalize things.

“You can’t do any eight- or nine-hour studio sessions and just sort of completely lose yourself into compressing drums or whatever,” Martyn says, chuckling. “Every two hours there’s something new, then you have to go there, or then she wakes up from a nap — there’s all these little things that you have to think about all of a sudden.”

Perhaps it was natural, then, for Martyn to find a different mode of making music for the time being. Known for his club sets and his creative, sonically adventurous solo albums — including 2014’s The Air Between Words on the Ninja Tune label — the 42-year-old says he was “never really interested in working with other people” until recently. The project with Doms stemmed from his DJ gigs in Europe. (He’s currently doing a monthly residency at Panorama Bar in Berlin.)

“When we sit together in the studio, ideas happen really fast,” he says. “We just lay jams down, and usually we spend a couple of hours on one, then record everything, and move to the next idea. And usually what happens when we get back home, and we’re in our own studios working, we take these jams and build them into complete songs.”

Doms, who is also Dutch-born, traveled to the Virginia ‘burbs in the spring to help finish the album, which was released this week on 3024, a label Martyn runs with artist Erosie. Martyn also found time over the past year for another collaboration: Fierce For The Night, by a Berlin singer called, coincidentally, Virginia. Martyn, Doms and the Dutch producer Dexter handled all the production.

Martyn moved to Ashburn, Virginia, in 2008 for love and was married the same year. In 2012, he became a U.S. citizen. The family has since found another apartment, in Sterling. He’s had some time to put Loudoun County in perspective.

“I must say that — especially with traveling to other parts of the U.S., I noticed that Ashburn and Sterling is not the norm,” he says. “I think we’re all quite privileged to live in this area. Although sometimes it can be a bit of a struggle, this is a really sort of wealthy area of the States. That’s something I only discovered when I started traveling to other places and see how other cities are laid out, also smaller towns and things like that … this is not what the entire U.S. looks like, you know?”

As his adjustment to suburban-dadhood continues, he says it’s “important to stay inspired.” He has time to listen to music on international flights, but he’s got a tactic at home, too.

“Once you actually find your groove again, you can actually make it part of your life again. Like, one thing we do is play a record almost every day — a new album every day so that in the house there’s always music,” he says. His daughter “really enjoys the music as well, even though sometimes it’s a bit weird for her, maybe. That way I can sort of engulf myself in music and give my child a little bit of education in a way.”

Martyn speaks highly of D.C.’s growing dance-music scene, particularly the Future Times and 1432R labels, and the roving-party series known as ROAM. He recently DJed at one in September.

“The crowd was just so healthy. It was so nice to see people really into the music and not really about posing or just taking pictures of themselves, just generally enjoying the music and generally enjoying the atmosphere and the other people,” he says. “It was just really cool to see that. It almost felt like a European party, you know? That’s something that I hadn’t experienced in D.C. before. … It was less sort of institutionalized clubbing, and more sort of, freedom. That’s obviously a very good time for people to play their music.”

Despite the recent stretch of working so much with other artists, Martyn says he’s returning to his roots in the coming weeks, with work on a new album that is likely to sound more “abstract,” given the club-oriented nature of the Doms & Deykers album and the project with Virginia.

“I’ve just been aching,” Martyn says, “to start working on solo material again.”

The experience was rife with racial tensions, however. “It wasn’t anything like I got spat on,” he explains. “At the same time, I think the coaches and the environments I would be in didn’t set right with me.”

So he was particularly moved when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem earlier this year. The NFL player said he wanted to call attention to the systemic mistreatment of minority groups in the U.S.

“I always wondered what was up with racist sports fans who may cheer for a player of color, but will not respect their rights as human beings once the game is over.”

“I think what he did definitely made people reflect and it exposed so many differing viewpoints for people to have this conversation,” says Ardamus (real name: Artemis Thompson). “We don’t give people with fame credit when they stand for something positive and meaningful.”

Thompson’s new song, “The Athlete,” pays tribute to sports heroes past and present who were unafraid to speak up about racial disparities in America. A confident, sauntering beat produced by Ardamus himself buttresses two segments of storytelling: In the first verse, the MC recalls the patient determination of baseball player Jackie Robinson, who first broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. In the second, he praises Kaepernick for using his status to call attention to social issues.

“The Athlete” appears on Thompson’s After I Replace You EP, which came out last week on the Delegation Music label. Thompson had written the bulk of the song a year ago, but Kaepernick’s protest inspired him to return and finish it.

“I always wondered what was up with racist sports fans who may cheer for a player of color, but will not respect their rights as human beings once the game is over,” he says. “Someone like Kaepernick takes a stand then all hell breaks loose. All these critics come out and show their true colors.”

It’s no surprise that Thompson is also a voracious sports fan, rooting for baseball’s San Francisco Giants, hockey’s Nashville Predators, both sides of basketball’s rivalry between the Brooklyn Nets and the Toronto Raptors, and of course, D.C. United soccer. He sees a deep connection between hip-hop culture and professional sports.

“So many rappers want to say they’re a version of this player and that player in the hip-hop industry. Then you have so many players getting involved in hip-hop music” he says. “I think they will continue to influence each other as time goes on.”

Ardamus performs Oct. 28 with Of Tomorrow at Solly’s in D.C., and Oct. 29 with Red Moon Preachers at Tree House Lounge in D.C.

Hospital originally was going to be a straight-up concept album about, well, dying, but once all the songs were put together, the lyrics didn’t really work with the idea. What did work was opening the album with tunes that were pop-based — almost electroclash — and pivoting to experimental, sometimes borderline-spooky songs about halfway through. The album moves from lyrics and concepts based in the real-world — addictive behavior, for example — to more abstract vibes.

“My mind inevitably gets fixated on negatives and I find it very difficult to notice the positive aspects of life, which is why the themes of my music are usually so depressing,” says the 28-year-old Falls Church, Virginia, resident. “I guess the only positive message of this album is that maybe the process of dying will be interesting and weird and therefore maybe not something to dread all that much.”

That said, it might not be totally evident throughout the album’s bleeps and bloops, which sometimes are purposefully funky (“Because God Is Dead And Everything Is Sex,” “.22”) or soulful (“Monochromatic”). Euphrat, 28, explains that Hospital is “basically 100 percent sample-based” — sometimes the “samples” are of his own music, i.e. recording a strummed note and going from there — and made to “sound as synthetic and fake as possible.”

Hospital started to come together when Euphrat, who has been making music under the Timmy Sells His Soul moniker for about a decade now, was looking back at material that he had set aside a few years ago. The songs had fresh appeal, and he decided to give the album another shot. It was probably inevitable that it would have a noticeable structure: Euphrat says he’s recently been obsessed with “conceptual coherence” and maybe a little too interested in looking at things from a “form-based standpoint.” (He’s been relatively prolific, too: In April he released the LP Money Always Wins.)

Euphrat, who digitizes books for a living, moved to the D.C. area from Tucson, Arizona, about six years ago in search of like-minded music-focused folks. He’s now in a handful of bands, including Tired All The Time and Narkotronik. “I rarely get a weekend to myself,” he says.

That adds a special kind of value to Timmy Sells His Soul, he says: “Basically whatever I visualize I can try to bring it into reality without other people interfering with it.”

The Frederick band’s eponymous full-length album, out Friday on New Jersey’s Black Numbers label, is the result of four years of shows and self-released EPs. Their woodshedding tends to be purposeful and ongoing, agree drummer/singer Matt Henry and guitarist/singer Evan Braswell. It helps that they’ve known each other for most of their lives and developed the kind of brotherly bond that keeps the sensibility intact.

“We’re all pretty picky — because we’re all such music-history nerds — about what we want out of the sound of the record,” Braswell says.

The 10-song Lilac Daze crackles with life: Songs such as “Shark Bait,” “Glow In The Dark” and “So Confused” have the kind of immediacy associated with Superchunk, Jawbreaker, Velocity Girl and other acts that sprung from edgy punk scenes but had broader sonic ambitions.

Lilac Daze isn’t coy about its primary reference points — Green Day, for example, gets repeated shoutouts on the band’s bio page. Henry says that for him in particular, the ’90s thing was baked-in.

“My mom loved to call into radio contests. She always won all sorts of CDs and videos … and my dad’s a huge music fan as well,” Henry says. “Even though I was like, in third grade, my mom was like, ‘Hey, I won this Weezer CD’ or ‘I won this Smashing Pumpkins CD.’ I kind of had all that stuff embedded in my brain, even at that young age.”

The band’s third member, bassist/singer Patti Kotrady, wasn’t an old friend, but she was a catalyst: Henry and Braswell met her at shows around D.C. and Maryland, and Lilac Daze essentially formed around her in late 2012 as she learned to play bass and write songs.

“At first, it was a little hard to fit into their musical process since they’ve done it together for so long … but Evan and Matt were great about making sure I had equal input when we first started,” Kotrady says.

A lot of Lilac Daze is about relationships, but the storytelling tends to be oblique. Kotrady’s “Lonely Eyes,” for instance, has a sensuous edge (“Thigh to thigh, hand in hand, I passively listened to your plans”), but it’s a collection of scenes more than anything else.

“Ultimately, it’s about being in a tough situation and reaching out for others’ company when that isn’t what’s best for you,” says Kotrady. “So you end up being with people who don’t really care about you, or vice versa.”

“Wrought Iron Fence,” by Braswell, is about wandering around a church alone and drunk — “realizing I still don’t know what I want out of that aspect in my life,” he says, noting that he wasn’t raised with religion. And Henry, the group’s only married member, credits “Jack O’ Lanterns” to finding proper perspective on childhood memories.

“This sounds so cheesy, but when I started dating Nicole, who’s now my wife, it was like, ‘OK, this is actually the time of my life,” Henry says. “Like, right now is the best time.”

And for now, all three members say the band’s interpersonal dynamic is fruitful. If there’s any tension, Braswell says, it’s because he and Henry “kind of act like little kids most of the time.” It’s not unusual for Kotrady to get the last word.

“One time we were in the car on a really long drive, and my feet smelled so bad that she made me pull over to buy new shoes,” Henry says. “We didn’t really get in an argument. I was just like, ‘OK, my feet smell really bad.'”

Lilac Daze plays an album release show Oct. 14 at the East Street Arts Center in Frederick, Md. The band also opens for La Sera on Oct. 20 at Songbyrd in D.C.