FRIDAY: >> Two shows for DAM! Fest tonight, with events at Rock and Roll Hotel and the Red and the Black. The former includes an appearance by recent Three Stars subject the Beanstalk Library, plus The Exit, Dragons of Zynth and The Teeth. Stick around for the free afterparty, We Fought the Hej, a combo of two of our favorite DJ nights, Hej Hej and We Fought the Big One. >> Don't forget to check......

The 2nd year of the District's Awake! Music Festival is making it's grand sophomore entrance tomorrow night in clubs across town. News about the festival is traveling far and wide, with a sponsorship and podcast from everybody's favorite online radio station, WOXY, an interview on the local news, and more. A few last minute changes have been made to the festival — namely the unfortunate cancellation of Cloud Cult's set, and of the Rock &......

MONDAY >> The City Veins are a strong local outfit that's been making their debut around town over the course of the past few months. They just formed in March and are already more mature and ready to bring the rock than a lot of bands with a lot more stage time. And hey, they have a blog! See what you're missing tonight at Solly's Tavern on U Street. 10 p.m. >> Do you......

MONDAY >> DC9 scoured the globe for tonight's lineup. The Comas hail from Brooklyn and Chapel Hill and specialize in the darker shades of psychadelic rock. The Veils are here all the way from New Zealand, with some "if you like The White Stripes, you'll love The Veils"-style blues-inspired rock. Locals Zulu Pearls round out the lineup with solid, basic, indie rock. We're incapable of hearing their name without thinking of "Zuzu's petals" from It's......

TUESDAY >> DCist favorites the Vita Ruins are playing this very night at DC9 for $8. You're tired of barbequing and sitting around on your back porch by now, aren't ya? >> Love them? Hate them? Secretly listen to them while you take a nice warm bath and have a good cry? Keane performs to a sold out crowd at the 9:30 Club tonight. WEDNESDAY >> DCist's own Sriram Gopal will be playing some......

Memorial Day is this Monday, meaning a lot of Washingtonians have a three day weekend. With the extra day comes extra opportunity to take a day trip (or two) around the area. We polled our staffer for some good destinations in the area to share, so pump up the bike tires, get out the hiking boots or start the car (Zip, Flex, or your own). And if you have any other good suggestions, let us......

MONDAY >> A year ago, Rolling Stone called The Whigs one of ten bands to watch and "the best unsigned band in America." The Athens, GA trio has since been taking their pure rock-and-roll on the road in support of Give 'Em All a Big Fat Lip, winning comparisons to the Replacements, the Strokes, REM, and the Drive-By Truckers along the way. The break hasn't come yet, but we've got a feeling it could......

Monday >> You can be fairly certain that when a rapper takes a stagename that is a play on Hawthorne, you're going to be dealing with a hip-hop experience concerned with more than just the next glass of Courvoiseir. Hesta Prynn and her cohorts in Northern State take the Black Cat backstage with Bitch and the Exciting Conclusion, the new project from half of the fantastic Bitch & Animal. This ought to be a mainstage......

FRIDAY: >>Do you like Hall and Oates and Haddaway? Who doesn't? The Black Cat is hosting Crap, a dance night of bad music on purpose. We advise loosening your Macarena muscles and preparing your ears for "singers" like Don Johnson, Eddie Murphy, and Bruce Willis. 10 pm, free. SATURDAY: >>There are more art openings than we can shake a sculpture at today, so check out our Arts Agenda for a rundown. >>Anything called "Underwear Party"......

One last list of picks from local arists as we look back on the year that was 2006. Today's final installment comes courtesy of W. Ellington Felton, Jukebox The Ghost, The Fake Accents, Telograph and the DCist Music Staff. W. Ellington Felton 1. Thom Yorke, Eraser This is an electronic record minus the noise that a lot of the others out there have. I can listen to this straight through. This is the perfect cd......

We're soldiering on with the second installment of our local lineup of 2006 favorites. Today we've got picks from Geologist of Animal Collective, Kat of Hello Tokyo, DJ Kaveh Soroush, DJ Aaron Lee of Dirty Sugar, and Chris & Alexia of Soft Complex. Geologist J Dilla, Donuts This album comes pretty close to perfect for me. I like hiphop but i'm not really into the lyrics so the beats have to do a lot for......

Call us old fashioned, but we like our year-end backward glances to come after we're done furiously ripping open presents and before we pop the champagne for New Year's. Rather than subject you only to what we on the DCist music staff deemed this year's best and brightest (don't worry, we'll do that too), we asked a handful of our favorite local artists what their favorite albums of 2006 were. A lot of great musicians......

Monday >> Milwaukee-based indie pop quartet Maritime will be bringing their brand of sweet melodies to the Rock and Roll Hotel accompanied by the Swervedriver-inspired rock of Kansas City's The Life and Times. We rarely get to make a Swervedriver reference, so enjoy it while you can. 8 p.m. >> Drive-By Truckers' frontman Patterson Hood drops by the area for a show at the Birchmere in Alexandria. If you're not familiar with the live stylings......

Monday >> Not every band can pull off the feat of traveling with and playing a turn of the century Vittrolio Grammaphone, playing the saw, or convincing you that the theramin is a real instrument. But Portland band Norfolk and Western seem to be bear this burden with ease and a bit of quirk. This band plays a mix of folksy, whimsical and occassionaly dark rock music, using an eclectic array of instruments and revolving......

We've talked about the lineup, interviewd the organizer, and even talked to a couple bands. Now we want to give you the chance to hear what's coming our way with some MP3 previews of a few DAM Fest bands. The music staff got together, divied up the lineup, gathered some files together and is now serving up brief breakdowns of a few bands D.C. will play host to this weekend. If you've got some insight......

By DCist contributor Graham Hough-Cornwell Perhaps you recall the scene from the questionably credible but always engrossing rock doc Dig! where Courtney Taylor of the Dandy Warhols starts talking about how touring – with its requisite marathon drives, partying, and gas station food – can kill a band. He’s talking about the ever-so fragile Brian Jonestown Massacre specifically, but their perpetual demise in the film isn’t exactly new territory in the topsy-turvy world of rock......

By DCist contributor Graham Hough-Cornwell In 1974 after watching a show at the Harvard Square theatre, rock critic Jon Landau famously wrote, “I saw rock and roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen." Now anyone who’s spent any time with rock history knows this as a defining point in Springsteen’s career, after which he graced the covers of Time and Newsweek (simultaneously) and would never have to play another dingy bar again in his......

By DCist contributor Graham Hough-Cornwell The pseudo sub-genre of schizo-pop that the Fiery Furnaces made well-publicized if not so much well-liked culminated – at least for this reviewer – with Architecture in Helsinki’s second full-length album, In Case We Die. To call the two groups similar perhaps isn’t fair; their most basic common aesthetic is a lack of one in particular. But for my money, Architecture are the more playful of the two, their shouts......

By DCist contributor Graham Hough-Cornwell When opener Chad VanGaalen first walked out on stage to prepare his one-man band setup, things looked less than promising. Donning one of those white ninja headbands tied around his head, he arranged a bass drum, hi-hat, snare, and drum machine around a short stool and his hollow body electric. I typically run from something like this, jaded by previous unfortunate experiences with openers like VanGaalen’s fellow Canadian New Buffalo......