There are plenty of reasons why Perfume Genius' 2010 debut is striking, but let's start with the most obvious: The only instrument is piano. On Learning, the Seattle singer (nee Mike Hadreas) plumbs heavy topics like drugs, sexuality, and suicide—fragile, personal stuff that's only amplified by the bare arrangements and hushed, layered vocals. Hadreas recorded the album [...]
Washington Project for the Arts' third annual IceBox Gift Shop, running through Dec. 23 at the organization's Dupont Circle office, is here to make your holiday gift-giving a little easier and a lot more creative.
The gift shop is part of WPA's Coup d'Espace series, which provides artists an opportunity to show their work in the WPA [...]
It's debatable which is more striking: Gauntlet Hair's awesome name or its explosive sound. The duo of Andy R. and Craig Nice is originally from Chicago, but relocated to Colorado, which has become one of the country's leading incubators of glazed-over art pop. The group's self-titled debut, which was released in October on Dead Oceans, [...]
Positive Force, the D.C.-based punk activist collective, needs your help. No, they're not collecting cans or gathering volunteers or collecting funds for a worthy charity this time. A Kickstarter campaign is raising money to complete a Positive Force documentary.
The film, "Positive Force: More Than a Witness," is directed by D.C. multimedia artist Robin Bell, and covers the [...]
Phantogram is the brainchild of Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, childhood friends who released their debut album, Eyelid Movies, on Barsuk Records last year. Where that label's releases frequently skew toward the poppy and immediate, Phantogram makes hummable songs that nevertheless have more to do with trip-hop than indie pop. On the dark and sultry [...]
In March of 2010, Cleveland-based band Cloud Nothings played at show at DC9 to a crowd of about five people (I know this because I was one of those five). But in January, the band released a self-titled pop-punk album to critical acclaim, and recently released an especially grim single from its forthcoming album Attack [...]
Following a couple of months of online buzz, Politics & Prose will finally unleash Opus, its new on-demand printer, on November 9. The bookshop compares the printer to a vending machine for books, capable of printing a paperback in four to five minutes. An out-of-print book under 200 pages costs $8 to print. Employee David Maritz [...]
Almost 20 years after it began, it seems like short-lived '90s phenomenon riot grrrl is making a comeback. Girls swap zines and feminist ideology via Etsy and Tumblr; fashion prodigy Tavi Gevinson recently launched the teenage-girl-geared website Rookie, where she posts themed mixes and drops tips on how to get over girl hate; hundreds of people [...]
The 1409 Playbill Café has known for a while that it has to find a new location. Now, finally, its current space in the shadow of Studio Theatre has a death date. On Sept. 30, the hangout will close its doors, according to a Facebook notice posted by its owner today. But not before it [...]
