Perhaps you're on the fence about attending tonight's fundraiser for the Washington Project for the Arts! It does, after all, cost $150.

I'll assume that number either made up your mind or it didn't, and just get to the point: For its fete tonight celebrating the opening of "Catalyst: 35 Years of the Washington Project for the Arts" at the American University Museum, the alternative arts organization has tapped a pair of alternative-y artists to provide some entertainment.

Hence: Beat Freaks (or possibly: BEAT FREAKS), the new band featuring polymath artist Kathryn Cornelius on vocals and "guitar-as-percussion instrument" and artist/curator/WCP critic Jeffry Cudlin on bass and drum machine. Tonight's show is the band's first.

What to expect? Well: art songs about art people, basically. One song, Cudlin writes in an e-mail, is called "A List of Artists I've Fucked." Guess what it's about?

Here's Cudlin on the band's name and M.O.:

We were called MIRROR/MIRROR; on Tuesday night we will announce that the band formerly known as MIRROR/MIRROR has become BEAT FREAKS.

BEAT FREAKS is actually just a random T-shirt that we found in a discount store downtown. I think it refers to a dance crew from some MTV dance competition.

Anyway, with each/any new show we play, we will rename the band using found/existing logos/tees. This ensures that each gig can be promoted as both our premiere and our final appearance, and that there will be a never-ending supply of pre-manufactured found merchandise that quickly exits rotation and becomes vintage/dated/collectible.

So, um, is it worth your $150? "I don't know that we're any good," Cudlin writes. "But I can guarantee that we will be entertaining live."

Tonight's VIP reception takes place from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the American University Museum in the Katzen Art Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW. $150 ($75 for WPA members). I'll have some more serious things to say about "Catalyst" later this week.

Photo by Max Cook.

Here we go November! Here are some free events to start your month off, highlights from Free in DC.

Tonight
Celebrate World Vegan Day at Busboys & Poets 5th & K NW with a panel of vegan-conscious entrepreneurs from various business backgrounds, including Doron Pertersan, founder of Sticky Fingers Bakery in Columbia Heights; and co-founder of blackvegetarians.org and author of By Any Greens Necessary, Tracye McQuirter. The event, moderated by DC Vegan founder Timothy Meinberg, begins at 6:30 p.m., and vegan goodie bags will be handed out to the first 75 people.

Up in College Park at the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland, you can check out "How Do We Know What We Know," a creative dialogue moderated by Kojo Nnamdi. The discussion, between choreographer Liz Lerman and three scientists, considers the intersection of art and science, which is also the subject of Lerman's latest work, "The Matter of Origins." The talk begins at 7 p.m.

Tuesday
Instead of sitting at home, glued to your TV as you wait for midterm returns to roll in, come to Free Speech TV's live broadcast of election night coverage at Busboys and Poets 14th & V NW. The event, which will feature analysis and discussion from radio personalities Thom Hartmann and Marc Steiner, kicks off at 8 p.m.

In the event you're not doing anything election-oriented, head to BloomBars in Columbia Heights at 7 p.m. and catch the film Made in L.A., the Emmy-winning documentary of three Latina sweatshop workers' three-year effort to obtain basic labor protections from a trendy clothing retailer.

“Remembering Rabin”–commemorating the 15th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin–takes place at 7:30 p.m. at the DC JCC. The event, featuring guests Dan Arbell from the Embassy of Israel and David Makovsky of the Project on the Middle East Peace, culminates in a screening of the documentary Rabin: Shivah in November. Free; RSVP required.

Wednesday
Opera Week continues at American University’s Katzen Center with Young Artists: AU Opera Lab at 12:30 p.m., as the Washington National Opera's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists work with AU students and perform arias and duets from opera and operetta.

Intrepid traveler and New Yorker contributor Ian Frazier discusses and signs his book, Travels in Siberia, about his own experiences in the northwestern most part of Russia as well as the region's geopolitical history, at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose.

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, which means my friend and local musician Flo Anito will be performing a free show at Chief Ike’s in Adams Morgan, from 9 p.m. to midnight. She's preceded by John Heintz, and followed by Alexis George.

Amy Melrose is the creator of Free in DC, an arts, culture, and consciousness blog highlighting free and low-cost events that are all Metro accessible in the D.C. area. You can also follow Free in DC on Twitter and Facebook.

Most of Evans’ stories take place along the I-95 corridor, including a few in Northern Virginia. Her last story, “Robert E. Lee is Dead,” centers on a black girl attending a segregated high school named for Robert E. Lee in an indeterminate part of the South. I asked her about the troubling notion of public spaces like high schools taking their names for Confederate figures. “It’s problematic and strange,” she says. “Large Muslim and Ethiopian communities are situated on streets that are named after Confederate generals.”

She also has some personal experience with the phenomenon—she attended J.E.B. Stuart High School in Bailey’s Crossroads, named for a Confederate general. “J.E.B. Stuart IV came to speak while I was in school,” she says. “He was an accountant or something, but I remember think it was kind of surreal.” Ultimately, she thinks the country’s reverential attitude toward the past is damaging. “This fixation on the past has actual consequences about the way we talk about the present,” she says. “There’s this weird vitriolic brand of patriotism now about this mythological version of America that has nothing to do with the actual America.”

Evans’ exploration of race in her book is informed by the fact that her family moved every couple years while she was growing up. There were frequently times when she was the only black person in her environment, which made her more aware of being black. “I think what comes through in the collection is the way that racial identity can feel really varied,” she says. “I don’t think of there being a single identity. I’ve had lots of exposure to different kinds of blackness.” She notes that the differences of being black in the South and black in the North are primarily superficially: “I think there’s a way the vocabulary shifts, but the experience really doesn’t,” she says.

In her efforts to adapt to frequently changing environments as a child, Evans’ main tool for fitting in was listening. As a result, she has an incredible voice—it’s accessible and familiar but still fresh. “Every writer has different things they get lucky with,” she says. “I think I was fortunate to have a pretty decent ear for dialogue.” Most of her stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are first person, but she says that she also employs a more formal, third person voice. She didn’t think they meshed with this collection, in which she says she’s “letting characters who don’t often get to tell their own stories tell them.”

Despite her ease with dialogue, Evans says there are still aspects of her writing she struggles with. She says she that her short stories tend to be on the long side, and that she works to keep her writing from being repetitive. She’s a judicious editor of her own work: “You have to be prepared to throw out more work than you keep,” she says. “It doesn’t feel good, but you have to be able to view your work with a critical eye. Most writers I know usually don’t feel that great about their work. If you have so much ego that you think everything you do is great, you probably need a lot more life experience.”

Perhaps because of this critical attitude, Evans says the trepidation factor never really goes away as she’s about to embark on a story, no matter how well-outlined it is. “It’s always nerve-wracking, putting a pen to paper,” she says. “If you’re not afraid of something, you’re not risking anything, and if you’re not risking anything, it’s probably not very interesting.”

Danielle Evans appears tonight at Barnes & Noble Bethesda, 4801 N. Bethesda Ave. (301) 986-1761.

Photo: Nina Subin

Tony Rubino

Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

Tony Rubino: The kind for good and not evil. Seriously though, I am currently fortunate enough to have a syndicated daily cartoon strip, along with my partner, the very talented illustrator and editorial cartoonist, Gary Markstein. "Daddy's Home" is distributed by Creator's Syndicate, and can be seen in many different places but here's a good one. I've done a little bit of everything over the years though: I've licensed a lot of my work to companies for use on Greeting cards, t-shirts, posters, etc. I've written for Mad Magazine and Cracked. And I illustrated 3 of my books as well.

WCP: When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

TR: Late 1960s, Jersey City, New Jersey.

WCP: Why aren't you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area did you live in?

TR: I moved to NYC because my wife got a good gig there and because I have family in the area. But I also have family in DC. My mother was born there, actually born in the District of Columbia! I think she's the only person. I went to American University and then never left. I owned a home in Bethesda, just over the DC border and down the street from AU as a matter fact, off Massachusetts Ave.

WCP: What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

TR: I studied communications and art at AU. But I started cartooning and drawing when I was a little kid. I always loved to draw and create.

WCP: Who are your influences?

TR: Cartoon-wise, the usual suspects: Larson, Watterson, Schultz, Hart & Parker. And also, Callahan (RIP), Groening, who I first saw in the Washington City Paper long before The Simpsons when he was only doing Life In Hell. I wrote to him, after seeing him in The CP and he wrote me back. Bet ya can’t do that any more. I still have the letter somewhere. I loved most of the alternative cartoonists in the City Paper. I'd have to say that the City Paper itself was a big influence. I was really intrigued by the alternative cartoonists’ departure from "normal" daily cartoon styles. That influence has lead to some of the different things I try today in Daddy's Home and in my books. Also, the City Paper is one of the very first publications I ever submitted cartoons to. They rejected me. I used to read Mad Magazine regularly along with Cracked and even Crazy. Remember Crazy? [Yes, it was Marvel Comics’ version of Mad – MR] But I was and am equally influenced by Saturday Night Live and other non-cartoon comedy mediums. When I was a kid I used to sneak out of bed on Saturday nights and watch the very first cast of SNL, with Belushi, Chase, Murray, Gilda Radner, Jan Curtin, Dan Akroyd, etc. That show blew me away. I mean hell, it blew everybody away. But I think for any kid who had a propensity to be funny, it was an education. Before that, I loved the Carol Burnett Show. Then there’s Woody Allen, Letterman, Steven Wright. Steve Martin was and still is a genius. I actually saw him live when I was a kid, with the white suit and arrow through the head and everything. I bought all his comedy albums and memorized them. From an artistic standpoint, I'm also influenced by graphic design and pop art. I'm an art director; so conveying a thought through the organization of images is what I do, I guess, one way or another.

WCP: If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

TR: It's ironic, I guess, but I would have invested less time in newspaper cartooning. Had I known that technology would bring us to where we are today, I might have tried more animation and script writing. I'm not complaining though. I think newspaper cartoons will find their new niche. And when they do, established cartoonists will be in a great position to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the Internet and things like the iPad. Sooooo, hopefully that'll all shake out before die. OK, now I'm complaining.

WCP: What work are you best-known for?

TR: Probably Daddy's Home now, I'd say. Unless you happen to be one of the dozen-or-so people who own one of my books.

WCP: What work are you most proud of?

TR: Daddy's Home and my last book, Why Didn't I Think Of That: 101 Inventions That Changed The World By Hardly Trying. And Life Lessons From Elvis. That's a pretty funny little book too.

WCP: What would you like to do  or work on in the future?

TR: I'd like to be an Astronaut or a Fireman. Ideally, a "Space-Fireman." Also, I'd like Daddy’s Home to grow and mature into a body of work that will be worth looking at when I'm gone. I'll probably give novel writing a try, because I just can't seem to get enough rejection. And, I'm already working on several other things. But if I tell you what they are you'll have to kill me.

WCP: What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

TR: I steal material from more talented people. No, I don't. I like to move around. The best thing for me is to get new stimulus. So, if ideas aren't coming to me, I literally go out and try to find where they're hiding.

WCP: What do you think will be the future of your field?

TR: Space-Cartooning. Definitely Space-Cartooning. But also, I think books and newspaper cartoons will find a very solid place on the Internet and through advanced portable electronic technology. They haven't quite found that place just yet, but they will. So far, comics and books have been largely devalued by this new technology, and are experiencing a little bit of a glut because so much content – comics very much included – is available for free. That will change. And when it does, cartoons and books will ride that wave with all the rest of the content providers, with some adaptation of course. I could go on and on about this. Don't get me started.

WCP: What's your favorite thing about DC?

TR: The restaurants, the monuments, the bike trails and so many things. It's a great place to live. About the only thing I don't miss is the swamp-like climate in the summer.

WCP: Least favorite?

TR: That would be the swamp thing I just said. Not THE "Swamp Thing" ... you know what I mean. And the traffic.

WCP: What monument or museum do you return to when you visit?

TR: The Jefferson Memorial is my favorite. That and the National Cathedral. The Cathedral is a totally underrated place. If you haven't gone there GO! It's amazing! And it'll be empty probably.

WCP: Do you have a website or blog?

TR: www.rubinocreative.com

Either he's generous or he's crazy, but David Isaacson’s passion for independent music eclipses any financial incentives. While still in high school, Isaacson created IndieMuse, a blog whose slightly redundant mission is to be “a place where people who are as passionate about music as we are can come together to listen and talk about music.” Initially conceived as an outlet for his ramblings, Isaacson’s IndieMuse began attracting attention, garnering around 4,000 hits a day. Now a student at American University (which I also attend), Isaacson wants to promote indie rock by creating a site where artists can sell their music and keep every penny. And Isaacson doesn’t want a dime. This is his vision for MusicFloss.

As Isaacson describes it, MusicFloss operates on two levels: It's a music store where independent artists and labels sell or give away music directly to fans; whereas most music stores pocket a 30-50 percent commission, MusicFloss doesn’t take a cut from sales. He also sees MusicFloss is a Web community for like-minded music fans and artists to directly contact other artists.

Some notable bands who have signed on to the site include These United States, Hey Marseilles, You Can Be A Wesley, and Pale Young Gentlemen. Despite the laborious process of creating a site like MusicFloss, Isaacson has been going at it alone, paying a fairly low overhead cost, he says.

“I took off some time from school and invested some of my savings,” says Isaacson. “I’ve been working on this for three years and it’s taken this long because I’ve done most of this on my own.”

But Isaacson’s pocket change can’t keep the site running for long. But recently, he entered a contest sponsored by Pepsi, which hands out $50,000 grants to projects supporting independent music. MusicFloss was voted into the top 100 of the applicant pool, and Isaacson is now waiting to see if his project will make the top 10, which will be decided at the end of the month.

Morning, folks!

The Tallest Man on Earth show at the Black Cat on Friday was the best show I’ve seen all year. I wasn’t the only one floored by Kristian Matsson’s latest album; Metacritic has it at an 8.2, with users giving it a 10.0. Tallest, indeed. Don’t miss him next time he comes through town.

Speaking of impressive performances, less is apparently more for Al Pacino in Kevorkian. The two driving forces behind the new HBO biopic—Pacino and Death—reportedly are not as oversold as they have been in past films. Salon praises director Barry Levinson for dealing with the latter without the vain pageantry that has been its obligatory companion in Hollywood:

The mundane reality of death is something we don't anticipate, something we can't bear, at some level, thanks to a lifetime of being spoon-fed valiant stories of the soldier who speaks a few brave words then dies on cue or the old man who lies in his bed at home, receiving loving visitors with warmth and clarity.

Speaking of the relentless turning of the life wheel, DoubleX invites you to have a look at film portrayals of women giving birth—another messy, existential phenomenon that Hollywood traditionally has been loath to depict with any verisimilitude. Also, thanks to DCist for volunteering to monitor Mei Xiang for signs of pregnancy via Pandacam.

Speaking of death and rebirth, AU has a new art show about war, that great engine of death, and the art to which it gives life. Namely in Lebanon—where, according to WaPo, war-based art is the only relevant art. (Egad! Either Lebanon is harsher than I thought, or WaPo is.)

Speaking of folk art, BYT shouts out America Hearts, the D.C. indie supergroup, calling the band “the next top model of Americana.” As far as new Americana acts that have recently appropriated that particular anatomical metaphor, my vote still goes to A.A. Bondy’s record and its titular song. But you should still catch the band at Velvet Lounge on Wednesday.

Do your Mondays ever feel like this? Mine too. Good luck to both of us.

“Shoshone Falls, Snake River, Idaho, View Across the Top of the Falls, 1874" by Timothy O'Sullivan from "Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

OPENING: "I Dream Awake" opens today as part of Pop-up Project; photographs by John Brown open tomorrow at Cross Mackenzie Gallery; work by Craig A. Kraft opens tomorrow at Osuna Art; "Pentimenti: After the Flood" opens Saturday at AU's Katzen Arts Center.

CLOSING: Work by Craig Kraft closes tomorrow at Washington Sculptors Group; "Roads and Paths" closes tomorrow at Goethe-Institut; "Go for the Gold!" closes Saturday at Civilian Arts Projects; "On/Off the Grid" closes Saturday at Irvine Contemporary; "Women in Art" closes Sunday at Del Ray Artisans Gallery; "The DCist Exposed Photography Show" closes Sunday at Long View Gallery.

ONGOING: See our listings.

THIS WEEK'S REVIEWS AFTER THE JUMP:

The Phillips Collection plays host to "Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction," an exhibit of the artist best known for painting what she calls flowers, and, well, the rest of us call vaginas. Though Georgia O'Keeffe always maintained that audiences were projecting their own erotic thoughts onto her benign work, there is no denying the sexuality of the photographs taken by Alfred Stieglitz, O'Keeffe's lover and mentor, on display with the rest of the collection at Phillips. "Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction" allows observers to look at the range of O'Keeffe's work, ranging from Stieglitz's racy boudoir shots to geometrically chaste work like Sky Above Clouds III/Above the Clouds III. Read critic Maura Judkis's review here.

While D.C.'s museums and galleries have no shortage of snaps from professional photographers, some of the entries in the 9th annual International Photography Competition at Bethesda's Fraser Gallery prove that amateur and semiprofessional photography is a force to be reckoned with. While some pictures tend to pay respect to the professional photographs that came before them, others offer a new perspective, such as Edward Hahn's photo of a small dock floating in calm waters. Some of the artists use digital manipulation to great success, while others do just as well playing it straight, like David Orbock's portrait of the Lincoln Memorial. The amateur entrants' works at Fraser span countries and range from landscape images to photos of circus performers. To read Louis Jacobson's review, go here.

Wide-set, sepia-toned images of barely settled Western lands are not uncommon to find in this day and age, but Timothy O'Sullivan, largely overlooked until the 1970s (nearly 100 years after his death) is considered one of the best photographers of the discipline. Referred to as "the most experienced expeditionary photographer in the country" by historian Beaumont Newhall in The History of Photography, O'Sullivan took risks photographing in mines, capturing images of dead people during battle, and using a wet-plate photographic process. The exhibit showcases the extent of O'Sullivan's photographic range, displaying everything from shots of large geological formations to soldiers lying dead in fields during the Civil War, but doesn't give much explanation as to how one interest led to the other. Though he was not well known during his own life, the Smithsonian American Art Museum's O'Sullivan exhibit is a fascinating, albeit incomplete look at one of the finest photographers of 1800s Americana. To read Louis Jacobson's review, head here.

Nate Beeler is an editorial cartoonist with amazing chops. His cartoons appear five times a week in the right-leaning Examiner chain of free newspapers, for whom he's worked since its launch in 2005. Prior to that, he worked for the Journal chain that the Examiner took over. His work could be seen in D.C. before that, though—he was the editorial cartoonist for American University's Eagle from 1998 to 2002. In 2008, the National Press Foundation gave Beeler the Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning, and he's also won the Charles M. Schulz Award and the John Locher Award. He's currently syndicated by the Cagle Cartoon Syndicate.

Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

Nate Beeler: I’m the editorial cartoonist for the Washington Examiner.

WCP: When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

NB: July 30, 1980, in Columbus, Ohio.

WCP: Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in?

NB: I went to college at American University and just happened to find a newspaper job in the D.C. area after graduating in 2002, though, I was out of work and living with the 'rents in Columbus for nine months before returning. I submitted my resume and portfolio to nearly 50 newspapers across the country, looking for a cartooning, copy-editing, or page-design positions. The Journal newspapers hired me as a copy editor, and almost two years later the newspaper transformed into the Examiner with me as its editorial cartoonist.

We recently moved to Reston from being in Alexandria, just outside Old Town.

WCP: What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

NB: Reading comic books and newspapers, mostly. Of course, I had art classes from elementary school through high school, and I took some life-drawing electives at AU.

WCP: Who are your influences?

NB: Comic artists, like the original Image Comics creators. I was a big Marc Silvestri fan beginning his stint on Wolverine. And frankly, I have to give credit to Bart Sears, although isn’t that really giving credit to Burne Hogarth? I religiously read his feature in Wizard magazine on how to draw superheroes during the early- to mid-’90s. I also read comic strips, and my favorites there were Calvin and Hobbes, Outland, which was Berkeley Breathed's strip after Bloom County had ended, The Far Side, FoxTrot, and Sherman’s Lagoon. Granted, I was limited by what the Columbus Dispatch printed.

My first editorial cartooning influences were Pat Oliphant, Jeff MacNelly, and Tom Toles. As I delved more into editorial cartoons, I became enamored with Jim Borgman, Mike Ramirez, Matt Davies, Scott Stantis, Don Wright, and others. To this day, Oliphant and Borgman are my biggest influences.

WCP: If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

NB: Nothing. I’ve been incredibly lucky so far. All along the way I’ve had editors that believed in me and gave me chances to show that I could be a professional editorial cartoonist. While other newspapers have been canning cartoonists at the first sign of economic distress, the Examiner has given me more responsibility and real estate, both online and in print.

WCP: What work are you best-known for?

NB: I wouldn’t say I’m best known for anything other than having a job as a cartoonist.

WCP: What work are you most proud of?

NB: Probably my cartoons critical of President Obama from the past year. I was trained to be a journalist, not an ideologue, so I do believe in the notion that truth is best found by listening to a diverse array of viewpoints. Since Obama took office, it seems like a lot of editorial cartoonists forgot they were members of the Fourth Estate. It’s our job to go after the people in power, but I still saw cartoon after cartoon bashing Republicans when the Democrats had the White House and a supermajority in Congress. Cartoonists are supposed to be the class clowns, not the teacher’s pets.

WCP: What would you like to do  or work on in the future?

NB: It’s hard for me to look too far into the future when I still have so much to learn about editorial cartooning. I think it would be nice to publish a collection of cartoons eventually. I drew a couple comic strips during college, but the itch to do that again isn’t there for me right now.

WCP: What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

NB: I trace Tom Toles’ or Matt Wuerker’s cartoons.

Seriously, I usually just read more news stories and walk around the block a few hundred times until something somewhat resembling a decent idea hits me.

WCP: What do you think will be the future of your field?

NB: Everyone will be doing color cartoons, and if the technology makes it less time-intensive, animation will likely be more prevalent.

WCP: What's your favorite thing about D.C.?

NB: The atmosphere that makes you feel that what you’re doing is important.

WCP: Least favorite?

NB: Also the atmosphere that makes you feel that what you’re doing is important. It’s a double-edged sword. It breeds the self-righteousness that people outside the Beltway despise.

Oh, and traffic.

WCP: What monument or museum do you take most out-of-town guests to?

NB: I love the National Portrait Gallery. It frustrated me to no end that it closed for six years shortly after when I first arrived in D.C. My favorite monument is probably the Korean War Veteran Memorial . It’s such a beautiful and haunting sight after dark when the statues’ faces are lit from below. Of all the monuments in D.C., I think its design is the most creative and dynamic.

WCP: Do you have a Web site or blog?

NB: www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/NateBeelerToons

With the 2008 release of Ice Cream Spiritual!, Ponytail experienced a textbook case of Web-launched ascendancy: They've gotten plugs everywhere. But singer Molly Siegel's erratic pulsations and escapist chanting make the Baltimore foursome bigger than the Stereogum hype.

Along with drummer Jeremy Hyman's roto tom lightening speed shredding and the crafty, conversant guitar work of both Dustin Wong and Ken Seeno, Ponytail brought curious back-of-the-crowd dwellers up front and moved the Tenleytown spiritual basement to cathartic gyrations.

The no-stage floor setup was a good fit for Siegel, as she pushed through the arm-to-arm crowd and grabbed on to kids in the front row, almost as if she were christening them.

The songs transitioned with bouts of dizzying guitar loops and crescendoing delay bleeps. Siegel was laconic when she wasn't singing, saving her weeping/screaming non sequiturs for Ponytail's anthems.

The set was a part of American University's Capitol Punishment series, a semester-long group of free shows orchestrated by AU's student-run radio station, WVAU.

D.C.'s Mittenfields opened the night with Radiohead-influenced indie alt-pop (including a cover of "Bones") and the Screaming Females turned up the volume with one screaming female's howling vibrato and classic rock soloing. Instrumentally, the trio's stoner bass trilling and slow tempo pacing draws from late '60s Black Sabbath projects, but they break out of low-tempo with high-energy, in-your-face riot girl/poppy punk rock hooks. The band is currently on tour backing new LP, Power Move, and in May they'll play Big Bear Cafe.

Photos by Andrew Merrill

Critics have praised the Baltimore-based quartet's live show, most recently at SXSW 2009. Vocalist Molly Siegel's chords pack a primal punch that belies her pixie frame, and when backed by Ken Seeno and Dustin Wong's frenetic fret work and Jeremy Hyman's relentless assault on the skins, the result is a Dionysian dance-off. Suffice to say, you'll get your money's worth–and then some.

The show is the sixth of its kind organized by the student-run internet radio station in an effort to bolster AU's presence–and that of independent bands–in D.C.'s musical milieu. Past line-ups have included True Womanhood, These United States and The Subjects.

Saturday, March 28. Kay Spiritual Life Center at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Metro: Tenleytown-AU. Doors open 6:30 p.m., show starts at 7 p.m. Open to the public, all ages.

*Photo by Frank Hamilton