On the national side of sounds, the year was mostly about slowing down and turning up the bass (see: James Blake, Drizzy Drake, The Weeknd, Bon Iver, Girls, Frank Ocean). However, some Haterade for all the buzzy mp3s I kept getting tricked into tasting seems in order:

• Shabazz Palaces – We don’t believe you.
• Clams Casino – Can’t tell this apart from Cities Aviv.
• Real Estate – Fitting that there’s a track on the album called “All The Same.”
• Washed Out – Really, really did not enjoy anything about this.

Turning inward, here are some vital local hits to consume while we all wait for Skrillex to unveil his next masterpiece.

5. Pree, Folly

During my college-newspaper days, staffers spent an inordinate amount of time debating the merits of Joanna Newsom's Ys. I was more interested in Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury, but the arguing still seemed ridiculous: Either you dug music as finger painting—as precious, densely orchestral blasts about cartwheels and goats—or you preferred structure. Pree's May Tabol stirs similar cocktails, though the blender of ideas is proudly worn survivalist creativity: Folly stems from scattered sessions across area English basements. The DIY whimsy adds a shot of desperation to Tabol's gems about sailing boats and parading floats. What's a good home without some creaking stairs anyway?

4. White Faces, Self-Titled

D.C.-based Windian Records spent the fall releasing six albums from its geographically diverse roster. The self-titled debut from Milwaukee's White Face's upholds the exuberant positivity of their label boss' Capslocked Facebook musings. The band's garage pop rarely meanders beyond three minutes, and keeps the message warm and human. Sample lyric: "I like the way you smile when you're happy." Sunny Buzzcocks revivalism isn't new ground, but the Faces' well-crafted songs make it enjoyable again.

3. More Humans– Demon Station EP

Cricket Cemetery's budding reputation as a trusted partner in hardcore is well-deserved, as the local outfit released three heavy records in ‘11. Demon Station’s five songs are an unexpected and ambitious departure. Elegant tracks like “Dracula” recall the Zombies with more aggressive and intricate percussion (and without the organ). The driving emo of “Mason-Dixon” is led by those gorgeous, almost aristocratic indie vocal arrangements that make you think of Rough Trade Records. “Icicles” big-ups the ‘70s radio rock you hear in snippets during infomercials about ballad compilations. More Humans’ influences and complementary pieces feel easy to cite, but their sparkplug songwriting prevails.

2. The Cornel West Theory – The Shape of Hip-Hop To Come

I spent some time profiling D.C.’s most complex hip-hop collective a few months back and the comments took the feature to task for not spending much time working in the new album’s strengths and weaknesses. Fair enough. The thing goes hard. The beats are sick. The flows are on-point. The anger is focused and serious. In fact, Dr. Cornel West’s occasional, curating guest lectures are somewhat superfluous.

1. Typefighter – Fall Winter Fall

Hooray for the underdogs. If this were 2003, two spins on a MySpace page from desperate suits and these folky punks would have been signed to Island Def Jam, slapped on a Warped Tour alongside Story of the Year and Sugarcult, and ultimately suffered blacklist-level backlash from the message boards months after a sweet hook about high school love letters exposed them as over-privileged newbies.

In 2011, Typefighter’s band members are well-traveled, post-recession “indie rockers” that serve good eats at Sticky Rice, reach out to mom for guest vocals, and make sweetly optimistic, toe-tapping ballads. The kind Occupy D.C. protesters queue up into ear buds and dance around in circles to.

Fall Winter Fall is nostalgic in that it sounds like emo after the last good Jimmy Eat World album but before Taking Back Sunday broke up (for the first time). “Frank Sinatra” works in addictive hand-claps. “Eyes & Ears” is dutifully simple. “Eggs” is pretty damn twee, but it gets a pass for its catchy banjo. I don't think this is the bravest or more important local release, but real talk—could not stop putting these six songs on playlists since the they dropped in March.

DC9 booker Steve Lambert

By its own count, DC9 hasn’t had any trouble attracting musicians since Ali Ahmed Mohammed died feet from the 9th Street NW venue one year ago. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of bands have played since that time,” says Steve Lambert, who books acts at DC9 and other venues in the District. “DC9’s been booking full storm since we were exonerated.”

Exonerated, he means, after the incident that saw one of DC9’s owners, Bill Spieler, and four of its employees charged with murdering a 27-year-old Ethiopian immigrant who had thrown at least one brick through the club’s window last October. And exonerated, perhaps, in the public’s eyes—even following Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier’s description of the alleged murder as a “savage beating” and “vigilante justice” not long after Mohammed’s death; following a liquor license suspension issued by the Alcoholic Beverage and Regulation Administration that left the club shuttered for three months; and following numerous protests and vigils.

Considering that the U.S. Attorney’s office dropped criminal charges against the DC9 employees in November and stopped pursuing the case in June, it’s no surprise that Lambert describes business as “normal booking as usual.”

That said, savvy concert-goers may notice that DC9 is booking fewer buzz acts in 2011 than in years past—a product, most likely, of another venue booked by Lambert, The Red and the Black, merging with the bar next door and doubling its capacity. (The newly minted Red Palace and DC9 each hold about 200 patrons.)

As far as Lambert will admit, there’s really been just one blip: In March, local bands The Cornel West Theory and Noon:30, facing pressure from fans and peers, pulled out of their DC9 show. The concert was with Trophy Wives, a four-piece punk outfit from Louisville, Ky., and Phonic Riot, a D.C.-based noise-pop group (who did not respond to interview requests). The concert was one of the first live acts scheduled at DC9 after Mohammad’s death; ABRA had lifted the venue’s remaining liquor-license restrictions only weeks earlier.

“Phonic Riot had contacted us and we were really excited,” Noon:30 guitarist Aissa Arroyo-Hill says. “We contacted The Cornel West Theory and honestly, we weren’t really tapped into the substance how everybody was feeling about DC9. We weren’t aware of it until we took the booking. It wasn’t anything that was thought about before.”

According to DC9 co-owner Joe Englert, bringing live music back to DC9 was tricky. The club officially reopened in December, but only on weekends and holidays, and at first without live acts. “We were basically screwed,” he says. “We couldn’t book high-caliber bands because they book so far in advance.” When ABRA lifted its restrictions, he explains, the venue relied on booking “faithful locals” to fill the first few months. The March 28 concert, like other shows in the spring, was an important step toward returning to DC9’s standard routine.

Arroyo-Hill says she caught the first inkling of trouble when she told a fan about the concert. That’s when she learned about ongoing tension between the club and some residents that live near 9th and U Streets—the neighborhood knows as Little Ethiopia. “It was around the time we were all like, ‘Oh wait a minute. There’s a protest,’” she says.

The Cornel West Theory, on the other hand, had kept tabs on the Mohammed case and was eager to play DC9. “I’ll listen to anyone say anything, but it always comes down to us,” vocalist Rashad Dobbins says. “My goal was to play at that place to smash it all and touch those people.”

Noon:30, which makes atmospheric art punk, and The Cornel West Theory, which makes politically conscious rap rock, are among a fairly small number of acts whose members are mostly black and have followings within D.C.’s largely white indie-rock scene. You could put rapper Head-Roc, who also leads the funk-rock band GODISHEUS, in the same category.

“Head-Roc left us a message on Facebook,” Noon:30 singer Blue S. Moon says. “He basically reiterated what we’d been hearing, that there’s this ongoing protest against DC9 regarding what happened and what it means to this community.”

Head-Roc, who contributes to Washington City Paper and has been a fixture in the D.C. music scene for more than a decade, is a prolific critic of Lambert, who in addition to scheduling DC9 and Red Palace also books Rock & Roll Hotel, where he’s a co-owner. Many shows at Lambert’s venues use a practice called “door polling,” in which fans are asked which act they’re there to see; bands are paid according to that data. Head-Roc and other indie rockers have criticized the practice in recent years.

Head-Roc proudly admits to “taking chunks” out of Lambert on his Facebook page; in conversation, he calls him a “menace” and a “predator” to the scene. “It’s such bad karma and such bad juju that these unfortunate things, like the death of the Ethiopian cat, have befallen that establishment,” he says.

Moon says that she knew about Head-Roc’s history with Lambert when she read his message, but nonetheless considered his advice. “Everybody knows about his issues with DC9,” she says. “I don’t really know what his intentions were, but all I can really go on is the face value of what he wrote.”

Dobbins, who has known Head-Roc since 1994, also heard from the rapper. “I understand how he felt, but personally I wanted to go right into the belly of the beast and talk about it,” he says. “I want to go right to the center of it all.”

In the end, though, it came down to respect. Noon:30 kept hearing from peers that playing DC9 would be disrespectful to Mohammad’s memory and his family. Dobbins didn’t hear from fans of The Cornel West Theory, he says, but friends within the Ethiopian community told him that playing “would be like stomping on their soul.” So with two weeks to go before the concert, the bands called Lambert and told him they wouldn’t play. “If what happened to that young man happened to my brother, I would hope people would handle it with respect,” Moon says. “Our choosing to pull out had less to do with Heady or any other person and more to do with wanting to respect his family and the people who were affected by this tragedy.”

After The Cornel West Theory released a statement announcing its decision, Head-Roc sent out a Facebook message lauding them. “The Cornel West Theory is family to me,” he says. “I would never put any type of family business out in the street, so I congratulated them.”

The news caused the smallest of ripples within the local music scene. Some black musicians, such as Steve McPherson, who has performed at DC9 as DJ Stereo Faith, never even heard of pressure to avoid the venue. And if he had, McPherson says, he wouldn’t have budged. “As far as I could tell, there hasn’t been a thing going around where you shouldn’t play that particular venue,” he says. “As a black man who has run up against false accusations with the law, I feel like that’s wrong—banding against people who were proven innocent. That’s something I cannot support.”

Englert says that opinions like McPherson’s—which he says are shared by “the people who know the club, the kids who come and dance and know what we’re all about”— are largely responsible for getting DC9 back on its feet. And now, the venue’s decidedly upright: Since Lambert started booking major acts again in June, Englert says sales have jumped 75 percent compared to past months. “We really had no business from Oct. 15 on because we couldn’t book bands and the miserable spring weather kept the outdoor deck closed,” Englert says, estimating the club lost $500,000 in income and attorney’s fees. “It’s been a hell of a comeback that proves this is a good place.”

And for what it’s worth, Lambert says he has no hard feelings about the dropped sets. “I booked The Cornel West Theory and Noon:30 numerous times before, and honestly, I would book them again,” he says. “It was annoying that they dropped off, but it was what it was and it was what they felt. There wasn’t any bad blood. I didn’t write them off or black list them or anything. We just moved on.”

With DC9 back to where it used to stand financially, Lambert says he’s no longer concerned. “These are two bands, relatively unknown D.C. local bands, out of the large pool of local bands that came back and played DC9,” he says. “This is a very, very small pool. Not downgrading either bands’ importance—but, for me, I don’t really need to dwell on this. There’s tons of other bands that want to play DC9. I’m not gonna put much thought into it.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Though not always monochromatic, the crowds at Fort Reno skew white. The bands—with a few exceptions—have usually been white, too. In a city that until recently had a black majority, it's surprisingly segregated. Over the past few years, the series has begun to branch out with more hip-hop artists—including Head-Roc and The Cornel West Theory—but is the crowd any more diverse? There's still a stark difference between the demographic of Fort Reno and that of Fort Dupont, for example.

Barbara Luchs, 88, served as secretary of the Tenleytown Neighborhood Planning Council from ’68 into the 1990s, and as board member of the Northwest Youth Alliance from the late ’90s into the 2000s: [In the late 1960s], integration was just beginning and there was a lot of racist feeling. The people in the neighborhood who were racially biased didn't want the events at Fort Reno, they didn’t want tennis courts there—we fought for those—and they didn't want the swimming pool at Wilson. They didn't want programs like Fort Reno, because they didn’t want blacks and whites mixing together.

Natasha Stovall, 40, booked Fort Reno in the early ’90s: My memory of Fugazi shows is that the most intense stuff would happen. Ian [MacKaye] would be breaking down slam dances, and people would get really mad at him afterward, saying, “Why can’t we do it, when you used to do this.” There were always skins and punks looking to start something.

Hugh McElroy, 33, played with AKA Harlot #1, Black Eyes, Horses, The No-Gos, Hand Fed Babies; plays in Cephalopods: I went to basically every show starting in ‘92 or ‘93. I think the first show I went to was Slant 6 and Cupid Car Club. There were just a lot of teenagers there, but granted, there were also skinheads there, and that was less desirable... I got followed home by skinheads from one of the shows once. I was walking home, and they followed me in their car and yelled "faggot" at me—six skinheads in a car.

Head-Roc, 40, plays as Head-Roc and with Godisheus: To my knowledge, Head-Roc was the first hip-hop act to play Fort Reno [in 2006]. It was really surreal experience. [It was a very white crowd;] that’s the demographic around that part of town.

The thing I remember is when we got up and started rocking, people got a little rowdy. They were into what we were talking about. We were talking about D.C. I’ve been locally focused for 10 years now... I love rocking Fort Reno amongst the white crowd—I think my biggest supporters are white fans. I’m a black man from a black city that talks about what’s wrong with the system. Black folks aren’t always down to talk about the system, which is run by white people. What’s encouraging is seeing the white brothers on board.

Dave Berman, 49, D.C. resident since the early 1980s, frequent Fort Reno attendee: [On July 14th,] the first band, [Guilty,] was like raging D.C. punk rock, the second band, [Sound Limit,] was like '80s synth pop, and the last band was The Cornel West Theory, which was like political hip-hop. That’s one of the more diverse shows I’ve seen. They’re one of the few black acts I’ve ever seen play here. Fort Reno seems to run pretty white. Since I’ve been coming, there’s always maybe a few black people in the punk scene, but beyond that, you don’t get black families coming out here. Then there are free shows at Fort Dupont, and you don’t get any white people going to those. [My wife and I] also go to Carter Barron to see shows and we see like The Chi-lites and The Delfonics, and we’re the only white people there. D.C. is still segregated.

Head-Roc: Head-Roc has a very multicultural, multi-ethnic fanbase. I don’t have to downplay who I am to get my message across. The message is solidarity, and that translates well.

Art Graveyard: Peggy Cooper Cafritz is selling her 1.34 acre plot in Palisades, where her home was gutted in a fire two years ago that also destroyed her well-known art collection. Asking price is $5 million; tennis court, pool, sadness included.

Wait Game: Advocates for a National Museum for the American Latino made their case at the U.S. Capitol yesterday along with friendly members of Congress. The Smithsonian says it's supportive of the plan, as long as Congress funds it. Waiting...

Kickstart Theory: Local hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory is filming a live DVD in July at BloomBars, and needs your help funding it.

Today on Arts Desk: Zach Barocas' new band, Thor's cinematic makeover, indie rock goes salon.

It draws from the label's regular roster as well as other locals, from True Womanhood to Hume to Les Rhinocéros to Macaw. Starting with a slow-burning, lo-fi folk ballad from Laughing Man and ending with a banger from The Cornel West Theory, the mix features nine tracks that pretty accurately displaythe wide stylistic range of the label: angular guitar pop to Afro-influenced backbeats to lush soundscapes of synths and drum machines. Check it out, for free, at Sockets' site.

Kriston Capps leads the Arts section with his look at the forthcoming book 100 Washington Artists and its author, Lenny Campello—who, it happens, is also an art dealer who's represented a number of the artists in his tome. For this week's One Track Mind column, Joel Mason-Gaines checks in with the always-interesting, always-controversial Cornel West Theory, which just released a new mixtape. Ryan Little reviews the latest record from loop-happy indie eccentrics Menomena. Ted Scheinman reviews the Numero Group label's excellent Local Customs: Low Star Lowlands compilation, which documents the early-'70s scene of Beaumont, Tex. And film critic Tricia Olszewski watches Dinner for Schmucks and Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel.

In City Lights: John Anderson reviews "New Now" at Hamiltonian Gallery. Mike Riggs thinks about Lilith Fair, and dredges up a childhood memory. Plus: Mustock musical festival, HAPPY BIRTHDAY WINDIAN RECORDS, Two in the Wave at the National Gallery, Robyn at the 9:30 Club, and the Temporium on H Street NE.

We gave our heroic theater reviewers a week off, but they've got a great post-mortem on this year's Capital Fringe Festival over at Fringe & Purge.

D.C.-based politically and socially conscious hip-hop band The Cornel West Theory dropped its latest mixtape this morning. The group released its debut album, Second Rome, last year, and and its namesake, the public intellectual and Princeton African American Studies professor Cornel West, to appear on a few tracks.

In Her Hands: Embryo Capital Vol. 1 has a very old-school sound. "K.N.O.W." is built around a mournful soul sample, while "Hustler's Boogie"—which you can read more about in this week's One Track Mind column—has an '80s sound and themes drawn from the height of D.C.'s crack epidemic. Elsewhere, the mixtape contains a live performance of "Captives" at the Black Cat, as well as another appearance by West on "Prophetic Suicide Pt. 1."

The Cornel West Theory performs at the Black Cat Saturday with Diamond District. Grab the mixtape for free from All Our Noise.

Good morning! Wale has offended Baltimore. Later today on Arts Desk, we'll ponder: Why does D.C.'s biggest rapper have the lamest controversies ever?

The Washington Post Magazine thinks this air-guitar champion is worth your time. Plus: The National Pinball Museum is coming to the beleaguered Shops at Georgetown Park mall.

Why does WaPo's Blake Gopnik get to review the Hirshhorn's Yves Klein retrospective twice?

City Desk points to a Flickr stream of historic D.C. photos uploaded by DDOT. Sockets posts a seriously hot new track from the Cornel West Theory, from the group's forthcoming mix tape. Ruffian Records files an update—Ruffian and Sockets will be collaborating on a series of split 7-inches of D.C. bands. Names mentioned in the Ruffian post: Buildings, Noon:30, Imperial China.

Got my review copy of the Arcade Fire's The Suburbs yesterday, and I've yet to complete a straight-through listen. I'll save my overall impression for, well, when I have one. For now, my favorite moment on the record comes nearly an hour in, on the Régine Chassagne-sung "Sprawl II (Mountains Be...)," which has a "Heart of Glass" bounce and a foreboding tint. As for the critical love: It's trickling out, even though the record doesn't land until August 3. Oh, and: Since I wanted an excuse to embed that Cap'n Jazz clip up yonder, here's a reminder that tonight's Black Cat installment of the band's reunion tour is very sold out.

City Desk's Matt Dunn has a Fort Reno portrait. Worn Magazine has more shots of good-looking showgoers. Also, Worn's Joshua Yospyn shares my Fort Reno routine. He writes:

1. Drive or metro to Guapo’s for margaritas by 6:30 pm;
2. Pay bill and walk to Fort Reno’s field by 7:30 pm;
3. Commit to watching at least two of the bands;
4. Gaze at smoke bomb plumes wafting out of the porta-potty;
5. Feel kinda old since the field contains a lot of high school students;
6. Hit the ice cream truck to feel young again;
7. and Get tired from the margaritas and head home.

Only thing missing? The return visit to Guapo's.

The 24th Filmfest DC kicks off today, and in this week's City Paper, we laud the festival's organizers for their spotlight on forward-thinking works of the Romanian cinema. The Romanian New Wave—or the New Romanian Wave, or the Noul Val Românesc—has lit up the international festival circuit in recent years, which is cool, but most of the time these films are pretty elusive—some land at E Street and the Avalon, many don't. So take advantage, Washington! (Related: About 100 ways to say "My hovercraft is full of eels.")

The opening-night film is Hipsters, which shows tonight at the AMC Mazza Gallerie. It's a musical love letter to Russia's 1950s stilyagi subculture, in which the country's wayward youth dressed like their American counterparts, except with more clashing patterns. They also dyed small animals pink (apparently!). Here's my review! WaPo's Ann Hornaday also has some thoughts on Hipsters and the festival in general. She writes that "the festival's 10-day program features a notable number of movies devoted to popular culture and the ways it intersects with social change." I dig.

Robert Hoffmann, a former director of the National Museum of Natural History, is dead, WaPo reports.

The New York Times has an update on the former Randall School in Southwest, which earlier this year the Corcoran sold to the art collectors Don and Mera Rubell, who own a museum and hotels in Miami, as well as the Capitol Skyline Hotel here. The sale ignited a spot of controversy, since later this year an exhibit the Rubells are curating will land at the Corcoran. The District sold the Randall School to the Corcoran in 2006 for a cool $6.2 million, well below what it was thought to be worth at the time—had the Corcoran developed the property, it would've housed the relocated  Corcoran College of Art and Design, as well as apartments. The Rubells, pending approval of the District, plan to build "apartments and a luxury hotel with an in-house museum at the site." The museum will be a satellite of the Rubells' Miami institution.

New videos from locals the Cornel West Theory and Bluebrain:

Stay hip, Washington. Noroc!

Sean Peoples

• A new HUME EP this summer, with a tour to follow.
• A Laughing Man EP.
• An Aaron Thompson LP, with lotsa guests.
• An EP from N'Digo Rose, who plays keys in the Cornel West Theory.
• A Cornel West Theory mixtape.
• A Sean Peoples EP.

And other stuff! Sockets' next release is an EP of Extra Life remixes.

Reissue corner! Dr. Strange has rereleased Government Issue's Joyride; VHF has re-pressed Skullflower's This Is...

The new Medications record is out next week on Dischord; we've got a review in this week's issue, on stands Thursday.

Cunieform has a bunch of new releases slated for May, including another installment of its Soft Machine archival series.

This Friday's "Taking the Piss" DJ night at Marx Cafe in Mount Pleasant is doubling as a release party for the new Black Tambourine anthology out on Slumberland Records.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments.