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.

Nappy Riddem

Once again, today is Local Music Day, which means more than a dozen D.C. establishments are playing nothing but D.C. music all day. Step into your favorite coffee shop, bar, or ramen joint, and you'll hear music from recent albums by sophistipop dude Black Hills, neo-soul/funk/dance hall mainstays Nappy Riddem, acoustic blues young gun Johnny Grave, jazz trombonist Reginald Cyntje, one-man cello orchestra Wytold, faerie folkers Pree, electro-funk outfit Big/Bright, and folk-punk ensemble Typefighter. The full list of participating businesses—which includes Tryst, Toki Underground, Sova, and a bunch more—is here.

(A disclosure: The organizers asked a handful of "experts" on local music to recommend artists. I use scare quotes because I was one of them; I offered one group's name.)

The group behind the Local Music Day, Listen Local First, is hosting a showcase tomorrow at The Parlour—a temporary space organized as part of Digital Capital Week—that will feature most of the Local Music Day acts. That's 8 to 11 p.m. Beforehand, beginning at 7 p.m., there's a panel discussion in the same space on the local music economy, featuring a few experts and artists.

So, yes, it's the wonky side of the local music scene. More on all of this, I promise, soon.

One of a handful of D.C. acts playing this year's CMJ, Pree happened to be wrapping up a leg of a tour. They performed at The Living Room to a crowd of about 25 seemingly tired music journalists, college music directors, and other souls taking advantage of the free show. The band didn't half-ass it, which they easily could have. Instead, they performed as it was just another day on tour, they just happened to be surrounded by a whole lot of eh.

After speaking to singer/guitarist/multi instumentalist Ben Usie and drummer Ethan Brasseaux, it became clear that the band isn't banking on a musical festival for anything more than a show.

Washington City Paper: Do you have any other shows scheduled for CMJ?

Ben Usie: Not yet. We're trying to get on some unofficial showcases this weekend. [They confirmed a Brooklyn Vegan loft party since this interview. Here's the Facebook invite.]

WCP: Why did you decide to play CMJ?

BU: We've been on tour the last month and we're going to be on tour next month. It was a good middle stop. We just released an album today. This was probably a good way to release it.

WCP: Would you have come if you weren't on tour?

BU: Probably. Our label is centered in New York so it makes sense. They have connections to management and it's a lot easier for them to get the word out.

WCP: Was it weird to play at 5pm?

Ethan Brasseaux: It was nice.

BU: I did have to drink a few beers beforehand. We played The Living Room before so we were happy to be back.

WCP: Is there anyone you're looking forward to seeing?

EB: I always like seeing Givers.

BU: They're from our hometown of Lafayette, La. We just played with Tall Ships, who are really cool. Dad Rocks! is from Europe and he's cool.

WCP: Is D.C. a good place to be in a band?

BU: It's done a lot of good things for us. We have a lot of really good friends that are doing really great musical things.

Pree's new album "Folly" is now available on Paper Garden Records.

MUSIC

Dayve Hawk's Memory Tapes plays Red Palace tonight with Pree. You may remember Memory Tapes from such websites as Pitchfork, which lauded Hawk's debut LP Seek Magic as one of the best recordings of 2009; this year's Player Piano on Carpark was not as beloved. 8:30 p.m. $12 at door.

Also on H Street, The Cool Kids stop by Rock & Roll Hotel to promote their second studio album When Fish Ride Bicycles. Violet Says 5 opens. 9 p.m. $18 at door.

Local favs The Caribbean plays the Black Cat's backstage with Little Pink and Flea Market. 8 p.m. $8.

BOOKS

Former defensive lineman Joe Ehrmann discusses his book InSideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives at Barnes & Noble Downtown. 6:30 p.m. Free.

Bruce Duffy talks semifactual history and Disaster Was My God, his fictionalized take on the life of 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud. 7 p.m. at Politics & Prose. Free.

WONKINESS FOR NON-WONKS

Nuclear policy expert Tad Daley's book Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World is supposed to be a policy-rich book for people who aren't necessarily schooled in policy. Check him out at Busboys & Poets on 14th Street tonight. 6:30 p.m. Free.

Thanks in part to Don DeLillo's 1973 novel Great Jones Street, it didn't take long for the rock-star-toiling-away-in-seclusion narrative to go from the stuff of critical legend to obvious fodder for parody. Nevermind that two years later saw the release and instant canonization of Bob Dylan and the Band's long-buried The Basement Tapes—the inspiration, in fact, for the DeLillo character Bucky Wunderlick's "The Mountain Tapes." And so for listeners, the brilliant, hermetic artist has persisted, both as a reductive, suspect concept and as an undeniably seductive one. Listed here, some examples of the latter.

The D.C./Baltimore psych-folk act Le Loup retreated to a cabin in North Carolina to record much of its latest album, Family (out now on Hardly Art) and the result is druggy, country-fried, and poppy. Take "Grow," which sports what might be the best pairing of Beach Boys harmonies and the "Be My Baby" beat since, well, the Beach Boys. But the real innovation here is space: Where past Le Loup songs were concise and linear, Family's breathe and frolic and expand. The band—which performs Saturday at the Black Cat with Pree—recently recorded a session for All Our Noise. Check it out:

More records made in wooded seclusion after the jump: Reluctant backwoods Svengalis, some latter-day Johnny Cash, and brassy mountain ditties!

Dandelion Gum by Black Moth Super Rainbow (2007): The members of this blissed-out post-rock band cloak their identities with costumes, pseudonyms, and video-heavy performances, hoping to emphasize their music by de-emphasizing the personalities making it. As the group has acknowledged, this strategy of willful obscurity hasn't exactly worked out. No kidding: When you record your breakthrough record in a Western Pennsylvania cabin and sing trippy, hypnotic songs about witches, you're more or less asking to be typecast as backwoods Svengalis.

American Recordings by Johnny Cash (2004): The cabin that the late Johnny and June Carter Cash built in Hendersonville, Tenn., in the late '70s is definitely that, rustic patina and all. But in the early ’90s, when Johnny began collaborating with producer Rick Rubin for a tetralogy of morose, mostly acoustic albums, the space became a full-fledged studio, which is now run by Johnny and June's son, John Carter Cash. You can't find a knobsman more pro than Rubin, but in this case, he simply captured Johnny singing and strumming in his living room. How the Man in Black then wound up with this terrifying Anton Corbijn video, I can't quite say:

Cabin in the Woods by Retsin (2001): The name says it all. Tara Jane O'Neil and Cynthia Nelson met in the early ’90s when their bands, Rodan and Ruby Falls, shared a tour, and they soon became romantic partners and musical collaborators. The final Retsin album, made more or less in isolation in upstate New York, is dusty and acoustic, drawing as deeply from the well of American folk music as the '90s indie-folk milieu. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Retsin contributed to a Jandek tribute compilation around the same time.

Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project by Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (2003): This between-album project found the Olympia, Wash., singer Mirah retreating for a month to the Blue Ridge Mountains with an eight-track and some fellow musicians. There, she recorded some playful ditties—more washboard band than precise, lo-fi folk—and found sounds. And then she laid down this brassy jam, which recounts, doo-wop refrain in tow, the month-long experience:

Image courtesy of the Cash Cabin Studio MySpace page.

For more info about upcoming shows — free, kid- and date-friendly, or otherwise — see our Summer Music Guide.

• Cricket Fusion Quartet. 1905. Call for price.
• Jonathan Coulton, Chelsea Lee. Birchmere. $29.50. All ages.
• Deleted Scenes, The XYZ Affair, Casper Bangs. Black Cat Backstage. $8. All ages.
• Dick Morgan. Blues Alley. $25.
• Buster Brown and The Get Down. Cafe Martini. Call for price.
• Tally Hall, Malbec, Prabir & the Substitutes. DC9. $12. +18.
• Pree, Dead Heart Bloom, Tripp. IOTA Club & Cafe. $12. +21.
• NSO: “Nights at the Movies: A Night on the Red Carpet.” Kennedy Center Concert Hall. $20–$65.
• Berklee College of Music: Liz Longley. Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Free.
• Old Crow Medicine Show. Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. $25.
• Toad the Wet Sprocket, Eddie From Ohio. National Harbor. $16.50-$35.
• The Jones, The Known Unknowns, The Very Small. Rock & Roll Hotel. $8. All ages.
• Maryland Deathfest Pre-fest show w/ Ghoul. Sonar. $10. All ages.
• Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, Dead Rock West. The State Theatre. $15.
• Hopewell, The Flying Eyes, Bad Liquor Pond. The Talking Head. $10.
• Fight the Bear, The Blue Line, Imaginary Friends. Velvet Lounge. $8. +21.

Photo of the XYZ Affair by Kyle Gustafson, via MySpace.