The 51 Best Songs to Come Out of the 51st State in the Past 365 Days

“I’m genuinely intrigued as to whether these pockets [of musical creativity] eventually connect like spokes on a wheel or tragically morph into self-protective roaches scattering to the relative safety of their respective nooks.” — my annual intro spiel, 2022

We all, understandably, lost our minds a bit this year.

To wit…

  • Caleb L’Etoile released an indie pop jam called “All My Friends (Are Depressed)”
  • Infinity Knives released a different indie pop jam called “Everyone I Love Is Depressed”
  • American Television started their album with a song called “This Is Hell”
  • Jukebox the Ghost started their album with: “I’m so tired of trying. It’d be nice to just exist for a moment.”
  • Teen Mortgage straight up released a song called “Lose My Mind”
  • Wale released an album straight-up titled everything is a lot. (lowercase, period included), whose closer is a duet with fellow hometown hero Shaboozey called “Lonely”

However, I believe the key to reclaiming our collective sanity may reside, in fitting irony, at one of our most haunted of grounds…

D.C.’s music scene has suffered uncountable casualties since 2019, but, for the most part, what was taken from us either dissipated in the endgamish wind or gave way to something unrecognizable; the glaring exception being the languid estate at 1353 H Street Northeast, the former funeral home turned beloved music venue that had stood since its previous tenant’s ousting in 2020 as a three-story testament to what gloriously was and almost had been. Our own Rock & Roll Overlook Hotel.

Until, one auspicious August morning, a PoPville post teased a liquor license. Three weeks later, an Instagram video featuring a now-familiar logo circulated feeds. Two weeks after that, the newly-dubbed Transmission flung open the building’s long-shuttered doors for a massive two-day opening weekend celebration; a joyous exorcism that started early, went late, and traversed every genre imaginable.

Dorvall Bedford did the best write-up I’ve seen regarding how it all came to be, but the TL;DR is: a group of friends that spanned the underground electronic music and hardcore scenes took over booking duties at a hole-in-the-wall venue on the second floor of a restaurant in the heart of Chinatown; they did such a good job with booking/creating a community they eventually outgrew the space; the venturesome opportunity of 1353 H St. presented itself; they went for it, foregoing loans and outside investors, working 18-hour days “gouging tiles out of the floor, replacing the wood beams in the baseboards, bleaching surfaces, and fixing every little thing that was broken.”

In other words, disparate groups found common ground, organized, strategized, and executed.

The spokes became a wheel.

Though much like upon entering the venue itself, you have to let your eyes adjust to fully appreciate the nuance in what Anthony Oro, Katii B, Ellie McDyre, Kelli Kerrigan, and Kabir Khanna have done with the place.

Transmission keenly instituted a membership structure à la Alamo Drafthouse, where one can pay a monthly flat fee to receive discounts on tickets and their tab — a system that both incentivizes and rewards the fervently loyal patronage they’ve cultivated since their earliest Chinatown Garden days. If you’re the Go-Go Museum, currently learning hard lessons about the risks of relying too heavily on good will and government funding during an authoritarian crackdown, it might be worth taking notes from these Gen Zers who were born in the darkness of late-stage capitalism.

And when the Transmission team talks about creating a space for the community, they’re able to follow through in a way that other venues either can’t or won’t. DC9’s rooftop patio is where you go to get a surprisingly delicious fried chicken sandwich, but Transmission’s expansive rooftop patio is where you can go to simply be. Eaton can host a vinyl market as well as anyone, but they sure would like you to buy an absurdly overpriced cocktail while you’re there. Meanwhile, Transmission has adopted a “sliding scale/no one turned away for lack of funds policy.”

Three sprawling floors, each with their own unique nooks and crannies, means there is literally space — and a space — for everyone who enters Transmission’s doors. You’re not finding that at Flash. You’re not finding that wherever Eighteenth Street Lounge is.

“We’re not just a nightclub,” Khanna told Dorvall in that WCP write-up. “We’re not Black Cat, and we’re not Songbyrd. We’ll be different.”

At this point, I’m just crazy enough to believe him.

As always, praise be to Listen Local First, Hometown Sounds, Washington City Paper, Capital Bop, The 51st, DMV Life DMV Daily, 730DC, City Cast, Washington Informer, The Hilltop, Inkwell, Haus DMV, and all the friends who let me leech off their good taste.

If you have any questions/comments/concerns, you can find me at @myquitecuratedlife.

Enjoy!

Every year, while researching, composing, and culling these best-of lists, I end up with a pocket-sized notebook full of jotted-down thoughts…

  • Here’s your annual reminder that this playlist is not a top-down ranking. It’s more a John Cusack-in-High Fidelity mixtape. Flow, thematic narrative, a desire to impress Catherine Zeta-Jones; it all factors in.
  • For example, this year’s inescapable theme was Inescapable Trauma. So we kick off with Dylan Rockwell’s lyrical painting “tank parade” (#1), we confront Trash Boat & The Ambush’s anthemic warning that it’s “Later Than You Think” (#4), we fret alongside Dijon as he worries about what his young son may inherit in “Rewind” (#5).
  • TO CLARIFY: Bartees Strange’s song “DCWDTTY” (#20) is a reference to, though is not a cover of, “DC Will Do That To You” by local post-hardcore icons Smart Went Crazy. Straight from the Strange’s mouth: “This song is just me, wandering through the DMV — things seen and heard in a uniquely lovely and upside down place.”
  • Giovanni and his team at Capital Bop deserve all the awards I’m not prestigious enough to know about for their Jazz Is Resistance project done in partnership with Free DC.
  • BEST CONCERT: Mosh Madness. An instant classic. I had a blast playing sideline reporter, and you couldn’t have scripted the “home team Dorinda beats vaunted Haus DMV” storyline any better. Thank god cinematographer Dominic Cicero was on hand so there’s proof this wasn’t all just a dream in Reid Williams’ head.

  • In one trip around the sun, Miri Tyler: went on a nationwide tour opening up for PUP and Jeff Rosenstock as part of Ekko Astral (which included a nightly everyone-on-stage singalong of Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know”), saw her other band, Pretty Bitter, release an indie darling of an LP (#18), and put out her own quirky masterpiece of a solo record (#34). You go, Miri Tyler.
  • SEÑOR CHANG SAYS: “Escualo” (#10) translates to “shark.” Once you get to it, you’ll understand why.
  • Around this time last year, the legendary musician/producer/author Kokayi started a Substack, “From Out the Bubble,” and it has consistently been one of my favorite reads. To the point that I actually decided to do some good old fashioned journalism and ask him about it on the record:

  • THING I LIKE KNOWING EXISTS: a local band called saafewaay who play “evil grocery store muzak” and whose album is called Price Gun to My Head and all four songs on it really are grocery store-related while still carrying enough emotional heft you need to double-bag it.
  • On my to-do list is ask Prinze George who has been recording/producing their most recent stuff, including list-maker “Wild Game” (#47). Naomi’s voice has never sounded better, and the scene needs more acts in their very capable hands.
  • That trippy funk song that sounds like it should be the soundtrack to something awesome, “Ferrari á la Mode” (#32), actually is the soundtrack to something awesome. Classically-trained composer and producer Kiri No Mikito wrote it for Tribeca-approved Cherry-Colored Funk about “a serial grifter [who] faces the music when seemingly everyone he’s ever wronged shows up on the opening day of his dubious Italian ice business.”
  • BEST MUSIC VIDEO: “Hot Chocolate” by Abe Mamet (#3)

  • Kenilworth Katrina’s “Sister Mary Clarence” deserves a bullet point simply because it’s good to remember we’re all internally screaming the same frustrated gospel when it comes to confronting the litany of masked-up teenagers we as a community have failed and now fear.
  • BEST LYRICS:
    • “Sell me something I don’t know. I’m feeling vulnerable.” — Glitterer, “Somebody”
    • “Living in an endless loop is fucking up my tempo.” — Caleb L’Etoile, “Collateral”
    • “It takes a lot to keep yourself from saying ‘happy birthday’ to people who’d prefer not to hear from you anymore.” — Pretty Bitter, “I Hope You Do”
    • “If Virginia is for haters and Maryland’s for fools, then D.C.’s for the kids who left their boyfriends back in school.” — Truth or Dare, “H.S.B.F.”
    • “That bitch ain’t nothing, she been stealing from Zara.” — Jaeychino, “LACED”
  • I wouldn’t say they’re the “best” lyrics, but Dupont Brass composed a theme song for the Washington Freedom, our city’s professional cricket team, which we apparently have. Lyrics include: “Yeah, we nice at cricket. Watch us knock down all them wickets.”
  • MOST POIGNANT THEME ALBUM: Mental Stamina’s Liquidity Pool Party, a hip-hop exploration of the financialization of our modern existence, which finance journalist Kyla Scanlon eloquently summarized a few weeks ago as “Everyone Is Gambling and No One Is Happy.”

  • Local music journalist Chris Kelly penned a review of local band Sex Faces’ album for purportedly local outlet The Washington Post. In it, he calls vocalist-drummer Jacky Cougar’s stage name a “nom de punk,” which is wordsmithing worthy of a bullet point.
  • Depending on when in 2025 it was written, it feels like “Media Mogul Superstar” by short-lived D.C. band Wonk either perfectly chronicled or accurately predicted Olivia Nuzzi’s downfall.
  • BEST MERCH:

  • NOSTALGIA LANE: Congolese-American beatmaker thadima put out an EP called The Nights On U Street whose song titles reference no less than Marvin’s, Patty Boom Boom, Saint Ex, Dodge City, and Velvet Lounge. We didn’t know how good we had it.
  • “I do miss it all the time. And to the people who are here and feel like they want to leave because the vibes are so fucked right now: Maybe don’t. Maybe stay and enter the cool zone with your neighbor.” — Rax King
  • Due to its excessive levels of sultriness, I don’t feel comfortable listening to “arson games” by Karen Jonas in public.
  • I’M BUYING STOCK IN:
    • Truth or Dare
    • Dyeboy
    • Miri Tyler
    • Mosh Madness
    • Kiri No Mikito
  • I readily admit I’m taking liberties when it comes to labeling some of these bands/artists a D.C. area band/artist. Some of these list-makers may have since abandoned the area for more affordable locales with better opportunities, some may live closer to Richmond than Alexandria. Whatever. Enjoy the music.
  • Thank you to Lindsay Hogan for the header image.

See you in the pit,
BTR

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