Out of the female-fronted bands in the DMV, Azure Wolf is one to give your undivided attention. With stomping grounds centered around Winchester, VA, the band began as a solo folk project and quickly expanded into the four-piece lineup that stands today. Azure Wolf’s ethereal brand of spacerock carries dreamlike qualities, with haunting vocals and an arrangement that’s sonically rich in time, timbre and rhythmic manipulation. Listeners of the band will feel real, defined emotions, as the band continues to write and produce new music that is sure to delight the ears and the brains in the space between.

Known to “set the stage on fire” with his hard-hitting lyrics and commanding stage presence, Chuck Da Arsonist, a pioneer of the DC hip-hop scene, knew he was destined to be a rapper the moment he discovered A Tribe Called Quest. Growing up, the DMV native was influenced by the best of the best, including Stephanie Mills, Miki Howard, Howard Hewett, Luther Vandross, and Lionel Richie.

If you’re looking for “raw, uncut hip-hop music,” then look no further.

Poetry is the currency of culture, and in this absorbing half-hour documentary, the poet Alejandro Murguía waxes on not only his years fighting for social justice, but on how the Beat generation (Ginsburg, Kerouac, etc.) bred a sense of rebellion against the way things “always” had been. Murguía was born in America but his family moved to Mexico when he was very young, so when they returned to California, he had to learn English—but soon had such a command of the language that he used it to fire up an ever-expanding circle of admirers. Little surprise he was drawn to San Francisco, where so many movements took hold in the ‘60s.

We’ve been waiting and we know that you have too. Stray Fossa, a band that started out in Sewanee, Tennessee has released 3 new tracks recently and we’re going to review all 3! They’ve been featured on our page a bit before, but in case you’re new here and need a background, they took a bit of a break for some years after moving from Tennessee, and met up in Richmond, VA. They gained a lot of their inspiration from their parents’ record collection, which you can hear in the way brothers Nick and Will Evans, and Zach Blount combine retro-synths and reverb layered guitar chords.

Last spring’s D.C. International Film Festival was among the last major in-person fetes prior to lockdown. Even as nervous planners nixed SXSW and other events, Maria Datch, chair of the board and director of international relations for DCIFF, and her team pressed on to make 2020’s iteration happen.
“Last year’s crew specifically thanked us, saying, ‘My film is not going to be seen anywhere live. You were it,’” Datch said of the “before” times.
Accordingly, this year DCIFF will be a hybrid affair, with many screenings and panel events taking place online, along with a few in-person events as capacity and social distancing restrictions allow. Several live events will be held at the Arlington Drafthouse in Virginia, where it is more feasible to space out patrons.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of chatting with young indie singer-songwriter and Alchemical Records writer, Hero Magnus to discuss her inspirations, goals, stories, and her new single, “Yours First,” now streaming. Her EP, “Make Me a Man,” is set to release on March 26, 2021.
Hero did a lot of Jewish singing in temple at a young age, which was very lovely. At around 14 or 15, she started writing her own music. However, she thought she was too old to make it and stopped for about six months. Fortunately, she started writing again and went to Berklee College of Music for a Summer, which was really inspiring to her. Since then she has focused on writing, performing, recording, and releasing songs, which became extremely important to her.