Armed with some outstanding new material, and having grown into a more confident and capable live performer than she was her previous local appearances, Sharon Van Etten enthralled a capacity crowd at the Black Cat on Saturday night, showcasing the vocal gifts and evocative songcraft that have made her one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters in independent music. more ›

Shearwater opens for Sharon Van Etten tomorrow night at Black Cat's mainstage, and we got to talk to singer Jonathan Meiburg ahead of the show. more ›

Local sausage maker 13th St. Meats is all over D.C. these days. This meat-producing newcomer has become the favorite cylindrical meat provider of several neighborhood watering holes and two of the city's popular music venues' kitchens. more ›

Black Cat Bill isn't dead! But we're still idiots for having reported that he was. We're sorry. more ›

We Love D.C. shares some sad news -- Black Cat Bill, an institution of a man known for being the club's unofficial doorman, passed away this week. more ›

Their most recent release may be titled Hello Sadness and their sense of humor may be nihilistic, but Los Campesinos!' dedicated following still pogoed their way around the Black Cat. more ›

For the better part of two decades, The Sea and Cake's records have been so consistently, if unspectacularly, good that it's easy to take them a bit for granted. Yet each of the band's live shows seems to come as a welcome reminder of why they stood at the forefront of Chicago's vital, cross-pollinated post-rock scene of the 1990s. more ›

Wild Flag's D.C. debut back in March was already one of the most riveting local shows of the year, but the indie-rock "supergroup" arguably managed to top it during Thursday night's return engagement. more ›

One of our favorite live acts, Baltimore's Double Dagger is calling it quits after nine years. We talked with bassist Bruce Willen on the mark they've left and the celebratory tone of their final shows. more ›

The label "1990s revivalists" follows Yuck around inexorably, sometimes an epithet, often a term of endearment, always an apt descriptor for their retro-leaning indie-rock sound. At the Black Cat on Wednesday night, the London-based four-piece wore it as a badge of honor, more ›

DCist has a long, storied relationship with These United States. They played our short-lived Unbuckled concert series (which is coming back, I promise) and they even did two series of tour diaries for us. However, we saw the writing on the wall when The Federal Reserve ended its monthly gathering at Iota. Sure enough, the local band with the most rigorous touring and recording schedule...is no longer local. However, These United States isn't leaving quietly. more ›

For a litany of '90s bands, reunions are lately all the rage. And there's hardly anyone who can blame the newly reunited Archers Of Loaf for a well-deserved victory lap. more ›

Eleanor Friedberger, best known as being one half of the Fiery Furnaces, brough a set of rocking, classic pop-inspired gems to the Black Cat on Tuesday night. more ›

America Hearts and Allo Darlin may be playing on the same bill tonight at the Black Cat but the two bands have never met before. Awkward, huh? We decided to facilitate the introductions by letting the London twee pop act and the local lo-fi stalwarts each ask the other five questions. Read along as they ruminate on touring Europe, eating out in D.C. and downloading. more ›

Though the setting was less dramatic than it was at his 2009 appearance at the Sixth & I Synagogue, Beirut's oft-itinerant Zach Condon made himself at home at the Black Cat on Tuesday night, regaling a capacity crowd with his worldly indie-folk songcraft. more ›

Philadelphia's Man Man has carved out a bizarre niche over the course of its four albums. The band is repeatedly described by similar reference points--Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits--though nobody would mistake anything played Friday night for Trout Mask Replica or "Frank's Wild Years." Rather, Man Man has found its own gravely voice amidst its influences, mixing frenzied spectacle that's a few parts junkyard gang with hints of wistful melancholy and obscured melodies. On stage, ephemera become instruments, be them fire extinguishers, water coolers or bicycle spokes. more ›

Memorial Day may have been the laziest day of the year. Between the searing heat, the oppressive humidity and the collective day off of work, the population of D.C. had moved to a pace that was sluggish at best. Times New Viking might as well have rolled their eyes at the climate conditions. more ›

A man, his amp, his pedals and his guitar: it's a sparse setup usually common to acoustic singer-songwriters. That said, the Dirty Beaches set felt a world away from an episode of VH1 Storytellers. Much as a good filmmaker uses elements that the audience can’t see to create a sinister atmosphere, Alex Zhang Hungtai’s economical setup effectively created an eerie soundscape moreso than if he'd overwhelmed us with dense layers of sound. more ›

Leaving everything onstage is the sort of description that's only fitting for performers that never leave the stage. However, Les Savy Fav, art-punk auteurs and masterful breakers of the fourth wall, have always seen the stage as more of a suggestion than a necessity. Admittedly, the shock factor of entering the crowd has become less of a shock within the past few years as bands like Double Dagger and Monotonix have gained a bigger following. Yet as their style of theatricality is no longer 100 percent unique, Les Savy Fav remains a must-see band because they do this sort of act better than anybody else. more ›

The word "yacht" conjures up images of boat shoes and champagne. Thus, by logical extension, it would be easy to believe that "yacht rock," or a band by the name of YACHT, would play safe and uninteresting music. DFA artists YACHT (who actually got their name from an education program in Portland, Oregon) toyed with that innocuous perception by playing thirty seconds of a soft rock recording before their set started. Then the drumbeats kicked in, the lights came up and they blew that brief illusion to smithereens. more ›

With early voting having begun this week and the election day less than two weeks away, the contest for the April 26 At-Large Special Election remains fluid and unsettled, with no one candidate yet rising above the rest. The uncertainties in the campaign to fill the seat once occupied by D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown is a product not only of the candidates, though, but of the ever-shifting political environment in the District. more ›

Written by DCist contributor Andy Hess

Dan Bejar, the front-man of Vancouver's Destroyer, does a lot of things I hate to see at live shows. He barely addresses the audience. He has a tendency to play with his backed turned toward the crowd. He doesn't look like he actually wants to be in the room, acting as if he's just there to sing and then go on his way. If you've seen him perform with The New Pornographers, this shouldn't come as a surprise. With the power-pop supergroup, he usually wanders in from off stage to perform when he's needed for a song or two then goes and hides in the shadows. Despite all that, Bejar's performance at the Black Cat on Tuesday night was not phoned in by any stretch. more ›

Last Friday's Black Cat double feature was a trip down memory lane, steeped in nostalgia for a period of music that doesn't yet fully exist. more ›

The third all-female buzz band to play the Black Cat in the past month (with Vivian Girls still to come this week), Warpaint may lack the sheer power and pedigree of Wild Flag and the stylish retro charms of Dum Dum Girls. But on Saturday night, the L.A.-based quartet proved equally capable of enthralling a capacity crowd, delivering a confident 75-minute performance that put their artful, yet accessible post-punk sound on impressive display. more ›

On Thursday night, D.C. got its first live look at indie rock’s latest “supergroup,” as Wild Flag made an impressive local debut in front of a capacity crowd at the Black Cat. Although the band has yet to issue a proper release (a 7-inch was available at the show, and a full LP is expected later this year), anticipation and curiosity ran high due largely to the pedigree of its highly-accomplished line-up, which features former Sleater-Kinney guitarist (and current Portlandia star) Carrie Brownstein, D.C. resident Mary Timony (Helium, Soft Power), Janet Weiss (Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks), and Rebecca Cole (The Minders). Fervent fans of the musicians’ previous bands were out in force, and Wild Flag did not disappoint, delivering a scorching, hour-long performance that at times threatened to blow the doors off the club. more ›

Bookended by a pair of familiar covers -- with the dozen or so originals in between evoking a broad span of atavistic influences ranging from '60s girl groups to '80s Britpop to the early-aughts garage-rock revival -- Dum Dum Girls' Sunday-night concert at the Black Cat conveyed a vibe of nostalgia and retrospection that belied the Californian quartet's status amongst indie rock's latest next big things. more ›

We've got a thing for Ted Leo, it's true. (Really, how can you not love a guy who can so adroitly perform "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"?) more ›

Two of the most highly-touted up-and-comers in indie music played the Black Cat Backstage on Monday night, as Glasser and Twin Shadow showcased their disparate, yet equally distinctive talents. Like The Joy Formidable, who played the same room last Thursday, Twin Shadow seems unlikely to play such a small venue again anytime soon -- his charismatic performance left little doubt that he'll be moving upstairs to the Black Cat's main stage (or beyond) next time he's in town. Glasser offered just as captivating a set, though the comparatively -- and regrettably -- tepid support for her more challenging material left her popular ascendancy a bit more uncertain. more ›

Every once in a while, a band comes to one of Washington's smaller venues and puts on the sort of performance that ensures everyone present that they will never play in a space that small ever again. Last Thursday night, The Joy Formidable put on such a performance, despite the fact that at least part of that sold-out crowd left after the openers had finished. more ›