Photo by Greg Nash

We get a lot of Three Stars artists who either came from somewhere else or ultimately go somewhere else. With duo Birdlips, our motivation was to catch them while we can. Although both Cliff Usher and Lindsay Pitts grew up in Northern Virginia, when we first caught wind of them, they resided in Charlottesville, and the conversation we had with them suggested that their current lcoation, here in D.C., is not a permanent solution. The working title of their upcoming release is Drift, and appropriately, we get the impression that the District is just where the wind has dropped them for the time being.

Birdlips’s music has an otherworldly quality to it. The songs on their debut LP, Cardboard Wings, are simultaneously somber and psychedelic. The keyboard and vocal harmonies seem simultaneously down to Earth, yet apart from it. Birdlips songs could alter the landscape of a claustrophobic Metro car or brick-enclosed nightclub into something more eerie… but more beautiful. As such, they’ve been put on bills that run the gamut from folky to slightly experimental.

We talked to them over the week of Thanksgiving about the influence of psychogeography, the difficulties of self-promotion and why they’re hoping for the growth of an underground artistic community.

See them next: December 10 at the Winter Wonder Faire at Sova, with Frau Eva.

Find them online: http://www.myspace.com/birdlipsmusic or http://www.birdlipsmusic.com

Buy their album: At one of their shows, on iTunes or CD Baby.

You’re doing a festival event at Sova and that you’ve previously performed at the H Street Festival. You seem to have found a niche doing these festivals with an artistic bent.

Cliff: Well, it’s definitely cool to get involved. We’re trying to get involved in the arts scene here in D.C. It’s one of the things where we grew up in Northern Virginia but even though Northern Virginia’s so close to D.C., it’s only a 30-minute drive into the city, where we are here, but it’s still so separated. We felt like we never really were part of what was going on in D.C., so we’re trying to be a part of it now. We’re trying to get to know the other bands and artists of the area.

So, yeah, the H Street Festival was a lot of fun. The people in Frau Eva, I guess we first met Pree and then Vanessa from Pree is in Frau Eva. There’s a bunch of cool people we’ve met in the D.C. area. Matt Hemerlein, we played with him about a year ago at Galaxy Hut. We’ve seen him a bunch of times recently. I think we’re going to do a thing with him at Asylum later in December.

When did you move back to D.C.?

Cliff: We’ve been living in Charlottesville for the past six years, mostly. But we got back from tour two months ago, almost three months ago. So we’ve been in the area for all of three months now. Not really playing that many shows. Kind of lying low, writing new material and stuff.

Lindsay: But we’re trying to get back in the swing of things now.