These United States, DCist’s favorite local alt-country Unbuckled alums and purveyor of tour diaries, is in the running for a spot in this year’s famed CMJ Music Marathon. TUS has been touring relentlessly and doing all the good stuff bands should do, but are still doing all of their booking, promotion, traveling, managing and everything else on their own. Have you seen their tour schedule lately? That’s a hell of a lot of stuff…

By DCist contributor Valerie Paschall The members of Syracuse chamber pop act Ra Ra Riot are no strangers to high profile performances. In fact, it was their impressive showings at the two music industry behemoth festivals, CMJ and SXSW, which put them on the map as a band to watch. They have since opened for Bow Wow Wow, Art Brut and actually came through D.C. last month with Tokyo Police Club. They should be well-prepared…

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend was really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they’re designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we’d say that they’re doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you…

By day Eric Boucher is a typical DC office drone but by night he is a music impresario. The audiophile’s passion manifested itself first in the music site BigYawn.net (a site I occasionally contribute music reviews to) and now is the force behind the District’s Awake Music Festival (DAM Fest). The event features more than 40 bands on four stages over three days (not counting the pre and post parties). As this is DC, there…