Our occasional series “Secret History” features profiles of classic D.C. albums as a way of looking back at the District’s contributions to music over time. In this installment, we revisit Velocity Girl’s ¡Simpatico! (Sub Pop, 1994). Coalescing at the University of Maryland in the late ’80s, Velocity Girl specialized in winningly sharp indie pop steeped in resonant major chord melodies and spry, agile rhythms, with a solid grounding in the unabashedly catchy style of…

You may remember Jim Spellman from such local bands as the High Back Chairs (late-80s Dischord) or Velocity Girl (90s indie-pop cult faves). Or maybe you’ve seen him recently with the local band he currently fronts, Julie Ocean (who open for oddball punk legends Half Japanese at the Rock and Roll Hotel next month). What we’ll bet you didn’t know is that Spellman pays his bills in a day job as a producer for CNN….

>> Mic Harrison (formerly of Superdrag) brings some alt-country goodness to the Velvet Lounge tonight, with The High Signs and Julie Ocean (ex-Velocity Girl). Show starts at 9 p.m. >> SILVERDOCS is in its first full day, so head on up to Silver Spring to check out a wide array of documentary film on offer. We’d recommend Oliver Hodge’s Garbage Warrior at 8:45 p.m., about New Mexico architect Michael Reynolds, who builds homes out…

It’s a new feature, a music roundtable! You’ll get the hang of it. We plan on doing this, oh, periodically, as questions come to us and our local musicians respond. We here at DCist love our local record stores. The information superhighway being what it is, we may not buy quite as much as we used to, but we still find our way to the better DC shops, to browse and chat and have a…