Getting to Merriweather Post Pavilion on the Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend was no small task, but for Empire of the Sun fans, it was the ultimate kickoff to the holiday weekend.
The Wailin’ Jennys recently played three nights at The Birchmere on their current 2026 tour, and Parklife DC was on hand for the second show on Sept. 3. The Jennys were in great form, sounding outstanding throughout the evening.
Longtime readers know the Beastie Boys were my white whale of concert photography. For reasons that are too boring to recount here, I never got to shoot them. So watching Mike Diamond front his own band at the 9:30 Club last week, closing that loop more than a decade and a half later, hit a little different than a normal weeknight show.
Legendary feminist punk pioneers Bikini Kill today are on tour! In the DC area, Bikini Kill play a sold-out show at The Fillmore Silver Spring on Sept. 19. But read on for more tour details.
Kehlani brought her World Tour to Merriweather Post Pavilion Sunday night, and the DMV did exactly what the DMV does: showed up and made sure the energy was impossible to ignore.
A 25th-anniversary tour can easily turn into a museum exhibit. The hits come out in predictable order, the deep cuts disappear, and the whole night becomes a carefully polished reminder of what a band used to be.
Blackberry Smoke took a different approach Saturday night at Capital One Hall in Tysons. Over roughly two decades’ worth of material, the Atlanta band treated its catalog less like a finished history and more like a working repertoire, pulling songs apart, folding other songs into them and moving freely between eras without much concern for which album was supposed to matter most.
There is something deeply reassuring about walking into The Anthem in 2026 and seeing a crowd that looks suspiciously like the audience I remember seeing at punk shows 25 years ago…except now of course many of us have children, lower back problems, and a much more complicated relationship with our metabolisms.
Such was the scene on Sept. 4, when two of Southern California’s foundational punk institutions, Descendents and Social Distortion, descended upon Southwest DC for an evening of loud guitars, youthful (ha!) rebellion, and the collective realization that apparently none of us have actually grown up.
Quicksand released their debut album, Slip, in 1993. Mid-July 2026, the band released, in my opinion, one of their best albums to date, Bring On The Psychics. They are touring in support of the new album — and this time around, they’re playing as a trio.
“Friendship is the foundation” of In Color, your newest alt-pop-rock obsession.
Hailing from Nashville, In Color consists of Matthew “Matt” Hastings (vocals), Holden Clontz (bass), Miles Leaderman (drums), and Val Hoyt (guitar). Hoyt and Leaderman met in middle school, and both later attended Belmont University, where they eventually met Hastings and Clontz. All four were already involved in music, but the band ultimately came together during one fateful snowed-in weekend in 2024.
Chance the Rapper took over Baltimore’s Nevermore Hall last week for a sold-out show on his Coloring Book 10 Year Anniversary Tour, celebrating the release of his 2016 breakout album. Coloring Book launched Chance into a household name, from becoming a judge on The Voice to having his own Kit Kat.
