Le Loup, Nurses

This is what acid rock means in the late '00s: An orgiastic decadence in sound, zillions of notes shimmering around all at once, instruments covering the stage, tribal beats and rhythms, and a cultish, "family" vibe à la Animal Collective, High Places, Holy Fuck and Octopus Project. D.C.'s seven-piece Le Loup offers its translation on the experimental and noisy world of down-at-the-compound rock with much to contribute: three-part harmonies and a keenly developed understanding of finger work (on banjos and mandolins), not to mention fully fleshed-out songs with beginnings, middles and clarifying ends that take the audience on a roller-coaster ride of emotion and sonic bliss.

Informed by the long, reclusive time spent crafting their second album, titled—wait for it—Family, Le Loup's members are experts at their brand of banging, honking, plucking cacophony.

Nurses, on the other hand, plays it subtle. This scruffy three-piece's ghostly, atonal melodies and slight harmonies spill out from its fair share of ramshackle instruments and stage gadgetry too, but Nurses would rather have the audience mull over three or four abstract sounds hanging in the air, as opposed to Le Loup's aural onslaught.