Lizz Winstead might not be a household name, but one of her creations—The Daily Show—has become a decade-long cultural phenomenon. Not surprisingly, her defunct weekly off-Broadway show, Shoot the Messenger, was also dedicated to exposing media fluff to biting sarcasm. Winstead will be in Washington performing standup at the Bentzen Ball comedy festival, going on from October 22 through 25. You can see her the first three days of the festival; her first show is Thursday, October 22, at 7 at Bohemian Caverns with Natasha Leggero, Chelsea Peretti, Hugh Moore, Chris Fairbanks, Ruby Wendell, and Jason Weems. Tickets for single shows and weekend passes are available here. We talked to her about the festival, some of her favorite comedians, and political comedy.

Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Luke Brindley thinks a lot about love. His songs, influenced by the likes of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, talk about “looking for love, I don’t wanna fight / take me in your loving arms tonight” (“Loving Arms”), or how “only love’s gonna tear down these walls” (“Wrecking Ball”). It’s something he knows about firsthand, Brindley says. He and his wife adopted a drug-exposed baby from New Jersey—where he grew up—and according to his personal bio, they did it to “redeem a tragic situation through real love and hard work.” Brindley now seeks inspiration from his daughter and says he finds himself writing about her in his songs.

Brindley has received acclaim from the likes of the Washington Post, Paste, and Rolling Stone and has been graced with awards including Best Contemporary Folk Album of the Year in 2008 from the Washington Area Music Association. When he’s not recording, writing, or playing, he’s running Jammin’ Java, a venue which he owns with his brothers. Brindley is currently recording new music and hopes to release an album this fall.

Brindley has back-to-back shows at Jammin’ Java on July 17 and 18, where he’ll share the stage with Parliament Hill and Seth Glier. To sample some of Brindley’s tunes before heading to the show, check out his MySpace or follow him on Twitter (@lukebrindley) to see what he’s been up to.

Deleted Scenes has a simple principle defining the band: Never repeat yourself.

“It’s sort of the fear of looking at other bands that start repeating themselves and then start to suck,” bassist Matt Dowling says.

It’s an approach that the band took from Radiohead—not a bad band to model yourselves after. It requires jumping from genre to genre, however, which can have some unnerving results to the unacquainted. All the sonic shifts can have a dizzying effect, but it keeps the music—and the band—fresh.

“That’s the big criticism: that we jump all over the place,” Dowling says, “but it makes it fun for us—that’s just what we do.”

The quartet follows in the spirit of eclectic-minded groups of Washington’s past, such as the Dismemberment Plan, one of Dowling’s favorite bands. Still, Deleted Scenes is a band you can’t pin down, preferring to float in various stratospheres of the indie-rock universe.

Dowling’s best reference point? Modest Mouse. You could also say Talking Heads, though after a point comparisons become useless. This is a band forging its own path.

Deleted Scenes released its first full-length album, Birdseed Shirt, in March, and it received a very positive write-up from the taste makers at Pitchfork, meaning it can’t be too long before the band bursts onto the blogosphere.

But for now, Deleted Scenes is Washington’s band. “One Long Country Song” is about the Metro, after all. “It’s one long country song to the Metro / which is five blocks by anyone else’s count,” singer Dan Scheuerman croons. It’s a poignant acoustic track—like nothing else on the record, which is just way the band likes it.

Find out for yourself at the band’s 9 PM show at Velvet Lounge tonight, where it’ll be joined by the Fordists, Weekends, and Math the Band. Tickets cost $8. For the immediate fix, check out our full Q&A with Matt Dowling below.

Men have dominated our Local Listens feature, but we finally found a female-only group to introduce. Noon:30 is an indie-rock trio based in DC. Aissa Arroyo-Hill rocks out on guitar and bass, Vivianne A. Njoku hits the drum kit and keyboards, while Blue S. Moon’s robust vocals (with an impressive range) lead the group—and she dabbles on bass as well.

Njoku and Arroyo-Hill were roommates and bandmates before they met Moon. The three ladies decided to jam one day, and “the strength of the trio was immediately undeniable,” they wrote in an e-mail. They decided to pursue the band seriously about a year ago.

“I feel like once someone hears us, the fact that we’re women isn’t an issue because we rock the stage just like the fellas. I guess if we were super frilly with big pink bows, it’d be an issue, but we’re not,” Moon says. Njoku adds that it makes them more self-aware and empowered. She says the only time it’s a problem is when “dudes are trying to tell us about our instruments or just plain patronizing because they’re not receptive to being in the company of amazing women.”

Noon:30 has numerous upcoming shows, including one at Arlington’s Galaxy Hut on April 27 and another at Asylum in DC’s Adams Morgan the following day. Check out all of their tour dates on the group’s MySpace page. Before heading to a show, read on to find out how the ladies chose a name, their favorite local spots, and when to expect an album.

On the folk-laced pop of “Roman Candle,” Mark Charles Heidinger compares a friend’s wild youth to a trip into space. The song is a coming-of-age story—complete with stops to Mars and the moon—about a person who emerges battered, bruised, and changed from travel. Heidinger sings in the chorus, “You always had a Roman candle for a heart; / Now you’ve got a firm grip on things from the start; / I suppose that’s a part of growing old.”

Heidinger, originally from Kentucky, has spent time playing with rock outfits the Apparitions and These United States, but for now his time is invested in his own project—Vandaveer. Vandaveer is an old family name that most recently belonged to his great-grandfather and father. Heidinger decided to continue the tradition in 2006, when he moved to DC. “Instead of giving it to a child, I decided to give it to a musical project,” he says. “Songs are kind of like children. You don’t have to change diapers, but you do have to nurture them.”

“Roman Candle,” like all Vandaveer songs, is built around the acoustic guitar, a clever set of lyrics, and Heidinger’s voice, which hits both conversational tones and higher-pitched harmonies with ease. On the spry “However Many Takes It Takes,” an instantly accessible track off 2007’s Grace & Speed, his lyrics bounce with a quality reminiscent of early Dylan. Heidinger isn’t a folk-rock icon, but he has a clear talent for narrative songwriting, within which he’s able to sprinkle bits of insight and wit. Like all the best musicians, he performs the balancing act of borrowing from other artists while making the songs undeniably his own.

Heidinger, who’s signed to French label Alter-K Records, has a new record due out in Europe on April 6. The US full-length is still in the works, he reports, but a seven-inch record will be released stateside in the spring.

Check out Vandaveer when Heidinger plays the Black Cat on March 9. We also recommend his performance on La Blogotheque.

For now, learn more about Vandaveer with our Q&A below.

The folk-rock group the Justin Trawick Group is led by mastermind Trawick, who rocks out on acoustic guitar and lead vocals. He’s been playing in Washington for about five years, and during that time, the other musicians have rotated in and out. The current lineup is composed of Jean Finstad (upright bass), Ben Tufts (drums), Josh Himmelsbach (electric guitar/mandolin), Ken Wenzel (saxophone), and Malik Starx (rhymes). The band has an extended family of musicians who help out on fiddle, cello, and the like on occasion.

Early inspiration for Trawick’s music came from playing at a retirement home on Tuesday nights with the Loudon Bluegrass Association—a group of people who Trawick says were four times his age. With influences such as G. Love and Special Sauce and Joe Purdy, Trawick combines blues, funk, and rock to create a sound that can be sustained through solo shows or with a full band.

He says he plays a variety of shows with usually one other member. “Most of the time it’s at least Jean and I,” he says of his upright bassist. “We have a good rapport onstage. But if we want to get the blood pumping and the crowd dancing, we add the rest of the guys: drums, sax, electric guitar, mandolin, rappers, and backup vocals.”

In the past, Trawick juggled a day job and an evening music career, but he finally quit the job to focus on music. Since then, he’s had time to record with some of his band members in South Carolina, and today he’ll present the final product—Starting Over—at the group’s CD release show at Iota.

If you can’t make it there, don’t fret: The group has shows lined up in Washington through March.

Learn more about Trawick in our Q&A below.

>> See our full Valentine's Day Guide

Ah, Valentine’s Day—the romance, the candles, the chocolates, the . . . Rap-a-Grams? We cracked open the Blogger Beat vault and asked some of our virtual friends about their best and worst Valentine’s Days ever. Some of their stories are downright swoon-worthy; others are just plain awkward. Here’s what they had to say.

Have you had a great or terrible Valentine’s date? Tell us about it in the comments!

Andrea Rodgers of Ask Miss A:
“One of my best dates was a Valentine’s Day dinner several years ago. My boyfriend told me that I had to guess the second gift but that the first gift was a hint. He handed me a box from Hermès. I opened it to discover a beautiful scarf with a map of Paris. I didn’t want to be too presumptuous, so I asked if it had something to do with Paris. It did—my second gift was a trip to Paris!

“On the flip side, one Valentine’s Day was ruined when I got a letter in the mail saying that my divorce was final. It was the end of a long process and really hit home for me that Valentine’s Day.”

Patrick Gavin of FishbowlDC (and soon, Politico):
“I once sent a girlfriend a Rap-a-Gram (rappers rapping a hip-hop Valentine’s message) to her office, but the rappers—at the direction of a misguided front-desk attendant—delivered their performance to a colleague with the same first name. She ended up in tears, thinking it a nasty prank from an ex. As for my girlfriend, she told me I was lucky that the rappers went to the wrong person: ‘I would have dumped you right then and there for pulling that kind of crap on me.’ It was this attitude that would later explain why she became an ex.”