Spokane, Washington’s Bartfest, curated by The Bartlett, arrives this weekend. From September 5-7, Bartfest offers 30+ bands at two venues in downtown Spokane. Tickets are still available, with a weekend pass at $90. Before the inaugural festival begins tomorrow, we’ve got you covered with a preview.

By Ceilan Hunter-Green

Wild Ones Friday, 6pm

This Portland-based band completed their 2012 debut Keep It Safe after almost two years of work, and in spite of a handful of band member hospitalizations and months of re-recordings, the resulting album sounds effortless. On “Golden Twin,” lead vocalist Danielle Sullivan sings “It was a dreaming state even when I was awake,” which describes the band’s serene-sweet pop songs perfectly: the synth on “Curse Over Me” and “Rivals”, coupled with Sullivan’s vulnerable-yet-brassy voice and lyrics like “Make-believing is the only thing I can do” on “18 Mile Island” edge towards the saccharine, but there’s a strong undertow of melancholy in Wild Ones’ songs that keeps them sounding sincere. That finely-tuned balance between dream state and harsh light of day keeps the band centered in their intricate and challenging songs, and guarantees a unrivaled audience experience.

Nite Jewel Sunday, 9pm

L.A.’s Ramona Gonzales performs her 80s-inspired electropop under the name of Nite Jewel, creating music that sounds like shoegaze got confident. Her airy vocals on tracks like “One Second of Love” or “Memory, Man” sound purposefully distant, but when she draws closer on “Am I Real?” and “Clive,” it’s clear that Nite Jewel’s songs rest on the strength of the vocals. Other bands can get distracted by the costume of the 80s, transforming into the musical equivalent of historical fiction, but the songs on Nite Jewel’s One Second of Love make it clear that synthesizers and drum machines are the best way to express Gonzales’ artistic vision, not the artistic vision itself. Much like Grimes and Washed Out, Nite Jewel’s ethereal pop feels weightless and moves at its own slow pace, yet is still highly, infectiously, danceable. It’s a good thing her Sunday night performance will be at Nyne. We’re gonna need a big dance floor.

La Luz Friday, 6:45

Seattle four-piece La Luz mastered surf rock in the two years they’ve been together. Marian Li Pino, Abbey Blackwell, Shana Cleveland and Alice Sandahl recorded their EP Damp Face and full-length It’s Alive in the same trailer park, a year apart; both albums have the freshness and the infectious hooks of the genre but contain more of a sharpness and tension than we’d expect, like Dick Dale walking home alone at night. Most of their songs include close harmonies and loose drum fills made possible by marriage of the bandmates’ impeccable technical abilities and unstoppable joyfulness, which is what gives their live shows their reputation: a total blast.

Hundred Waters —Friday, 10:30

Somewhere musical overlap between Bjork, James Blake, and the Dirty Projectors, Florida band Hundred Waters is developing a powerful sound. The group has changed from an ephemeral acoustic sharpness on 2012’s Hundred Waters EP to a slower, sidling electronica on this year’s The Moon Rang Like A Bell; the evolution may be partly because the new album was produced on Skrillex’s label OWSLA, but the newer style is unmistakably a development of what came before. On tracks like “Innocent” and “Chambers (Passing Train)” Nicole Miglis’s vocals are at center stage, weaving over trancelike, ebbing melodies. “Murmurs” evokes the wistfulness of Blake and FKA Twigs, with Miglis repeating lyrics like “I wish you” and “You used to” before reaching the lines’ conclusions, over a bedrock of bells and driving piano chords. Hundred Waters perfectly marries unease and containment in their haunting songs.

By Jordan Satterfield

No Age

No Age’s long line of work has always efficiently blended their punk and ambient inclinations, and almost a decade into their career they have never seemed to lose creative steam. The Los Angeles natives are at a particularly fascinating point in their career right now, seemingly backing away from the rowdy riffage and huge rhythms that scored them early success. They’ve gone deeper, gotten stranger, and created a sound more singular than any two-member band yet. Still, they haven’t lost their remarkable ability to make the subtle things exciting, working with simplicity to create the loudest, most fun and most excitable art rock ever made.

Normal Babies

Spokane locals Normal Babies are a screaming hiss of guitar fuzz, dripping with sticky bubblegum hooks. Classic indie rock with a noticeable twang, they are electric shock treatment for the pop freak in all of us. In the two years they’ve existed, they’ve sculpted a body of work that doesn’t look like any other in the city, a scuzzy but thoughtful take on the visceral instincts of punk with the loving hand of power pop. They are bringing the garage to the basement–or maybe vice versa.

Glasser

Cameron Mesirow’s work under the name Glasser is as sparkling and bright as the name might imply. Appearing at the forefront of a rising popularity of dreamy electronic music with big ambitions but small sounds, she has somehow managed to be one of the few acts that never exchanged them for big sounds and small ambitions. Comparing her to any of her contemporaries would be unfair, because even if she does have the grooving shimmer of Bat for Lashes and the dark edge of The Knife, she has a personal sound words cannot describe.

Bear in Heaven

Bear in Heaven is one of the more intriguing acts playing at Bartfest this year, even if only because it will be interesting to see what direction they will take their live show. Since getting a relative amount of buzz for the great LP Beast Rest Forth Mouth in 2009, they have gently descended from a deceptively complicated and rewarding experimental rock group, into something moodier and less inspired. The two records they have made since then have been solid but forgettable, lost among the more ambitious and hungrier newcomers. Whether their live show will capture the spirit of their more fertile material or sink into the atmosphere of their newer work will be worth seeing out of curiosity.

Pickwick
While the name Pickwick might look like a bandwagoning folk group, they couldn’t be farther from that distinction. A Seattle band but a Spokane favorite, they blast smooth but raucous blues rock that may or may not sound like it’s coming from a garage. Since releasing their debut LP last year, the tight Can’t Talk Medicine, they have garnered plenty of good press and good will alike, and not just in their home state. The six members of Pickwick absolutely dominate the stage, and turn any show they play into a big party. If that’s your type of thing, make sure to get there early – it’s going to be a tight fit.