Critic's Pick: Dead Gowns

Although the context is indie rock, the music on Dead Gowns’ new album Vegas is stylistically all over the place. For singer and bandleader Geneviève Beaudoin, the lyrics for Vegas, which detail the end of a friendship in the context of Las Vegas, carry the message of the album. Beaudoin currently lives in Maine, where she grew up, and Vegas examines Beaudoin’s trip out West with wintry precision and exhausted humor. As she sings on the album’s “Vegas Dream”: “The mistake in my hand / ’Cause I had signed for the car rental / Without reading the fine print.” Meanwhile, “Salt Destroyer” lays out the end of a relationship in uncomfortable detail. As it was on Dead Gowns’ 2025 album It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow, the music is post-Big Thief indie-folk, with acoustic guitar interludes and arrangements that build into rock. Vegas and It’s Summer might put you in mind of Wednesday, Waxahatchee and any number of Americana bands that skirt avant-garde folk while remaining accessible. In that sense, Beaudoin is as much like Sierra Ferrell as she is Cat Power, with different musical idioms. Vegas is subtly addictive — Beaudoin and Luke Kalloch’s guitars provide plenty of understated thrills. Lamplight and Justin and the Cosmics provide support Saturday at Drkmttr.

8 p.m. at Drkmttr

1111 Dickerson Pike