Death By Audio

WILLIAMSBURG, NEW YORK –

Two barely furnished rooms, an eclectic performance calendar, and entry through a gray service door all mark Death By Audio as the DIY space it is, another welcome venue in Williamsburg’s grand tradition of basement gigs and house shows.

Bearded regulars and teenage newcomers wander past exposed pipes and into the wide concrete concert space, where a crowd of long-haired hipsters bop and sway to the indie, noise, or shoegaze tunes offered by the band on stage.

A hallway featuring spray-painted psychedelic eyes leads to a similar dark warehouse space occasionally tricked out with a projector for impromptu dance parties, but more often home to a scattering of tables and a chairs and a shirtless guy with a handlebar mustache selling PBR and Stella to exhausted music journalists, bubbly indie scene girls, and smokers.

Fantastic murals by Brooklyn artists liven up both spaces, from the dueling tigers by the stage to the cartoon devil puking up his uvula in the smoking room.

Frequented by underground indie-pop legends like Japanther, Dan Deacon, and the Dirty Projectors, and not likely to get a phone number any time soon, Death By Audio is an all-ages punk rock bomb shelter that remains the real deal – relevant and entertaining where other live spaces sold out long ago.