Flowers for the Dead open Red Brick Weekend in a Takoma Park church

The D.C. alt-rock trio behind Magnolia and the First Place EP plays Takoma Park Presbyterian Church next Friday, with the night's music starting at 6:30 p.m.

Next Friday's first D.C.-area rock show of the night won't be in a club. It's at 6:30 p.m., inside a church on Tulip Avenue in Takoma Park, and the band at the top of the bill has spent the past few years making some of the most quietly stubborn guitar music in the region.

Flowers for the Dead play Takoma Park Presbyterian Church on Friday, Nov. 13, at 6:30 p.m. DICE lists the night as the Red Brick Weekend 2026 Friday Main Show, with "Flowers for the Dead & more," and also sells a weekend pass for Friday and Saturday, Nov. 13–14. The date is on the band's own Bandcamp tour list too. The church is at 310 Tulip Avenue, just over the line in Maryland.

The band calls itself the D.C.-based alternative rock project of guitarist and singer Jessie Szegö, with Ten Bears on drums. The bass chair has changed over the years. The catalog tells you how much ground they've covered in a short time: *Nova* in 2021, then a second LP, *Magnolia*, in 2024.

The record that best shows where they are now came next. In summer 2025 the trio put out *First Place*, a four-song EP that Flood Magazine premiered about eight months after *Magnolia*. It opens with "Tiny Beanie" and closes with "Perfect View." Szegö told Flood that "Perfect View" started out as a simple love song about finding your person and turned into something about isolation, and about acceptance within a community.

A love song about finding your person that turned into one about isolation and finding your people.

This year they've kept releasing music. "My Misery Is Mine" followed the EP, and in July Vanyaland heard the latter as a song built around a shared, low-grade malaise. It's a good description of what the band does well: songs about feeling stuck that somehow leave you less alone.

You've probably passed them on a local bill already. Flowers for the Dead have played the D.C. market more than anywhere else in our records, 16 shows, from Comet Ping Pong in April 2025 to Songbyrd. A church is a different setting. The early start makes it an easy first stop on a Friday, and a sanctuary is a fitting place for a band whose best songs are about the slow work of finding your people.

Grab a ticket or the weekend pass on DICE and go early. If Red Brick Weekend is what it looks like, a neighborhood putting its own bands in front of its own people, Flowers for the Dead are the right band to start it.

Sources: Flowers for the Dead at Takoma Park Presbyterian Church (JamBase) (jambase.com); DICE tickets: Red Brick Weekend 2026 Friday Main Show (link.dice.fm); DICE: Takoma Park Presbyterian Church tickets and events (dice.fm); DICE: Flowers for the Dead artist page (dice.fm); Flowers for the Dead on Bandcamp (fftd.bandcamp.com); Nova, Bandcamp (fftd.bandcamp.com); Flood Magazine: Flowers for the Dead, 'Perfect View' first listen (floodmagazine.com); Songbyrd DC: Flowers for the Dead (songbyrddc.com); Vanyaland: Flowers for the Dead craft a common malaise in 'My Misery Is Mine' (vanyaland.com); Flowers for the Dead at Comet Ping Pong, Apr 13, 2025 (JamBase) (jambase.com); Wikimedia Commons: Takoma Park Presbyterian Church (commons.wikimedia.org)