My crusade to keep my immune system intact throughout the week forced me to awake early on Thursday, have a balanced breakfast, and meditate on my mission to squeeze in as much as possible without succumbing to the promises of free drink. I’m here for the music after all. Free vinyl, though, is hard to turn down, so I headed at high noon to the Team Clermont/MBV party to, alas, no free vinyl. What I did see was Venice Is Sinking, a chamber-rock sextet from Athens, Georgia. It wasn’t all that bad for delicate indie lullabies accented with strings and horns, but not exactly what I needed to jump start my afternoon.

The French, in contrast, did come to entertain. Schmoozing with champagne, pate and tacos, the Gallic delegation began by introducing America to Soko. The chanteuse, who originally gained internet fame with her haunting folk song “I’ll Kill Her,” now has a band behind her. Gone are tiny foibles in her language—she claims to prefer Los Angeles to her native Paris—the finger-picking beauty, and the mystery. Despite the lack of what made her initially charming (defiantly not playing her “hit”), her set was a gypsy-punk version of the traditional Franco-chanson singers, and her flighty stage personality bubbled over into the crowd. Uffie, while not French but of a French label, is only here to prove that what she started cannot be stolen. It has been four years since she first debuted at SXSW and in that time, she must have been holed away chiseling away at her half dim-witted, half post-modernist party rap with a bevy of producers. Her new DJ was raging in the background, and Uffie herself, never stopped dancing. I’m sure she’ll be rocking the same spankies all week—and she’ll have to. In that four years, crop after crop of pre-processed, femme-fronted, pop-hop has surfaced, leaving her one in a million. I was intrigued that here, at 1:00 in the afternoon, she played it off like it was the climax of a late-night party.

In keeping with my French themed day, I walked the incline of E. 6th, to enjoy the natural expanse of the French Legation Museum. In the bright sunshine and tranquil environment, I had little hope Zola Jesus could keep the crowd entertained with her midnight-tar scrapes and empty well atmospherics. Now she’s flanked by a trio of synth towers, which allow her to freely roam the outside like a feral animal let loose. Practice is perfect they say, and this is a girl that is constantly stretching the extremes of her wild voice. Newer songs like “Night” and “Clay Bodies” almost sounded like Madonna goth-pop among the throng there to see her. Impressively she’s quickly becoming a star of some imagined black-clad counterculture—the world needs more pin-ups like her. Real Estate took control of the other half of the Museum, allowing their mellow vibes to drift in the calm winds. They were the perfect accompaniment to a lazy afternoon, and whether they think so or not, they are spearheading a new generation of jam bands, for better or worse.

Peckerheads was the absolute opposite clime to the Legation Museum. Inside, upstairs, it felt like a scummy, dive bar, or for those in the know, an old-school Bernie’s hip-hop night in Columbus. With two stages, these hip-hop rookies took turns playing tight 20-minute sets back to back—nary a dud in the bunch. Two stand-outs were Atlanta’s surrealist rapper Pill and the L.A. by way of Gary, Indiana gangster-redux of Freddie Gibbs. If this were a war, the latter would win out. This wouldn’t be my last dance with hip-hop on this day. More on that later.

My biggest mistake of this Thursday was heading to the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar showcase at the Mohawk. Normally, this would be a no-brainer, but the back-to-back full-bore of Salem and JJ proved to be torturous. I’m a fan of the slow-motion death-funk of Salem, but on stage it looked like a crack house foreclosure. This was a trio of half-awake amateurs who I wouldn’t trust with a $20 bill to buy Mexican dirt weed. The beats were way off, the vocals flat and completely off-key, and the enthusiasm non-existent. Maybe this was their shtick, but that shtick was numbingly depressing, a narcotic lull on the worst drugs you can dredge up in a convenience store. Meanwhile, JJ looked like the type of woman who you’d find employed as a roadside psychic advisor. Draped in drapes, she was a cross between Adele, Jabba the Hut, and Stevie Nicks. I had hoped their anonymity would reveal a timid group of pasty Swedes, but instead what the crowd got was Enya/Enigma karaoke. And that enthusiasm? You’d think she’d at least pick up a guitar or something showing ingenuity. Talk about a sham, this was the worst display of the week so far. Sorry, no pictures. The place was packed, but see it as my favor to you.

So it would have to be the Dum Dum Girls who’d salvage the night. While they took a while to primp and prime their vintage equipment, tailored black lace uniforms, and $200 symmetrical haircuts, once they got going, with a cover of “Play With Fire” and two songs later, a cover of GG Allin’s “Don’t Talk To Me,” you understood what they were trying to accomplish. Basically the Dum Dum Girls have taken the barebones shambolic riffs of the Vivian Girls and quite literally dressed them up to girl-group perfection. I thought breaking out into a finale of “Be My Baby” was inevitable. This is one band I’ll see again—and likely again.