We are now unzipping our sweatshirts at Georgetown Music Fest. The sun is out! Just an hour and half earlier it appeared impossible.

Also, very good rocking has commenced. With the sun, women have brought GMF to life.

The sun started shining as moody three-piece rock band Megasapien played the Ranier stage. Megasapien's singer is a petite woman who both plays guitar and sings like Jeremy Enigk from Sunny Day Real Estate, '90s NW pioneer of what is now called "emo" rock. As people put on sunglasses, she murmered verses and threw her voice off cliffs for big power-chord choruses. It was slow, heavy rock engineered to sound like there was a tight emotional coil underneath its surface.

I watched Megasapien and then walked around the corner to catch Seattle rock singer/guitarist Carrie Akre. She played solo with a lightly distorted electric guitar plugged into a small Fender amp. Later, she was joined by a male back-up guitarist. She has a tuneful, flinty rock voice, and used it confidently on power ballads. We know Ms. Akre from her '90s bands Goodness, Hammerbox, and the Rockfords, all alternative rock born from people who remember what "alternative rock" used to mean. It was bright, and even a little hot, while she played the out of the way Georgetown stage for an appreciative audience of people in black glasses with full-sleeve tattoos.

Back around the corner from Carrie Akre played another female-led local rock group called Kindness Kind. They did carefully arranged, very pretty pop rock. As I write this blog, their webpage is open on another tab: www.thekindnesskind.com. I suggest you check it out. What I heard was "indie"-sounding with an emphasis on writerly compositon, but not pretentious.

Inside All City Coffee blogging, I can hear The Bad Things plod through a Zorba the Greek-style 2/4 rave-up. It's minor-key and notably male-voiced. I think it's all men from here on out.

Whoa- here's Lords of the North sludge-ing through some drop-D tuning right next to me on the Stockhose Stage. Very manly.

Sets to catch: Cancer Rising and Godspeed, both local hip-hop, and Helmet, '90's progenitors of what Wikipedia calls "thinking man's metal."