If there’s any definitive sign that the #TimesUp movement currently broadening out from sexual assault to a larger discussion of female equality hasn’t reached the music industry with the fervor of the film world, it was this year’s Grammys.

White is achromatic. It absorbs and reflects all color, then scatters into visible wavelengths of white. As Kelela Mizanekristos glided onstage Wednesday night at the Gatsby, stark in a white, quilted coat, the second generation Ethiopian-American from D.C. did just that.

Like their Crown Prince and Princess, Oslo’s Sassy 009 probably feel most at home in a club setting, which Wednesday night turned out to be Elysium.

Halfway through Hoodlem’s 8pm set at House of Because on Wednesday, she removed a puffy jacket emblazoned with her logo and revealed a black tank-top with sparkling silver letters that read “fire.”

Superorganism’s Wednesday night debut at Stubb’s looked and sounded like a Technicolor cartoon spaceship, with teen vocalist Orono Noguchi at the helm as a pint-sized Captain Kirk.

Group identities can be brandished on a bumper sticker or asserted by a new haircut. In a midnight Tuesday set at Sidewinder’s outdoor stage, Shamir Bailey wore his on a jean jacket.

“Peace be with you,” Alan Sparhawk intoned quietly in concluding Tuesday evening’s SXSW showcase in St. David’s Sanctuary, a blessing the Low co-founder offered sincerely following a particularly intense and at times bizarrely unexpected evening in the church.

“Cops can’t stop the rock!” So declared Partner’s Lucy Niles at Sahara Lounge on Tuesday afternoon after permit problems forced She Shreds magazine’s day party to relocate from Kinda Tropical following Shamir’s set. The scramble meant shortened set times and cancellations, but the packed Eastside soul shack thrummed with the triumph of pulling it off.

People play music and form bands for all kinds of reasons: fame, fortune, sex. The primary compulsion remains self-expression, of course, the need to say something through art, even if no one who hears or understands what that something may be.