Empty Country: Empty Country II

A song by Joseph D’Agostino can spin in a dozen different directions. Take “Erlking,” an early standout from his second album as Empty Country. Named after a murderous elf from European folklore, it opens with […]

Kevin Abstract: Blanket

For some Brockhampton fans, the band’s farewell album felt like a fakeout, if not a betrayal. The form-breaking rap collective’s previous full lengths had been defined by both their abundance and their communal spirit—each was […]

Ian Sweet: Sucker

Ian Sweet’s new album, Sucker, opens with mortal fear. “What if I die?” Jilian Medford wonders; after a piano chord rings out for a moment, she continues: She’s afraid she’ll pass “with this song in […]

Wild Nothing: Hold

On May 25, 2010, Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks released a pair of homespun debuts by bands whose re-interpretations of first-wave indie pop would help spearhead a wave of millennial DIY nostalgists. Since then, Beach Fossils and […]

Maria BC: Spike Field

Since the 1980s, teams of engineers, anthropologists, and other specialists assembled by the U.S. Government have attempted to warn us about nuclear waste repositories. A field known as nuclear semiotics was developed around the challenge […]

Sparkle Division: Foxy

William Basinski shares a few traits with the late director William Friedkin. The two artists—who both have answered to the nickname “Billy”—have created prolific bodies of work while moving gracefully between disparate genres. Like Friedkin, […]

Offset: Set It Off

Offset was always the black sheep of Migos. The Atlanta rapper was in jail at critical moments during the group’s rise, and before their blockbuster album Culture, he rarely handled hooks or opening verses. “Lost […]

Jane Remover: Census Designated

On Frailty, Jane Remover was a voyager sculpting her own cosmos from her childhood bedroom. A frenetic combo of emo, EDM, and idyllic video game tones, the singer-producer’s 2021 debut rendered a cyber otherworld with […]

The Rolling Stones: Hackney Diamonds

Before he was the drug-smuggling, skull-ring-wearing pirate of rock’n’roll lore, Keith Richards was the Rolling Stones’ amateur accountant. A working-class kid born into mid-war England, the spendthrift immediately began documenting the band’s finances: how much […]

The Drums: Jonny

For all the sweetness of the Drums’ music, they’ve always sounded crushed. As the leader—and now sole member—of the band, Jonny Pierce has written hundreds of spare, summery indie pop songs full of self-recrimination and […]

Ken Carson: A Great Chaos

“Fuck,” Ken Carson mutters on “Jennifer’s Body,” as KP Beatz and Lucian’s cybernetic beat starts, stops, starts, stops, like a heaving spacecraft that just needs a good kick. (He said it’s a Green Day reference.) […]

Tex Crick: Sweet Dreamin’

Tex Crick has a rare ability to sound wistful without any sense of pain or longing. On Sweet Dreamin’, the Australian songwriter’s second LP for Mac DeMarco’s record label, his languid vocals take on a […]

Sarah Morrison: Attachment Figure

When the physical world is stifling, the internet beckons. It’s a sinister trap, one Sarah Morrison knows all too well. On “This Sorry Day,” the second track off the Tallahassee singer-songwriter’s subdued debut album, Attachment […]