Pop Spotlight

The Disney starlet-to-pop star pipeline can be a delicate transition to navigate for any budding musician. Over the years, we’ve seen Britney Spears, Hilary Duff, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus face the daunting […]

After five years, Speedy Ortiz is finally back. Today, the Philadelphia-based quartet led by Sadie Dupuis released Rabbit Rabbit. We can confidently say that this is the group’s finest work yet. Speedy Ortiz spent time […]

If Paerish were based in the U.S., its journey would have been much easier. The four-piece, which recently released its new album, You’re In Both Dreams (And You’re Scared), would have been better able to […]

Less arty than My Bloody Valentine, less angsty than Swervedriver, less cheeky than Lush, and rarely as loud as any of them, Slowdive was the beautiful, beating heart of the ‘90s U.K. shoegaze scene for […]

If “Not Giving Up” by Pleasure Pill sounds more refined than most bands’ third songs, there’s a good reason for that. Even if they’re technically “new,” the San Diego quintet has been around the local […]

Young Summer is a wonderful singer, musician, and songwriter who has been banging on the door of success/stardom — that’s what the door’s called — for nearly 10 years. But it’s a very big and […]

Even for the esoteric Chester Watson, there’s no greater knowledge than self-awareness. This becomes evident across his latest project, fish don’t climb trees, which takes its title from a quote Albert Einstein may or may […]

Call it the latest surreality of Taylormania ‘23. Next week, Taylor Swift’s meticulously re-recorded “new” album, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), will become the pop deity’s 12th consecutive No. 1 album, passing Jay-Z for the longest […]

A lot can change in a year. Just ask Donna Missal. Last year, the singer-songwriter was dropped by her label, severely depressed, and was living out of her car. This year, she’s back on her […]

Forgive me, but let’s open with some math. Depending on what sounds you consider canonical—never an easy decision in Frank Zappa world—the enigmatic composer released somewhere around 60 albums in his lifetime. His first, the […]

That Mexican OT (Outta Texas) was mumbling raps before he could write them. When he failed grade school classes, he remembers his mother saying, “Fuck that school — my son is going to be a […]

You have to be a total maniac to go to a festival focused on uncommercial, loud, raucous, confusing music in the summer in Austin, Tx. Hopefully, like me, you are a total maniac. Oblivion Access, […]

Welcome to Difficult Fun! Each month, SPIN will spotlight the best punk on the planet and discuss it here, with the ambition of challenging preconceived notions of what the four-letter word actually means and, ideally, […]

In the past year, Mexican singer/songwriter Peso Pluma has gone from an unknown to the second most-streamed Latin artist on Spotify, trailing only Bad Bunny. His trap-infused take on the age-old folk song form of […]

Ian Shelton always gets right to the point. It’s what people like the most about him. He formed Militarie Gun during the pandemic, recording demos on his iPhone, and visiting his practice space every day. […]

McKinley Dixon spent his childhood and adolescence searching for community. The rapper and poet bounced back and forth between Maryland and Queens, New York as a child, feeling untethered from both, alienated and in need […]

If Protomartyr’s 2020 album Ultimate Success Today was a meditation on our broken world, its newest release, Formal Growth in the Desert, is an exploration of healing (frontman Joe Casey’s mother died from Alzheimer’s in […]

Just three weeks after she graduated high school in 2020, Hannah Jadagu randomly received a DM on Instagram from Tony Kiewel, co-president of Sub Pop Records, the storied indie label that was home to Nirvana […]