Pop Spotlight

Anyone in the vicinity of a radio around 2006 heard “Put Your Records On,” Corinne Bailey Rae’s warm ode to feeling relaxed and fulfilled in the moment. Since then, the song has become a staple […]

It’s easy to imagine Kipp Stone in one of those videos rappers post of the recording process: vibey lighting in the vocal booth, headphones slightly askew, eyes focused just past the mic on the object […]

Mark Linkous was a devotee of the work in progress. Under the banner of Sparklehorse and until his death by suicide in March 2010, the Virginia songwriter crafted a series of exquisitely fractured indie-rock albums […]

Independence looks good on Tinashe. With former label RCA firmly in the rearview, she’s been free to indulge: On 2019’s Songs for You and 2021’s 333, her first albums to be self-released, she swapped out […]

Gaika Tavares has made a career of being difficult to pin down. With each new outing, the south Londoner seems to gain a fresh hyphen: rapper-singer-columnist-curator, producer-activist-promoter. And he has committed wholeheartedly at every turn. […]

For decades, Les Rallizes Dénudés’ legacy has been plagued by myth and misdirection. The Kyoto-based psych-rock ensemble, founded in 1967 by guitarist and vocalist Takashi Mizutani, never recorded a studio album. Instead, their trance-inducing jams, […]

Róisín Murphy has always made a point of standing out. For nearly three decades the Irish diva has pitched herself as your friendly neighborhood pop star; a couture-clad weirdo at odds with her surroundings but […]

On the list of things to know about Beaumont, Texas native Teezo Touchdown, it may take a while before you get to the songs. The nails he wears woven into his braids weigh, supposedly, 15 […]

Babe, Terror is the moniker of the São Paulo-based electronic producer Claudio Katz Szynkier, and the woozy, magnetic music he issues under this alias has attracted pockets of influential admirers. In 2010, Four Tet’s Kieran […]

The first thing you need to know about Sid Sriram is that the guy can really sing. He’s got a lush, honeyed baritone with just a hint of smoldering melancholy, at once sensual and brooding. […]

As a teenager, Romy Madley Croft burned CDs to play in gay clubs, loading them with unabashed floor-fillers like Ultra Naté’s cathartic house hit “Free” and Ian Van Dahl’s elegiac Euro-trance anthem “Castles in the […]

Raphael Rogiński was supposed to be a sculptor, but his guitar got in the way. He practiced more than he slept; blood “was pouring” from his fingers, he told the Polish publication Polityka in 2015. […]