Pop Spotlight

Jason Lytle is an unlikely spokesman for our electronic companions. As an amateur skateboarder growing up in the Northern California city of Modesto, the Grandaddy frontman aspired to a career working in the elements: a […]

A level-up record isn’t just a band’s best yet, or even the record where a band finally realizes its promise. It’s a record that taps some previously unrecognized potential, surpassing any reasonable expectations even the […]

In January 2013, synth musician Steve Hauschildt wrote a series of messages on Twitter to share some sad news. His band of seven years, the beloved Cleveland-based trio Emeralds, had come to an end. He […]

Before he became a queer disco icon, Sylvester had already cast himself in a movie “in which he was the fabulous star.” Between joining the Disquotays—a glamorous gang of teenage drag queens and trans women—and […]

Four songs into his very ambitious, very serious self-titled album, Zach Bryan anticipates some criticism. “Do you ever get tired of singin’ songs/Like all your pain is just another fuckin’ singalong?” he asks in “East […]

Has there ever been a genre name that sounded more eager to be shoved into a locker than math rock? Even the bands who spearheaded the sound—Polvo, Don Caballero, Ruins—distanced themselves from the term, rejecting […]

​​Sam Barker possesses the kind of restless intelligence that’s best expressed within a set of parameters. The Berlin-based producer and Leisure System boss is fond of approaching music through the lens of behavioral science, both […]

“I told them I’m a genius” is succinct and grand as an opening salvo, and Burna Boy is nothing if not grand. This is the lyric that introduces I Told Them…, the Nigerian superstar’s fifth […]

The Japanese concept of mono no aware, roughly translated as “the pathos of things,” has gone on a curious journey through the music underground. Invoked almost two decades ago by William Basinski to describe a […]

After landing a series of crossover hits, Cypress Hill turned to Indiana Jones for inspiration. Where their early records pulsed with blunted humor and buzzed paranoia, 1995’s Cypress Hill III: Temples of Boom was slower […]

Earl Sweatshirt, rap’s professor emeritus of dread, has inspired a whole subgenre of rusted, wavy, micro rap songs best absorbed on headphones with a hoodie pulled over. That Earl would become one of the many […]

Dominican multi-instrumentalist Diego Raposo plays with contrast on YO NO ERA ASÍ PERO DE AHORA EN ADELANTE, SÍ. Melding jungle breakbeats, fuzzed-out electric guitar, and frantic bass with melancholy downtempo production, Raposo’s new LP, which […]