Pop Spotlight

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. […]

Growing up, Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir found that the jazz singers of the past, with their rumbling low registers, resonated more deeply with her than charting pop vocalists. As Laufey, her style falls somewhere between the […]

Justice Tripp probably gets a good laugh whenever he’s included in the “next Turnstile?” dialogue—in a lot of ways, Angel Du$t was supposed to be the first one. When Turnstile’s 2015 album Nonstop Feeling was […]

Twenty seconds into the music video for her hit single “good 4 u,” Olivia Rodrigo sits in front of two casting directors, partially obscured behind white text that reminds the viewer what we’re about to […]

Alabaster DePlume cuts a grand figure: ringed, tattooed, bestowed with a splendiferous stage name that also pokes fun at the idea of stage names. Yet the Mancunian singer-poet-saxophonist’s role in the fertile UK jazz scene […]

Techno, in 2023, is far removed from its roots. It is a keyword for lifestyle playlists. It sells tickets to clubs and festivals. It is merch. But techno, for the musician and writer Deforrest Brown […]

In the summer of 2020, the 79-year-old Linda Martell sat in her daughter’s home in Irmo, South Carolina, recounting a phase of life that had faded nearly five decades prior. She sounded at peace but, […]

No album screams “1995” like the soundtrack to Kids, Larry Clark’s voyeuristic, vértité-styled document of New York City youth gone wild, aka the Euphoria of its time. While Kids is best remembered today as the […]

The recording of Spirit of the Beehive’s new EP, i’m so lucky, was, in some senses, a peaceful reprieve from the chaos of years past. The Philadelphia band’s distortion-scuffed early records, like 2014’s The Spirit […]

James Blake’s early EPs had the tension of a pregnant pause, with tracks so spacious that it seemed as if his airy drums and vaporous keys might waft away if you averted your gaze. The […]

When Anjimile was a senior in high school, their conservative Presbyterian parents caught them emptying the household liquor cabinet. In response, they took Anjimile to church every week, even sent them to Christian counseling, hoping […]

Alan Courtis and Davis Grubbs’ dual guitar record Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves zigzags between blown-out riffs and sunny strumming, spiraling and breaking into spiky shards. Exploration is second nature here, as it is across […]