Pop Spotlight

As a member of Fuck Buttons, the dearly departed electronic noise duo, Andrew Hung helped elevate the experiential over the emotional, imagining Olympian feats of speed and strength far beyond anything that would be considered […]

Will Oldham, now 53, has not sounded young for a quarter-century. Perhaps he last did in the waning days of Palace Music, back when he sang about wanting to “fuck a mountain” with unmistakable élan […]

True to his name, ICYTWAT’s music sounds like it emerged from a frozen hell, cold and intense as an Arctic snowstorm. The Chicago rapper-producer distills the airiness of cloud rap, the blown-out noise of rage […]

In 1992, Warp’s Artificial Intelligence compilation launched a movement of cerebral, Byzantine techno rooted in proggy concept albums by ’70s visionaries like Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd. Informed by the rawness of footwork, contemporary rap, and […]

“My first experience composing was adding a note to the last chord of a Mozart concerto,” Keith Jarrett told Down Beat Magazine. “I’d play it right at the teacher’s house and the other way at […]

The cover of Sonic Youth’s 1985 album Bad Moon Rising is one of indie rock’s most striking pieces of iconography, featuring the silhouette of a scarecrow in a crucifixion pose, topped with an evil-grinning Jack […]

Sometimes the only way to work through the bullshit is to point at your close friends and ask, “Do you all see this, too, or am I bugging?” Their confirmations stop you from feeling like […]

The influence of Latinos in hip-hop culture is especially potent in Texas; it’s hard to say what Houston rap would sound like without the lowrider and slab culture Mexican-Americans helped pioneer. Bay City rapper That […]

If Reason’s inherited anything from his erstwhile TDE labelmate Kendrick Lamar, it’s a bone-deep exhaustion. Across good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar’s weariness underscored his subjects’ dim horizons: bright-eyed boys lapsing […]

John Lydon has made a career out of being contrarian, so it seems less surprising that some fans had written him off as a frustrated old reactionary tarnished by his pro-Trump and pro-Brexit views than […]

Dhanji has spent the past four years working feverishly to probe the limits of his genre-blending iconoclasm and restless, larger-than-life imagination. The seven mixtapes he’s dropped since 2019—five in 2020 alone—are all over the map, […]

Listening to the shadowy, crepuscular compositions on Jon Gooch’s murmuring chasms of nostalgia, it’s hard to fathom this is the same guy behind a screeching dance hit called “I Do Coke.” After developing a reputation […]