Pop Spotlight

Jeff Rosenstock doesn’t want your money. In the 2000s, as the mastermind of Bomb the Music Industry!, he turned down record label offers, gave away his music for free, and spraypainted his fans’ shirts instead […]

The steady churn of the average Speedy Ortiz album complements singer-songwriter Sadie Dupuis’ vocal approach; she sounds as if she’s thinking through the scrupulously worded one-liners, bits of fridge door poetry, gnomic confessions, and tart […]

Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering should have a familiar ring to it: The title first appeared on a print illustrated by McKay Felt and sold with an exclusive vinyl edition of Open Mike Eagle’s 2022 […]

When Billy Corgan was 9 years old, he stuck his head in the speakers to get closer to the terrible, godlike sound emerging from them. The record on the turntable was Black Sabbath’s Master of […]

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 […]