Pop Spotlight

Since the broadcast spectrum was cordoned off and commercialized a century ago, pirate radio stations have been sending their signals like phantoms through the airwaves. Sequestered on anonymous city rooftops and boats anchored offshore, unlicensed […]

Maybe the only thing higher than the bass-driven volume of baile funk is the rate at which it has evolved as a musical form. Since its origins in Brazil in the 1980s as a local […]

Violinist and singer-songwriter Andrew Bird delved into his interior psyche with uncharacteristic candor on 2022’s Inside Problems, balancing introspection with a subdued yet lively combo of collaborators. Though it arrives a year later, his new […]

With his husky voice and murky selection of beats that sound best when the sky is gray, Los brings hard-boiled chronicles of Detroit’s underworld to life. In the west side-bred rapper’s tales of the drug […]

Nina Simone’s legendary 1966 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival has been talked about in small circles with awe for half a century. This is due in part to two things: Her set was so […]

Death metal is music of eternal descent. The guitars are the muck into which the drums pound, while the vocalist growls amidst it all like a drowning beast. It’s a fitting style to be pioneered […]

Mother Tongues make pretty, pristine music about messy, primal emotions: a brand of dream-pop that’s teeming with the sort of thoughts that can keep you up at night. The Toronto group’s debut full-length, Love in […]

Fists and feelings, muscle and moodiness: Kode9 and Burial cut opposite but complementary figures. For years the Hyperdub boss and his label’s elusive leading star have carved out distinct approaches to dance music aimed (respectively) […]

Strange Ranger emerged from lockdown transformed. With a heavier, more expansive sound, the band’s 2021 mixtape, No Light in Heaven, explored the sustained restlessness and dread of a moment when no one knew what the […]

Just a few years ago, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Valee would be a star. He materialized fully formed in 2015 as a new kind of Chicago rapper. Instead of drawing from well-established lanes—Kanye […]

NewJeans arrived on the K-pop scene last year unannounced, a bold move in an industry obsessed with drawn-out lead-ups to artist launches. The day after releasing “Attention,” their breezy, ’90s R&B-indebted debut single, the K-pop […]

Warwick. It was a misprint on the label of her first single. In 1962, the 22-year-old Dionne Warrick was on her way to becoming one of the greatest singers in American history. But her record […]