Pop Spotlight

Erik Satie casts a long shadow. The eccentric French composer’s distinctive approach to melody and harmony has traveled decades downstream from his starting point in the 19th century, imparting lessons not only to musicians in […]

Listening to Galen Tipton can feel like watching a mad scientist at work. Over a number of different projects, the Ohio producer has tossed ideas at the wall with a zany abandon: Last year they released […]

If you have ever searched for the meaning of life in a pop song, you have likely turned to Paul Simon. The sacred comfort of being alone, the creeping anxiety of getting older, the haunted visitations […]

Westside Gunn’s activities as a rapper, A&R, fashionista, and wrestling fan are well-documented, but within the Griselda family, Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher have quietly been putting in work. Since its founding in 2016, Benny’s […]

Last summer, before DD Osama was being played out of every pre-teen’s Bluetooth speaker in the five boroughs, he was a relatively small-time drill rapper from the Sugar Hill area of Harlem. Along with his friend […]

Bar Italia spent their first few years in quasi-anonymity, tinged with the default intrigue that attaches to certain bands who decline to overshare. They bathed in the transitive mystique of association with Dean Blunt, who released […]

In 2014, the 20-year-old Aminé was just another college dropout with a mixtape, trawling for beats on SoundCloud. But rapping over Kaytranada’s single “At All,” his nimble flow served as the perfect foil to the Montreal producer’s […]

Who is Charlotte Cornfield? The video for “Cut and Dry,” a single from her new album Could Have Done Anything, answers the question with a lifelong collage of home video footage. She begins in a children’s choir, […]

Five years ago, Zeerak Ahmed was going through a rough time. The Pakistan-born, U.S.-based musician, artist, and academic—who performs as Slowspin—would spend hours in bed, struggling with a constantly aching throat and a heart that felt […]

The words inked across Blawan’s knuckles—KICK DRUM—offer shorthand to the UK producer’s credo: a paean to the life force that is rhythm, the pulse at the heart of all things. The heart, of course, is also […]

Brandy Clark is one of the finest rhymers in Nashville. In addition to finding unexpected pairings of words, she can use a simple AABB to blur comedy and tragedy, or combine humor with pathos. “Crazy […]

What use is beautiful language in a crisis? On her previous album as Mega Bog, 2021’s Life, and Another, Erin Birgy found breathtaking ways to describe the world around her and the one inside her head. On […]