Pop Spotlight

For all the sweetness of the Drums’ music, they’ve always sounded crushed. As the leader—and now sole member—of the band, Jonny Pierce has written hundreds of spare, summery indie pop songs full of self-recrimination and […]

Jay Worthy and Kamaiyah are both California stalwarts committed to keeping tried-and-true West Coast music alive. Worthy’s smooth, almost monotone reflections on street life tend to be couched in stately G-funk and wavy samples, while […]

“Fuck,” Ken Carson mutters on “Jennifer’s Body,” as KP Beatz and Lucian’s cybernetic beat starts, stops, starts, stops, like a heaving spacecraft that just needs a good kick. (He said it’s a Green Day reference.) […]

Tex Crick has a rare ability to sound wistful without any sense of pain or longing. On Sweet Dreamin’, the Australian songwriter’s second LP for Mac DeMarco’s record label, his languid vocals take on a […]

When the physical world is stifling, the internet beckons. It’s a sinister trap, one Sarah Morrison knows all too well. On “This Sorry Day,” the second track off the Tallahassee singer-songwriter’s subdued debut album, Attachment […]

In the Odyssey, the lotus eaters existed on a small island, stuck in a dreamy stupor. They subsisted off the daze-inducing lotus fruit and spent their days consumed with narcotic pleasure. Vanishing Twin embrace a […]

A little over halfway through MIKE’s new album, Burning Desire, a recent moment of joy in the New York rapper’s life takes center stage. During an interlude that begins on the title track, TAKA, MIKE’s […]

Westside Gunn has spent his career treating rap music like a high-end commodity through keen juxtaposition: Vivid bars about cooking and selling drugs live side by side with scenic tours of his closet and passport, […]

Devstacks might as well have a PhD in Chief Keef studies. The Springfield, Massachusetts producer is part of a SoundCloud-based community that builds on moments of instrumental grandeur scattered across Keef’s discography (see loosies like […]

For the past few years, Ella Williams has been relentless. The Massachusetts-born, Chicago-based songwriter released her debut album as Squirrel Flower in 2020 and then, after contracting COVID and recovering, recorded and released a follow-up […]

Once upon a time, Bad Bunny was the king of a movement called Latin trap. Seven years ago, before the Rolling Stone covers and the Gucci ads with Kendall Jenner, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was […]

How much would you let love change you? That’s the dare that singer and songwriter Jamila Woods tosses inside the circle on her sprawling new album Water Made Us. Across 17 songs, she considers love […]