Maria BC: Spike Field

Since the 1980s, teams of engineers, anthropologists, and other specialists assembled by the U.S. Government have attempted to warn us about nuclear waste repositories. A field known as nuclear semiotics was developed around the challenge […]

Sparkle Division: Foxy

William Basinski shares a few traits with the late director William Friedkin. The two artists—who both have answered to the nickname “Billy”—have created prolific bodies of work while moving gracefully between disparate genres. Like Friedkin, […]

Offset: Set It Off

Offset was always the black sheep of Migos. The Atlanta rapper was in jail at critical moments during the group’s rise, and before their blockbuster album Culture, he rarely handled hooks or opening verses. “Lost […]

Jane Remover: Census Designated

On Frailty, Jane Remover was a voyager sculpting her own cosmos from her childhood bedroom. A frenetic combo of emo, EDM, and idyllic video game tones, the singer-producer’s 2021 debut rendered a cyber otherworld with […]

The Rolling Stones: Hackney Diamonds

Before he was the drug-smuggling, skull-ring-wearing pirate of rock’n’roll lore, Keith Richards was the Rolling Stones’ amateur accountant. A working-class kid born into mid-war England, the spendthrift immediately began documenting the band’s finances: how much […]

The Drums: Jonny

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 […]

Ken Carson: A Great Chaos

“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.) […]