Pop Spotlight

By 1991, Too $hort was the foul-mouthed face of Oakland rap. He was fresh off a massive three-album run—1987’s Born to Mack, 1988’s Life is…Too Short, 1990’s Short Dog’s in the House—that went a long […]

Leo Takami finds joy in simple melodies played in a straightforward manner. Though his compositions often lead somewhere unexpected, the jazz guitarist and pianist keeps his tunes as rounded and safe as kindergarten toys. Like […]

A minute or so into the opening song on UK electronic musician Pangaea’s Changing Channels, something strange happens. Over a rubbery, insistent bassline and crisply swinging drums, an unidentified vocalist is spitting out a string […]

New York City courses through Parquet Courts’ discography. The quartet that tapped the streets’ pulse on 2021’s “Walking at a Downtown Pace” has long captured the full spectrum of life in the city, from heady […]

Hemlocke Springs explains her creative process as a haphazard exercise with only three steps: collapse into neurosis, keyboard smash on your preferred DAW, and spill your guts. It’s a characteristically insular approach for a young […]

Out and About, the fourth album from Rotterdam quartet Lewsberg, is a collection of hypnotic, talky post-punk that hinges entirely on atmosphere. It’s music for small rooms with weird lighting, old churches where you have […]

Once when Sufjan Stevens was in college, he brought an injured crow to the biology lab to help save its life. “You are doing the universe a great favor,” a woman who ran an animal […]

On Cherry Glazerr’s first new album in four years, I Don’t Want You Anymore, Clementine Creevy pushes herself to extremes. As a lyricist, she explores devotion and surrender, apathy and dependency. As a musician, and […]

Slow Pulp know how to ground extreme emotion. Their shoegaze-tinged country rock can transform euphoria into a mellow CBD gummy high, anchor combustible bursts of rage, and buoy depression. Their self-produced 2020 debut, Moveys, was […]

Maxo’s music, especially as of late, has felt like those coming-of-age movie scenes where the frenzied young protagonist meets someone they aspire to become—picture Benny “the Jet” Rodriguez and Babe Ruth—and realizes that today’s stressors […]

KMRU is not the call sign of a radio station, though it could very well be. The calendar of this imaginary broadcaster would vary in format and genre. Shows would change frequently: evolve, morph, disappear. […]

Arepa Mixtape, the new record from MJ Nebreda, seems designed to leave blue denim stains on basement walls. The Peruvian-Venezuelan producer and singer’s newest release is a clubby reggaeton thrill, one that revels in the […]

Shone a Rainbow Light On, by the new instrumental folk trio Setting, evokes the dark, infinite expanse of the night sky with its shimmering stars. The joint project of multi-instrumentalists Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, and […]

Backwoodz Studioz engineer Willie Green has said he wants people to have a “physical reaction” when they listen to one of the label’s records. Last year, Green and Armand Hammer’s Elucid assembled a crew of […]

There is music that feels like it was born out of a white-hot spark of inspiration, and there is music that feels like it has come together gradually, like accrued wisdom; the music that Jack […]

Nothing Lasts Forever may seem like a peculiar choice of an album title for Teenage Fanclub, a group devoted to preserving the sound and sensibility of the guitar-pop explosion of the mid-1960s. Six-string traditionalists even […]

Rachel Brown keeps their foot on the gas pedal. In addition to making experimental art-rock as one half of Water From Your Eyes, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter has uploaded over 80 solo releases to Bandcamp as […]

Daniel Lopatin is hung up on the past: how it shapes us, and how we shape it in turn; how the songs on the radio of your parents’ minivan can frame your perception of the world, […]