Pop Spotlight

Music suffuses the films of Jim Jarmusch, sometimes not so much complementing as completing them. He has prominently cast Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, RZA, GZA, Meg White, John Lurie, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Briefly, he played no wave at peak CBGB. And he’s always […]

Around 15 years ago, a user named “airloaf” began uploading video clips of evangelical church services to YouTube. Picture flailing arms and rapturous uplift—swooning exorcisms, devotees collapsing, pastors with cordless mics and wild dance moves. […]

It’s a bold move to title your first album Legacy, but by 2013 Kavain Space had earned the right. The Chicago producer, better known as RP Boo, was already legendary in his hometown, having spent the mid […]

Seattle-raised vocalist Highway is the kind of rapper-producer who understands that well-curated vibes are their own art form. He orbits the same universe as many other somber rap-crooners, but he’s not as emotionally distant as Dro […]

Bristol’s Will Yates makes music inspired by folk rituals and ley lines—music of landscape and weather, of legend and myth. Recording under the aliases Half Nelson, O.G. Jigg, and, mainly, Memotone, he has made records based […]

Madison McFerrin has many sides: She is lonely, she is scared, she is godly, she is trying. On her debut full-length, I Hope You Can Forgive Me, the Brooklyn singer-songwriter explores the joys and pitfalls of […]

If you’re worried about the fate of your favorite musicians in the face of AI, consider the case study that is Markus Popp. In the early 1990s, recording under the name Oval, Popp became synonymous with […]

Madeline Johnston and Angel Diaz make music at the intersection of beauty and sorrow. In Johnston’s pensive, minimalist work as Midwife, she finds moments of soul-stirring radiance amid thick clouds of synth and guitar. As the […]

The title of Lucy Liyou’s second album, Dog Dreams (개꿈), comes from an elastic Korean concept of the fleeting nonsensical visions we have, whether they’re quaint reveries or ghoulish fears. Liyou’s new record considers both with gut-wrenching […]

It was a provocative thought: What if, Daft Punk wondered, we take our retro flirtations and lean all the way in? Is it the moment to fully consummate a Pharrell connection that stretches back over 12 years? […]

For a while, any band with a Big Muff pedal and a tower of stacked Marshalls was stamped as a Dinosaur Jr. understudy, and some of them courted the comparison firsthand. But lately, the tides have […]

Beyond the Juicy Couture rhinestones and TMZ flashbulbs of 2000s tabloid culture lay another, cheekier way of keeping up appearances: high glam. Arty flamboyance strutted through the aughts pop industrial complex, offering up outré, high-fashion […]