On the cover of Bird Hour, twin sisters Inez and Ella Johansson have their backs turned as they hunch over a sparsely furnished dollhouse, blissfully unaware of the camera. The music they make together as 7ebra is […]
NxxxxxS: Short Term Agreement
Parisian producer NxxxxxS was among the first wave of artists who shaped the aesthetic of SoundCloud’s phonk scene in the early 2010s, finding equal inspiration in the dreamlike stillness of filmmakers like Tarkovsky or Jarmusch and the […]
Nourished by Time: Erotic Probiotic 2
With their inquisitive pop music under the name Nourished by Time, singer and producer Marcus Brown rummages through the past like an archaeologist. Since 2019, the Baltimore-raised, London-based crooner has released a series of singles exploring […]
Y La Bamba: Lucha
The earliest recordings that Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos made under the name Y La Bamba were stark and immediate by design. The songs on their 2008 debut Alida St. felt captured, not recorded—as if Ramos had grabbed a […]
JFDR: Museum
Jófríður Ákadóttir was at odds with herself. “I can’t tell my feelings apart,” she sings in “Life Man,” a standout from Museum, her third album as JFDR. “Even when I reason with myself/I’m no closer.” […]
Martyna Basta: Slowly Forgetting, Barely Remembering
Martyna Basta was trained as a classical guitarist. On YouTube, you can find videos of the Polish musician as a preteen, tackling her repertoire with uncommon skill and an expressive sensibility unusual for a player […]
Indigo De Souza: All of This Will End
Indigo De Souza used to fear the reaper. Death haunted her first two albums, 2018’s I Love My Mom and 2021’s Any Shape You Take, lurking in all her relationships. Ruminating on our collective impermanence can be […]
Baby Rose: Through and Through
What does it mean to say that a piece of music sounds like it came from another time? That a ghost or an ancient soul created it? That it favors tradition over modernity? That it […]
Braids: Euphoric Recall
You’ll be tempted to turn off Euphoric Recall halfway through the first song. The fifth studio album by Montreal pop experimentalists Braids begins with an inauspicious flashback to Shadow Offering lowlight “Snow Angel”—the same goofy rap cadence, the same stale […]
Jack Harlow: Jackman.
When the cover art for Jackman. dropped, people did not know what to make of Jack Harlow standing there, arms crossed and chest bare. I certainly didn’t. Maybe it’s that Jackman. is as stripped down as the artist: Devoid […]
Smokey Robinson: Gasms
The first thing to know about Smokey Robinson’s Gasms is that it’s a proper album—not a live album, a Christmas album, a standards album, or a celebration of the soul legend’s songbook thronged with younger guests, but […]
Yunè Pinku: Babylon IX EP
Yunè Pinku makes nostalgia-fueled music infused with techno and garage, and airlifted by her gentle, occasionally deadpan vocal melodies, corroborating lyrics like “told you I don’t give a fuck” with a delightful, lilting shrug in her […]