Pop Spotlight

With Bandcamp as their roadmap to discovery and YouTube as their confessional, artists like Soccer Mommy, Clairo, and Jay Som represent a new breed of bedroom-pop musician: introverts who sing confessional lyrics into their Macbooks while turning hazy […]

As a band supposedly made up of cartoon characters, Gorillaz could theoretically do anything: record in outer space; make hip-hop beats out of fish teeth; revive the lambada—an unlimited horizon. Which makes it slightly frustrating that […]

If Nappy Nina were a comic book character, her thought bubbles would fill whole panels. In her music, the Oakland-raised, Brooklyn-based rapper’s thoughts flow in arcing run-ons that skip from prayers to confessions to flexes. Her […]

Screaming Females don’t immediately seem like a band that’s been around for 18 years, but perhaps their longevity can be chalked up to their consistency. They’ve maintained the same power trio lineup, and all eight […]

Skrillex is what tech folks would call a disruptor. For decades, there was only dance music: a patchy network of underground nodes and connections that made sporadic incursions into the mainstream. Then, sometime in 2010, […]

In 1981, a young man sat quietly in Conny Plank’s legendary Cologne recording studio, watching Japanese singer Phew record her debut album. She had been whisked from Osaka to Germany at only 20 years old […]

New York City and London share history, slang, and connections as cultural and African diasporic hubs, and for decades, hip-hop has strengthened the bond. Early stars like Slick Rick and the late MF DOOM were born in greater […]

crushed make music as cliché as that first morning when you wake up next to someone new. Stupid. Excited. Hungover. Phone battery at 10 percent. But then the light hits your face. Was the sun […]

Dylan Khotin-Foote has been bobbing between lo-fi house and moth-eaten ambient music for nearly a decade now. On four albums released between 2014 and 2020, the Canadian electronic musician known simply as Khotin established a remarkably […]

Lane Shi sings with the voice of a shapeshifter. Flitting from croon to shriek with ritualistic caprice, the Haining-born vocalist played Boston basements with Berklee art punks DENT before graduating in 2016; these days, her […]

There are a lot of ways not to say what you meant. Maybe you can’t find the words; maybe you just can’t choke them out. Maybe their intended recipient isn’t here and never will be. […]

U.K. polymath Wesley Joseph’s psychedelic, existential ballads play like a score for an Oscar-nominated thriller. Paired with hazy production, his diaristic words of self-reflection and self-deprecation ring out loud. The London-based singer, rapper, and producer has […]