Pop Spotlight

In the past decade, Yung Lean has traveled well beyond the novelty-rap origins of “Ginseng Strip 2002,” moving from trance to 2-step to art pop. But he’s never really been able to escape the fact that […]

The love explored on Desire is not the result of a patient and sustainable partnership, but a violent, all-or-nothing immersion. Implicit in the wish in the album’s title, I Want to Turn Into You, is the prospect of losing one’s […]

God and the devil have preoccupied Andy Shauf’s work since the beginning. Sometimes, he paints sympathetic portraits; on 2009’s “The Devil,” he describes a lovesick Satan, clutching a bottle and weeping over the souls he’s […]

When Janet Weiss broke her legs and collarbone in a 2019 car crash, she gained a new appreciation for drumming—not just as an artform, but as a lifeline that could be snipped at any moment. The world […]

Narrow Head’s previous album, 2020’s 12th House Rock, had a grim outlook. It was a document of total depression, its lyrics populated by apathy, self-loathing, and substance abuse. Accordingly, it sounded dirty and grungy, calling back to […]

To establish a more tranquil, soul-bearing afterglow, Kelela recruited OCA, the ambient group comprising Yo van Lenz and Florian T M Zeisig. (She previously included their sparse, abstract music on her 2019 Aquaphoria mixtape, a precursor […]

But Let Her Burn is so, so dry. Largely produced and written with MØ collaborator Stint and Micah Jasper, who worked on Slayyyter’s Troubled Paradise, Let Her Burn is bereft of the subversive and chaotic DIY energy that made hyperpop a destabilizing […]

After more than a decade of dedication to a singular sound and soft-focus vibe—not to mention the marriage, the boat, the name—it may be time to accept that Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley are not doing a […]

SKECH185 is ready to smack you in the face with reality. Every verse crackles with the urgency of Savion Glover’s speech at the end of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, the weight of racism and capitalism bending him to the […]

The mid-2000s were an explosive era for women in R&B. The decade of shiny-suit rap had elevated hook queens to star status, while the maturing neo-soul movement was becoming more playful and varied. The energy […]

Well before Brian Eno recruited Laraaji for the third installment of his epochal Ambient series, 1980’s Day of Radiance, the man born Edward Larry Gordon already had his own fully formed sound. Still, Laraaji’s origin […]

This Is Why is front-loaded with similar lyrical missteps and ironies that would make Alanis Morissette roll her eyes: “No offense/But you got no integrity,” Williams sings with a smirk unearned by the weak disses […]