Pop Spotlight

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 […]

Since the days when Doughboyz Cashout were the hottest names in Detroit rap, the city’s cold and direct drug-dealing chronicles have owed a lot to Atlanta trap forefather Jeezy. These days his influence is everywhere: The way Peezy […]

Nicole Rodriguez is a detective of uncertainty. The Brooklyn-based folk singer who records as Pearla says that although she may write music in order to “solve a mystery,” after completing a song, questions typically outweigh answers: “The […]

This feeling of resignation powers much of This Stupid World, no matter how lively the bulk of its songs may sound. “Every day, it hurts to look,” Kaplan sings early into “Fallout,” one of their […]

Is Anarchist Gospel—whose title hints at political consciousness—Sunny War’s call to action? It’s not an inconceivable notion. The Los Angeles singer/songwriter has hovered on the fringe of polite Americana circles since the early 2010s, parlaying her […]

The Drin make obscure, threatening post-punk that invites a kind of mental projection. When the Ohio six-piece light up their ambient gloom with a flash of in-the-red guitar or the thunderclap of a harsh snare, […]

In the UK, even those who have never heard of RAYE have undoubtedly heard her songs. Signed to Polydor at 17, RAYE (real name Rachel Keen) spent several years writing topline after topline with EDM producers […]

Forty years after the hunt began, Robert Forster has found what he coveted, right in his front parlor. “That striped sunlight sound” he’s called it—as thin, keen, bright, and warm as the Brisbane summers he […]

Since the late 1990s, Loscil—Vancouver’s Scott Morgan—has amassed a sprawling discography numbering dozens of ambient releases. Brisbane, Australia sound artist and Room40 founder Lawrence English is an equally prolific creator of musique concrete that typically falls on […]

Far from the strained dichotomy espoused by the “fuck art, let’s dance” brigade, much of the greatest dance music is shot through with a wildly experimental instinct, from jungle to footwork to singeli’s galloping club […]