There exists a bit of a trope in music that deals with the haunting wails of a generously ranged vocalist singing over blackened synths, eerie atmospherics, and those tell-tale drum machine claps. A few names immediately come to mind: Lykke Li, Phantogram, Lapsley, etc. Every one of them very much different than the other, but […]

How many artists start shaking things up eight albums into an already fruitful career? Austin indie rockers Spoon have always been on the experimental side – their deconstructed garage rock has given birth to underground classics (“The Way We Get By,, “Jonathon Fisk”) as well as bona fide hits (“I Turn My Camera On,” “The […]

Jay Som’s Everybody Works — a personal collage made from beautifully disparate pieces of sound   In a legend that’s become her version of Bon Iver’s fabled forest retreat, Jay Som – aka SF songwriter Melina Duterte – debuted her first full-length after “a few too many glasses of wine on Thanksgiving.” Turn Into consisted of […]

Cloud Nothings will Perform at Teragram Ballroom Los Angeles Feb. 22   For Cleveland quartet Cloud Nothings, a new album is more than just a collection of songs. Over the past few years, bandleader Dylan Baldi has used each of his former solo project’s documents as a turning point for its sound, adding a full […]

Japandroids to Headline Two Los Angeles Dates at Fonda Theatre in Support of New Album ‘Near To The Wild Heart Of Life’   Hit or stand? It’s a question that’s plagued more gamblers than rock bands, but it feels like something Japandroids members Brian King and Dave Prowse might’ve asked themselves before crafting Near To […]

Von Sell is Your New Favorite Electronic Purveyor of Sound — Debut EP is an Addictive Symbiosis of Synths, Drum Machines and Those Titillating Vocals Words: Zoë Elaine You may have heard of the up-and-coming Brooklyn artist Von Sell through his dominance on Hype Machine, or some other outlet of the blogosphere. His sound is […]

Hot New Music: Air Traffic Controller Drop “Black Box” Words: Steven Ward When it comes to the early-beginnings for any band or artist, there are always the few outlying but common stories of adopting nomadic lifestyles, sleeping in cars, selling their belongings, and generally what has become a cliche of the “struggling artist” model. Yet, […]

Brooklyn-based René Kladzyk calls herself a child of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). When she was nine, her father’s auto industry job was relocated, moving them from Michigan to El Paso, where he met her stepmother from the neighboring Ciudad Juárez. Her childhood largely informs her music — her abandoned Michigan home was used […]

Scoring a Netflix series is a rare triumph in itself, but it’s not likely that Survive, the Austin analog synth quartet that soundtracked Stranger Things, knew that glowing red logo would become like Coca Cola in the states, and that those four child actors would virtually turn into today’s Beatles. They also might not have […]

  For many readers, the name Kishi Bashi is not new. Kaoru Ishibashi has been making music under that moniker for a few years, releasing his debut LP, 151a, in 2012. But prior to that, people probably knew him as a member of of Montreal, or even from his days with Jupiter One, a group […]