Unlike many of 2009s breakout indie bands, Vancouvers Japandroids werent hanging onto their youth out of nostalgia. For this duo, it literally sounded like a matter of life and death. While the chaot...
Phil Elverum, the force behind the Microphones and Mount Eerie, lives in a small town of just under 20,000 people town called Anacortes in Washington, about 64 miles outside of Seattle. As he told Br...
Even the best relationships acquire baggage. Circa 1999, Def Jux forged a fiefdom from the ashes of vinyl champs Fondle Em and the soon-to-be-ruined promise of Rawkus. "Independent as fuck" w...
Does a rapper need to make a truly great album before hes considered one of the best alive? Its a question with no objective answer. Some rappers are phenomenal with verses and punchlines but have no...
Beach Houses decision to call this record Bloom is almost too perfect. Over the course of four albums thats exactly what this band has done. Two people from Baltimore started by making incense-smelli...
Darren Cunningham is one of those dance music producers who has spent most of his career moving away from the dancefloor. The London-based artists first two albums as Actress, 2008s Hazyville and 201...
Death Grips are angry. Its unclear why. But their thirst for vengeance, their monomaniacal desire to visit fiery destruction on the powers-that-be, is crystal-clear on The Money Store, even if nothin...
Spiritualizeds best album since the defining 1997 monument Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is not so much a drastic transformation as much as an acute refinement. Hes still singing his ...
Chromatics first turned heads with 2007s stunning Night Drive, an album of smokey, neon-noir electro that dropped just as a resurgence of interest in the slow, dreamy dance-pop subgenre known as Ital...
The Deerhunter guitarist/songwriters second solo LP is unerringly tuneful and immediate, the sort of thing that seems unambitious until you step back and ask yourself just how many records actually m...
Five years after the moody Wincing the Night Away and two releases by his Broken Bells project, James Mercer returns to the Shins energized and with his songwriting prowess intact. Its a triumphant r...
Open Your Heart is both tremendously physical and friendly, knocking you on your ass one second and then immediately helping you back up to put a beer in your hand. While theres a surface shift in at...
On her second album, the California singer and songwriter Julia Holter pulls in references and sounds from everywhere and shapes them into music thats both haunting and life-affirming. Her work, whic...
The debut album by this young doom metal outfit from Arkansas is startlingly well realized, with deep, sludgy guitar textures and proggy songs that are complemented by a sparkling melodic sensibility...
Seattle songwriter Mike Hadreas sophomore album addresses personal traumas like physical abuse, drug addiction, and desperation, but unlike his 2010 debut Learning, a light shines through the darknes...
Kurt Wagner and co.s masterful 11th album is one of the best to emerge from their strange, modest universe. Nothing on Mr. M is designed to pop, not in the conventional sense of the word. To describe...
While kicking around Brooklyns jangle-pop scene, multi-instrumentalist songwriter Frankie Rose was the most charismatic member of Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and Dum Dum Girls, respectively. On her...
Grimes is the one-woman cyborg-pop project of Montreals Claire Boucher. Visions, her compulsively listenable third album, mixes clean, Aphex Twin-esque atmospherics with the immediacy of straight-up ...
A year after the somewhat predictable Street Halo, the London producer returns with another three-track EP, a collection that pretty much breaks every Burial precedent there is, from the 12-minute lo...
In the past two years, John Talabot has become an exemplar of a new breed of producers working at the intersection of deep house, disco, and indie pop, and he has carved out his own niche somewhere b...
Schoolboy Q is the most promising foot soldier in Kendrick Lamars Black Hippy crew, a small circle of talented rappers currently reinventing West Coast hip-hop. His dark and moody second LP is a sump...
Now a roaring, technically adept band rather than Dylan Baldis bedroom solo project, Cloud Nothings undergo a total overhaul on their bracing Steve Albini-recorded second LP. Its an aggressive, catch...
On their full-length debut, the New York duo of Praveen Sharma (Percussion Lab, Braille) and Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) nimbly incorporate current bass music trends and arrive at a sound-- politely...
Kate Bushs second album of original material in the last 17 years is haunting and gorgeous, filled with lengthy story-songs that unspool with her characteristic imagination and wit. 50 Words for Snow...
Drake is the perfect avatar for the era of reality television and 24-hour celebrity news, and his new album finds him putting his talent to use on his strongest set of songs so far. While Thank Me La...
In the past, Oneohtrix Point Never-- the main project of the busy producer Daniel Lopatin, also of 1980s pop revivalists Ford & Lopatin-- had drones and moods and thematic movement that hinted at...
The first mixtape from Rakim Mayers sidesteps the usual pitfalls of the heavily anticipated debut. Rockys ear for beats is worthy of Rick Ross or early Game. Courtesy of Clams Casino, Burn One, Beaut...
Deerhunter frontman Bradford Coxs self-doubt tends to manifest itself in his solo project Atlas Sound, where he often feels small, alone, and cut adrift from the world. That sense of isolation still ...
Cleaner, sharper, and stronger than Real Estates 2009 self-titled debut, the classic-sounding Days is like a single idea divided into simple statements-- a suite of subtle variations on a theme. No n...
Since 2003 breakthrough Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, M83 mastermind Anthony Gonzalez has created increasingly colossal records. His latest, a double album, could be his best record, its 7...
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