Exclusive Song Premiere: ‘Crosswinds (feat. Sean Nicholas Savage),’ SoftSpot
May 6, 2014
SoftSpot may share sonic DNA with experimental pop artists like Grimes and Blue Hawaii, but there’s a naturalism to the trio’s sound that’s all their own.
Discovery: Nat and Alex Wolff
April 29, 2014
Along with their ongoing musical career, the Wolff brothers are both gaining momentum as dramatic actors.
Exclusive Album Premiere: ‘Together We Shine,’ The New Division
March 17, 2014
Synth-pop act The New Division may have started as a home-recorded outfit in Riverside, CA, but its lead-singer/chief creative-force John Glenn Kunkel has since expanded his band’s blend of New Wave and house to very un-bedroom-like proportions.
Exclusive Song Premiere: ‘Phantom,’ Hiro Kone
March 6, 2014
“Phantom,” the gorgeous new single from Hiro Kone’s upcoming second album, The Unmoved Mover, does a great job presenting the project’s shifting facets and dynamic production.
Exclusive Song Premiere: ‘Wreckage,’ Weeknight
February 13, 2014
“‘Wreckage’ was one of the last tracks we worked on for the record. It was one of those freak-accident-songs that truly felt effortless to write,” says Weeknight’s Andy Simmons.
Baltimore’s Easy Riders
January 30, 2014
Directed by newcomer Lotfy Nathan with an assured hand, the 12 O’Clock Boys follows a group of Baltimore men as they tear through the city on dirt bikes and quads.
Exclusive Video Premiere: ‘This System,’ Fast Times
January 29, 2014
Fast Times (a.k.a. Jorge Day) is a Brooklyn-based Floridian whose lo-fi house tracks mix sensuous and seedy sounds to hypnotic effect.
The Political Power of the Pencil
January 28, 2014
A ruddy-faced Joseph McCarthy caught with doctored photos. A defeated Richard Nixon dangling between audio tape reels. Bill Clinton precariously balancing both Monica Lewinsky and the Budget. These are just a few of the iconic images drawn by Herbert “Herblock” Block in his half-century tenure as the Washington Post‘s political cartoonist.
Exclusive EP Premiere: ‘Crab in Honey,’ Fever the Ghost
January 24, 2014
L.A. psych-pop act Fever The Ghost may be relatively new to the scene, but their sound—a spectral mish-mash of ’70s glam touchstones and tongue-in-cheek New Age—is already their own.
Discovery: Francis Lung
January 13, 2014
At first glance, a Discovery piece on Francis Lung (a.k.a. Tom McClung) might seem like an unusual choice. After all, McClung played bass in the now-defunct WU LYF, whose debut LP garnered praise from just about every music publication on the planet.
Scorsese and DiCaprio’s Marital Bliss at the National Board of Review Annual Awards Gala
January 8, 2014
It would take more than a polar vortex to keep Hollywood’s best and brightest from attending the annual National Board of Review Awards gala.
Exclusive Song Premiere: ‘Space Oddity,’ Visuals
November 19, 2013
Though Visuals, Andrew Fox’s chosen moniker, is clearly inspired by his history working with film (he’s an accomplished cinematographer), there’s more to the name than meets the eye—quite literally. When Fox was a child, he was afflicted with an ocular disorder that caused him to see the world in only two dimensions. Visuals’ music, however, is anything but flat.
Exclusive Video Premiere: ‘Spanish Peaks,’ Weekender
November 18, 2013
Philadelphia-based four-piece Weekender mix blissed-out melodies with the loose guitars of your favorite ‘80s shoegazers (a little bit Galaxie 500, a little bit Jesus and Mary Chain). The band’s new video for “Spanish Peaks,” from its self-titled debut EP, sees the quartet combing archival clips and its own lo-fi recordings for an impressionistic exploration of the natural world.
Exclusive Album Premiere and Interview: ‘Tropical,’ Pompeya
October 30, 2013
When you think of Moscow, words like “sunny,” “bright,” and “breezy” probably aren’t the first adjectives that come to mind. Thankfully, Pompeya is here to clear up any misconceptions.
Factory Floor, In Full
September 26, 2013
Throughout Factory Floor’s debut full-length album, the mood is cold, deliberate, and razor-sharp. The tracks are intensely repetitious, with each note ringing out as though through a vacuum.
Exclusive Video Premiere and Interview: ‘Lonely Sinner,’ Teddy Blanks
September 25, 2013
Teddy Blanks is a man of many talents. At his day job working at CHIPS, the design studio he co-founded, Blanks creates top-notch creative projects for a wide variety of clients. In his spare time, however, Blanks moonlights as a troubadour of wryly sentimental pop music.
Exclusive Song Premiere: ‘Under the Rose,’ Jensen Sportag
September 19, 2013
The sleek productions created by Austin Wilkinson and Elvis Craig under their Jensen Sportag moniker sounds more tailored to a Gothenburg nightclub or Parisian after-party than the duo’s hometown of Manchester, Tennessee.
Discovery: Ellie Herring
September 4, 2013
Mixing dance floor-ready beats, carefully programmed MIDI, and airy vocals, Ellie Herring has carved out a sound that’s resolutely technical while still coming across as warmly human.
Penny Lane and The American President
August 30, 2013
“I don’t like pointing cameras at people. I really like research,” says Penny Lane, the director of Our Nixon. Lane’s new documentary came about when she, along with co-producer Brian Frye, discovered 26 hours of Super 8 home movies taken by Richard Nixon’s aides John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, and Dwight Chapin sitting unseen in the National Archives.
Exclusive Song Premiere: ‘Vagabond Dreamer,’ The Interest Group
August 27, 2013
As The Interest Group, Philadelphia-based songwriter/production team Marissa Lesnick and Yohsuke Araki create wistful pop that is self-consciously out of step with the times.