First Listen: Dawes, 'We're All Gonna Die'
Through travelogues, story-songs and a literary quality that's been honed to a cutting edge, Taylor Goldsmith and his band have crafted their most ambitious record to date.
Music & Culture
First Listen: Against Me!, 'Shape Shift With Me'
On the band's follow-up to Transgender Dysphoria Blues, the personal and political dovetail into an inseparable tangle of anxieties and fuel for protest.
First Listen: Kishi Bashi, 'Sonderlust'
Throughout his third solo album, K. Ishibashi broadens his palette, rendering his sound ever more frantic, unpredictable, digital and danceable.
First Listen: Pretty Yende, 'A Journey'
Follow the young South African soprano's fairytale rise to fame in a travelogue of classic arias and scenes by Rossini, Delibes and Bellini.
First Listen: Amanda Shires, 'My Piece Of Land'
The singer and fiddler has mastered craft and structure in order to communicate the nuances of a richly responsive internal life.
First Listen: Cymbals Eat Guitars, 'Pretty Years'
Catharsis comes heavy and often in the Staten Island band's raucous-yet-refined rock sound, which reflects a new generation's willingness to look back on the '80s and '90s with fresh eyes and ears.
First Listen: Jóhann Jóhannsson, 'Orphée'
The Oscar-nominated Icelandic composer crafts an enveloping instrumental take on the Orpheus myth. His simple, haunting sketches use the familiar tale to comment on changes in his own life.
The Head And The Heart On World Cafe
Hear the Seattle band play new songs from its major-label debut, Signs Of Light.
First Watch: T-Rextasy, 'Gap Yr Boiz'
Enter the wonderfully weird world of the feminist occult with T-Rextasy in the band's new animated video for "Gap Yr Boiz."
William Bell: Tiny Desk Concert
The 77-year-old soul hitmaker, known for co-writing songs like the blues standard "Born Under A Bad Sign," returns to the spotlight with the aid of a 12-piece band.