Music Features

PJ Harvey's latest album is I Inside the Old Year Dying. It's a knotty musical expansion of the world she created in Orlam, the epic poem Harvey published in 2022.

Music & Culture

'Life and death is such a fine line': PJ Harvey on creating in a place between worlds

5:00am July 06, 2023

by Ann Powers

Harvey talks with NPR Music's Ann Powers about her album I Inside the Old Year Dying, a ragged, highly crafted adaptation of her epic poem Orlam, and why she prefers to make art without boundaries.

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Musicians Denitia, Larysa Jaye and Tylar Bryant pose for a photo before their set at Lulu's Downstairs in Manitou Springs, Colo., on June 17, 2023. They are members of the Black Opry, a touring musical revue dedicated to uplifting Black artists in country music.

PHOTOS: Meet The Emerging Americana Stars Of The Black Opry Revue

10:42am June 30, 2023

The Black Opry Revue show emerged from a simple directory of Black country and Americana artists and blossomed into a full-blown community of artists and fans.

Michael is Killer Mike's first solo album since 2012, after over a decade of focusing on his duo Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike at the top of the mountain

10:42am June 28, 2023

by Sheldon Pearce

Faith and religion have been career-long themes for the Run the Jewels rapper — if often in a wary, ambivalent light. But on Michael, his first solo LP in over a decade, something has changed.

Music & Culture

The rebuilt heart of Jason Isbell

7:35pm June 21, 2023

by Jefferson Cowie

A decade ago, Jason Isbell gave his career a second act by facing his own mistakes. Can he help his listeners do the same?

Amya Watson, 11, prints "Black Power" on a poster celebrating Juneteenth during the "Black Joy as Resistance! Juneteenth Celebration" in the historic Farish Street business district in downtown Jackson, Miss.

Music & Culture

Check out this special Juneteenth mix from 'World Cafe'

2:40pm June 19, 2023

A mix of old classics and new music from Black musicians to help you commemorate Juneteenth National Independence Day.

Music & Culture

Jónsi explains how Sigur Rós made its first new album in a decade

4:14pm June 15, 2023

by Bob Boilen

To make their first album since 2013, the members of Sigur Rós found their back together slowly, but the Icelandic group's singer says that when they started playing it felt like nothing had changed.

Drummer Matt Tong (second from right) with the members of Algiers. The band released its fourth album, Shook, in early 2023.

Music & Culture

Matt Tong, Algiers' elastic timekeeper, surrenders to the song

2:25pm June 13, 2023

by Daoud Tyler-Ameen

Tong first blew minds as the drummer of the British post-punk band Bloc Party. In his recent years with the genre-agnostic Algiers, he's found his place chasing a more collective mood.

Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" takes a simple, Springsteenian plea for escape and uses it as a jumping-off point for a life's story. Sounds like a country song.

Music & Culture

Tracy Chapman's 'Fast Car' is the country song we didn't know we had

9:03am June 13, 2023

by Stephen Thompson

In Luke Combs' unexpected cover of the Tracy Chapman classic, NPR's Stephen Thompson found hope for a world with fewer boundaries and binaries and roped-in genres.

More than 20,000 fans watch Joni Mitchell perform during "Joni Jam" — her first official concert since her aneurysm — at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Quincy, Wash., on Saturday, June 10, 2023.

Music & Culture

PHOTOS: Joni Mitchell At The Gorge

1:02pm June 12, 2023

by Ann Powers

The beloved singer-songwriter performed in front of more than 20,000 fans at an idyllic amphitheater in rural Washington state.

The troubles of The Idol's embattled pop star Jocelyn feel out of step with what's demanded of mainstream music stars in 2023.

Music & Culture

Why can't Hollywood get pop stardom right?

5:12pm June 06, 2023

by Hazel Cills

The singer at the center of HBO's new melodrama The Idol is awfully familiar. Why do so many film and TV depictions of pop stars fail the same way?