Music Features

A still from Aftersun, one of this year's Oscar nominees that truly realizes the narrative power of songs.

Music & Culture

The Oscars are getting the best song category all wrong

8:00am March 12, 2023

by Ann Powers

In filmmaking, placing a song in just the right context and letting it cast its spell is an art — one that many films in 2022 mastered. What if we gave that achievement its own award?

Meet Me @ The Altar's debut album, Past // Present // Future, features a punchy rhythm section and a momentum that reaches out a hand to yank potential friends into the fun.

Music & Culture

On its debut album, Meet Me @ The Altar carries a pop-punk legacy into the future

9:08am March 10, 2023

by Cyrena Touros

For many fans, MM@TA has become the face of a new, more inclusive era for pop-punk. But Past // Present // Future also proves the Florida-based band is deeply tied to the genre's history.

Joni Mitchell (by Central Press/Getty Images), Lianne La (by Hollie Fernando), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (by Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

Music & Culture

Celebrate International Women's Day with these axe-slinging heroes

12:43pm March 08, 2023

World Cafe celebrates some of the greatest guitar players of all time, who just happen to be women.

Wayne Shorter, photographed while performing with pianist Herbie Hancock in Paris on Sept. 4, 2007.

The lessons of Wayne Shorter, engine of imagination

6:00am March 07, 2023

by Michelle Mercer

Shorter's biographer, Michelle Mercer, recalls the many "isms" and lessons she learned from her time working with the legendary composer and saxophonist on his biography, Footprints.

When you go back and listen to De La's early run you're getting a lesson about how hip-hop itself was born, how it survived in the past, how it functions at its most imaginative and how the artform can live on in the future.

Music & Culture

2023 is the magic number

6:00am March 03, 2023

by Matthew Ritchie

After years absent from the digital music landscape, what does it feel like to listen to one of hip-hop's most storied groups with fresh ears?

De La's absence from streaming sites has effectively erased their presence from the contemporary musical landscape and threatened to minimize their historical import. Now legally available on the internet for the first time, we revisit the classic catalog and its restored legacy.

Music & Culture

De La Soul Is Streaming

1:00am March 03, 2023

by Oliver Wang

The iconic group's early music releasing online at last comes with a renewed interest in its career arc. Take a guided tour through one of the most distinguished runs in hip-hop history.

Music & Culture

Wayne Shorter, sage of the saxophone, dies at 89

4:35pm March 02, 2023

by Felix Contreras

The composer and saxophonist, who won a dozen Grammy Awards and recorded with everyone from Miles Davis to Joni Mitchell, died on Thursday, March 2 in Los Angeles.

BBoy B, Flash, 38 Slugs and Skol's 'Frankie Knuckles' tribute mural is displayed in the Fulton Market neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois on July 6, 2019.

Music & Culture

From the Warehouse to the world: Chicago and the birth of house music

11:01am March 02, 2023

For the people who were there when it was invented in small clubs and basement parties in Chicago in the 1980s, house music was a force of nature. Four decades later, its impact is bigger than ever.

Niang encourages young Senegalese to stay in the country.

Senegal's artists are fighting the system with a mic and spray paint

6:38am February 28, 2023

A cultural center in Senegal is creating a safe space where artists can use their platform to speak about climate change while also finding opportunities in the art and music scene.

Queue Listen Now

"It's not all just about anger and aggression," Zulu's Anaiah Lei (far left) says, "I'm kind of tired of being expected to express that when I want to express love."

Music & Culture

Zulu's soul-sampling powerviolence shifts the pit toward love

10:47am February 27, 2023

by Laina Dawes

Meaty riffs, disembodied screams and... Curtis Mayfield? Anaiah Lei carefully curates samples to acknowledge past freedom fighters and provide windows of hope.