Music Features

The Japanese psych-rock band Les Rallizes Dénudés were after a visceral — sometimes violent — impact, borne from unimaginable loudness.

Music & Culture

The fuzz, feedback and folklore of a mythic Japanese psych-rock band

5:00am June 07, 2022

by Matt LaJoie

For five decades, the only way to hear the Japanese band's sprawling psychedelia was through live bootlegs. With The OZ Tapes, an official chapter of Les Rallizes Dénudés begins.

S.G. Goodman composed parts of her new album, Teeth Marks, to evoke the feeling of traumatic experiences building up in the body.

Music & Culture

S.G. Goodman leaves 'Teeth Marks' in Southern stereotypes

11:57am June 06, 2022

by Jewly Hight

A songwriter with a rural Kentucky zip code and a philosophy degree, Goodman has thoughts to spare on small-town life, bottled trauma and the ways that both are misunderstood.

Otoboke Beaver refers to Super Champon as "season two." The album refines the scorched-earth fury of its debut, but maintains the band's madcap sense of humor.

Music & Culture

Otoboke Beaver, the fierce and funny punk band, finds new courage

5:00am June 02, 2022

by Zhenzhen Yu

The Kyoto band was, at first, puzzled being branded punk feminists. But after experiencing its global meaning, frontwoman Accorinrin has since changed her stance: "I am a feminist."

Like The Linda Lindas, this teen girl band in Benin makes you dance — and think

7:00am May 28, 2022

by Nick Roll

The 7-member band hails from a conservative part of the country. They sing about female genital cutting, child marriage and gender equality. And they rock.

In the metal bands Sleep and High on Fire, Matt Pike has always looked to esoteric sources. Over the last decade, however, he's found inspiration in the conspiracy theories of David Icke.

Music & Culture

Can Matt Pike face the music?

10:59pm May 19, 2022

by Grayson Haver Currin

Matt Pike overcame long odds to find success in metal bands Sleep and High on Fire. But his deepening obsession with conspiracy theories has created a dissonant riff.

Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers is the first album from Kendrick Lamar since DAMN., the 2017 release that made him the first rapper to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Music & Culture

Kendrick Lamar is ready to talk. Is he ready to listen?

5:00am May 18, 2022

by Marcus J. Moore

The long-dormant, era-defining rapper makes one thing clear from the start of Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers: He's not the hero you're looking for.

Leikeli47 (left) speaks with NPR's Sidney Madden about how Shape Up tracks the rapper's learning process to embody the confidence she so often preaches onstage to others.

Music & Culture

Leikeli47 wants you to look and listen deeper

6:13am May 16, 2022

by Sidney Madden

Cozy and coiffed in a Brooklyn studio, watch the masked rapper break down essential tracks from Shape Up with host Sidney Madden.

Margo Price, performing on the roof of Third Man Records on Sept. 13, 2018 in Nashville.

Margo Price recalls the uppers, downers & out-of-towners of early motherhood

6:00am May 15, 2022

by Margo Price

In an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, singer-songwriter Margo Price remembers the early days of motherhood and marriage, their chaos compounded by a late-living musical lifestyle.

Education

This educator writes 'anti-narcocorridos' — songs that tell the story of heroes

10:31pm May 08, 2022

by Ayesha Rascoe

Mexican singer Vivir Quintana talks about her latest song, 'El Corrido de Milo Vela,' which tells the story of one of the many journalists who have been murdered in Mexico for doing their jobs.

Queue Listen Now

Skylar Tang, a 16-year-old from the San Francisco Bay area, is the winner of the Dr. J. Douglas White Composing & Arranging Contest.

Who says big band jazz is for old people? Not this teenage composer.

8:07am May 06, 2022

by Elizabeth Blair

California musician Skylar Tang, 16, is the winner of a Jazz at Lincoln Center contest. She'll accept the award in New York this weekend.

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