Since 2024, Kou Records, a label co-run by vocalist Charmaine Lee and sought-after producer and composer Randall Dunn, has been “dedicated to artists who have built their own musical language”. A listen to their small but potent roster bears this out. From Lee’s processed, often violent vocal contortions to Aliya Ultan‘s foreboding song cycle for cello, these are serious artists with daunting resumes. These musicians have often grounded themselves in classical forms, so they know exactly what rules they are breaking.
Taiga Ultan, a classically trained flautist who now creates her own tight constrictions only to break free of them constantly, creates music perfect for the Kou label. With her debut, Shade Zero, she makes a strong argument for…
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The New York quartet ContraPunctus eases into the third track on its 2026 self-titled debut with about 15 seconds of musical suggestion. Bassist Gui Duvignau and drummer Hamir Atwal respond to pianist Carmen Staaf’s gentle Fender Rhodes melody with a tempo that starts at a comfortable clip. Staaf eloquently establishes the melody in the next few seconds — Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” — that clarinetist Mike McGinnis picks up and continues. McGinnis and Staaf trade the tune’s theme as the quartet establishes an elastic, rollicking synergy.
This “Caravan” came about during a moment of collective improvisation the group made time for in the recording studio, summoning this restless and introspective version of a jazz standard…
Show Me the Body have always approached hardcore less like a defensive crouch and more like a charge — they treat it as an offensive form. Their songs don’t wait to be cornered; they move first into the fray, with jaw set and teeth bared as the hand that feeds draws near. They force confrontation, and on Alone Together, this is the most direct and recognizably punk they’ve sounded — not because they’ve abandoned what has made them one of the strangest, most experimental hardcore acts around, but because they’ve sharpened it all into a weapon of absolute precision, brandished with love.
Yes, their classic banjo-punk sound still scrapes like grazing the surface of some exposed rusting metal, while Julian Cashwan Pratt…
Melodi Ghazal’s debut full-length finds the Copenhagen-based artist tracing a path through cultural inheritance and sonic exploration. Raised by Iranian parents and shaped by everything from pre-revolutionary Persian pop to VH1 balladry, her sound was honed at the illustrious Rhythmic Music Conservatory – the same stable as left-field contemporaries like ML Buch and Astrid Sonne.
The opener ‘Heart on the Loose’ drifts in on cyclical grooves and devotional lyricism, Ghazal’s voice hovering over soft-focus electronics and darkening daf rhythms, while ‘Miracle’ is a swirl of delayed synths and sultry bass.
‘Fariba Forever’ sets spoken word against manipulated melodies, ‘Numb’ pairs shimmering guitar with a muted sense of release,…
Slow Magic is the second album by Sailing Stones, alter ego of the Irish-born and Bristol-based singer-songwriter Jenny Lindfors, arriving six years after the debut Polymnia — released in 2020, the very year her daughter was born.
The record explores the rising tide of physical, psychological, and emotional changes that come with motherhood, blending together moments of beauty, rage, heartache, and exhaustion into a woozy psych folk swirl.
…It is both musically and lyrically built around the subject of matrescence, the transitions and major life changes a woman goes through at the time of bringing new life into the world. Which is not to say that only half the population will relate to this collection; it is a universal moment…
She’s green have been justifiably building buzz as purveyors of a mighty fine brand of shoegaze and ethereal indie rock since their 2023 EP Wisteria took the scene by storm. Now swallowtail arrives ready to cement their status as one of the best and most exciting bands of their time. Coming in at seven tracks and 29 minutes this record still counts as a long EP rather than a short album. The power and beauty of the band is only growing, which is shown in multiple spots on the record, whether on the more understated “dear ivy” (“and I need you know” ringing out in its latter stages atop some beautiful lead guitar lines) or in the more restrained “empty house” where vocalist Zofia Smith truly comes to the fore.
Elsewhere, tracks build to perhaps more…
Ordinarily, a Bruce Springsteen show is a ferocious, three-hour rock’n’roll display. But his performance Sunday at TD Garden was no ordinary Springsteen show. It was a ferocious, three-hour, rock’n’roll display of righteous anger, a conscious political act. Dubbed the “Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour,” Springsteen made plain what it was about in the tour’s announcement: “we will be rocking your town in celebration and in defense of America — American democracy, American freedom, our American Constitution and our sacred American dream — all of which are under attack.” It is no accident that the tour kicked off in Minneapolis, the city where, a few months ago, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by ICE agents, an event that precipitated the latest…
The colorful combination of names on this collaboration is indicative of the vibrant music they create together. Americana singer/songwriter Grey DeLisle, who has been releasing rootsy country/folk/rocking albums for over 20 years, heard young soul singer Greene and was so impressed, she suggested they combine their talents. The effervescent, soulful and instantly loveable Grey & Greene, is the result.
The two initially dueted on 2025’s frisky Christmas single “I Don’t Want Nothing,” then decided to expand that to a (short) album-length project touching on retro-tinged upbeat soul, classic pop, rockabilly and even some gospel. Their secret weapon is producer/multi-instrumentalist James Intveld; a veteran of roots-oriented…
This is George Mann and Si Kahn’s second album working together following the release of Labor Day: A Tribute to Hardworking People Everywhere in 2024. That album, released to celebrate Kahn’s 80th birthday, was rightly celebrated within the Civil Rights and the music fraternities.
…This latest album, Mayday!, is subtitled Songs to Keep Our Hearts Steady and Strong for the Fight and reflects on life in a darker, less democratic country. The album features 9 Kahn originals, two of which were recorded last century, 3 new songs jointly written by Mann and Kahn, and a track where Kahn shares a writing credit with Beethoven. Mann has clearly been a key facilitator in making this album to celebrate Kahn and takes the lion’s share of the vocals, with Kahn taking…
Inspired by a bird landing on a city windowsill, Air Signs by anthéne looks to the skies for meaning or assurance. We don’t find a feathery, avian energy here. Instead, this is an airborne album of open expanse and surging textures, matching the bird’s natural element. Ephemeral guitar sounds overlap in loops, rising and falling like breath. Diffuse gusts of melody blow past. Bright glimmers of sound give a sense of sunlight and shadow.
Air is immediate evoked on Air Signs. So what about signs? With guitar, pedal, and filter, artist Brad Deschamps weaves signification out of thin air, or transcribes the air’s own signifying. The finished work may be organic and effortless, but the activity of meaning-making is hinted at. Rustles, clicks, pops, and crackling…
Przemysław Jankowiak, aka 2k88 (and fka 1988), is one of Poland’s most singular producers. Long associated with alternative rap and experimental electronics, he gained a cult following as a member of duo Syny and later lent his hand to some of the adventurous figures in the Polish mainstream. His music is, like his concerts, full of smoke: airy, cloudy, inscrutable, dreamy, and unreal.
Everything Always Changes, for We’re Truly Here started as a one-off special project for Kraków’s Unsound Festival. Jankowiak enlisted a trio of acclaimed, like-minded British artists who, like him, work across ambient, rap, R&B, and pop. The four musicians passed ideas back and forth, bringing forth their shared sensibilities and aesthetics: Rainy Miller delivers his signature…
Arguably no contemporary vocal ensemble is more daring than NYC-based Ekmeles (Charlotte Mundy, Elisa Sutherland, Timothy Parsons, Tomás Cruz, Steven Hrycelak, and Musical Director Jeffrey Gavett). As if its earlier releases, A howl, that was also a prayer (2020) and We Live the Opposite Daring (2024), didn’t already argue that point, it’s rendered incontrovertible by its third, Nonsongs, and the trio of works George Lewis, Wolfgang Von Schweinitz, and Katherine Balch fashioned expressly for it and the ensemble. Whereas another vocal outfit might focus its attention on harmonizing celestially, Ekmeles leaves standardized singing behind for microtonality, extended techniques, and other innovative strategies. As challenging as the music is, it’s all…
For a pianist whose prodigious recorded legacy goes back to the 1960s, Ran Blake has only rarely deviated from his preferred settings: solo albums and duos with vocalists. While his Short Life of Barbara Monk (1987) is arguably one of the finest quartet records of the 1980s, and his Sonic Temples (2001) is a superb later trio effort, he has for the most part been largely content to limit himself to more intimate contexts, especially with talented singers such as Jeanne Lee, Christine Correa and, more recently, Sara Serpa and Dominique Eade.
His first two records with Eade, Whirlpool (2011) and Town and Country (2017), offered compelling readings of the American songbook, both within and outside standard jazz…
The leaders of Hew have been around for a long time. Your Version might technically be the debut album for this band, but Mercy Harper and Lindsay Minton have been making pristine second- meets fourth-wave emo for 20 years.
Their original college band, Tin Kitchen, crafted unsteady, introspective indie rock. Their longest-running group, football, etc., released a string of excellent yet underrated emo records that blended Rainer Maria with Braid to tremendous effect. They followed that with Overo, which introduced some post-hardcore flair to their sound. Suffice to say, this duo has experience and songwriting chops to spare.
And yet, Harper and Minton refuse to rest on their laurels with this new 11-song album.
Whenever some music that has not been in the immediate focus of critics and audiences, pops up, they tend to call it ‘resurrected.’ Power pop is one of those, but it is just another genre that has been around since the 60s that has never gone away, it just isn’t given the attention and credit it deserved all along.
It seems that Little Steven Van Zandt never lost it out of his focus, as his Wicked Cool Records keep coming up with some serious power pop (extended) gems more often than not.
Count among those Haunted By American Dreams by Ryan Hamilton. It is the kind of power pop where that extended addition to the term comes in – Hamilton adds bits and pieces of the so-called heartland rock to the usual mix of…
When Twisted Teens broke through with their second album, Blame the Clown, only five months ago, the New Orleans duo’s southern-fried mix of garage rock, early punk, rockabilly, and country screamed both “First thought is absolutely best thought” and “Wait until I show you what else I can do.” But if their last album presented the band at their most gleeful and cocky, ready to call the world as they saw it, then Florida Water Blues takes place the morning after: a touch more vulnerable now that the liquid courage has subsided and the hangover is setting in. Blame the Clown may be where the makeup was first put on, but Florida Water Blues is where the tears start to show.
That’s not to say that Twisted Teens have suddenly upended their approach.
Drakulas are a Texas punk band, three of them veterans of the Riverboat Gamblers, all native to the same Denton nexus that birthed the Marked Men, Radioactivity and Bad Sports. (The great, now sporadically active Dirtnap Records released records from all these bands as well as this one.) Yet while Riverboat Gamblers were frenetic but straightforward Ramones-style garage rockers, Drakulas has a bit more new wave in its DNA.
“Going Going Gone Gone” thumps and pillages, true, but with style and a certain amount of decadence. The hammer of drums, the giant guitar chords are block simple, but the vocals vibrate with lurid romanticism, and the keyboards gleam with futurism. Sophistication goes slightly rotten, grand gestures turn theatrical, and all…
If there’s one thing you can be sure of with The Last Dinner Party, it’s that they’re not short of confidence. After releasing a debut album, Prelude to Ecstasy, that debuted at Number 1 and was nominated for the Mercury Prize, and playing a succession of gigs that successfully combined camp theatrics with magnetic stage presence, you wouldn’t be surprised to see the London five-piece put their feet up for a while.
Not a bit of it. The band’s second album, From the Pyre, follows just 18 months on from that planet-straddling success story and already sounds like an instant hit. It has all the elements that made Prelude to Ecstasy such a success, and seems to refine them. Abigail Morris’ voice swoops and soars magnificently, Emily Roberts launches…
Sophie Wellington was born and raised in Virginia but moved to Boston to attend the renowned Berklee College of Music. On Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still, Wellington is the only performer laying down guitar, fiddle, vocals and percussive dance. Their style involves blending a lot of influences as well as applying the methods from one instrument to another to create what they describe as a quilt of American folk music.
The record is their second full-length release. One of the most striking things about the album is a sense of space where, despite quite a lot going on, the music and the vocals leave a lot of room for the listener to reach in and appreciate the different dimensions of each piece. A spell of stillness in a busy world. That said, the percussive…
Trever M. Keith, frontman for the Southern California pop-punk band Face to Face, has released an homage to country music, We Drank from a Poisoned Well. This isn’t as unlikely as it sounds.
Keith grew up in the high desert, Southern California town of Victorville, where Face to Face was formed. Country music was the go-to music in the area and an inescapable part of Keith’s childhood, shaping him in ways he didn’t fully realize at the time. To some extent, this may be true for other members of Face to Face. Put together, guitarist Dennis Hill and bassist Scott Shiflett have a handful of co-writing credits on this record, and Hill arranged the backing vocals, performed by Mykele and Jagger Hill.