For the last year, most of us have been stuck at homes, unable or afraid to venture outside due to COVID-19; looking back, the stagnant nature of the past twelve months creates a kind of time warp – a...
California-based experimental folk quartet Kidi Band doesn’t pull punches on their sophomore album So Good. Coming off the heels of 2016’s Gimme Gimme, the band’s new record takes their West African-inspired indie sound and cranks the volume up a...
On YouTube, Nigerian-born, California-raised, and Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Mary Akpa leads a virtual language lesson, teaching her community how to say the name of her latest single “A hurum gi n’anya.” Those unfamiliar with Akpa’s native Nigerian language Igbo may...
Shannon Clark & the Sugar hail from Greenville, Ohio, home of the American sharpshooter Annie Oakley. It’s a connection that feels natural when listening to their upcoming album Marks on the Wall, a collection of what lead singer Shannon...
They say that home is where the heart is, and after a year of sheltering in place, singer-songwriter Paulina Vo is starting 2021 with a fresh-faced ode to her partner of 10 years. Her new single “Sweetie,” premiering today...
Adulthood doesn’t mean that an acquaintance can’t manage to make you feel like shit. Anya Marina is an accomplished singer-songwriter, known for an expansive catalogue, including “Satellite Heart” (from the platinum-selling soundtrack to Twilight: New Moon) and her bomb-ass...
For pop-Americana singer-songwriter Cf Watkins, 2020 has been a catalyst for big changes. She left New York, where she’d lived for nine years, to ride out the pandemic in her North Carolina hometown with her parents. Six months into...
George Floyd’s murder. A pandemic sweeping through the world. Fires burning out of control. Sometimes it can feel hard to catch one’s breath amid so much chaos and pain. Singer-songwriter Dani Darling felt herself pushing against her own anxiety,...
The ghosts of your past selves live in your hometown. They linger in the same old spots as memories, not frozen but reverberating in time. The public pool you learned to swim in. The spot on the corner where...
San Francisco-based alt-pop artist Floyd spent her childhood dressing up like Cyndi Lauper, bouncing around her bedroom with a hairbrush in hand daydreaming of her own flight into rock stardom. Her latest single “Sorry Sorry Boy” has the playful,...
Lasse Passage is currently spending his summer vacation with his 90 year old father in a fisherman’s village in Norway. On a daily basis, they climb aboard a boat and head out to sea, fishing for crabs and mackerel...
A full bottle when shaken never makes a sound. Torii Wolf isn’t sure if that’s the way the saying goes, or who exactly said it, but its meaning resonates with their latest single release “Wash Away,” as well as...
Returning to one’s home after a long time away can feel like jumping into cold water. Alie Renee, the singer-songwriter behind the music project Byland, had been away from Albuquerque, New Mexico for ten years. In that time, she...
Thirteen years ago, Canadian musician FOONYAP took a class in Chinese poetry. The themes discussed in those poems directly influenced her latest single “Free and Easy Wandering,” a song built around the exploration of self. The music is as...
It’s hot as hell in much of the United States, with temperatures rising as high as 128 degrees in Death Valley. Most of the country is in its fifth month of COVID-19 quarantine. Businesses are shuttering left and right,...
Every relationship hits a fork in the road, a moment in time when both parties actively choose to walk down a path together (or not). In 2019, singer-songwriter Chloe Jane, aka Neia Jane, found herself anxiety-ridden, hoping that her...
Egos uploading to an alien cloud server. Psychedelic dreams being analyzed by a droid. Don’t worry, it’s not a new 2020 news headline – these are the themes that populate the self-titled debut from Baron Minker, a trench coat...
Marihuzka Cornelius, aka MC, grew up in what many consider a rough part of Western Sydney, Australia. In the ’90s, you could find her dressed in regulation plaid, with Nirvana on blast in the background. It was her neighborhood’s...
Desert sun stretching over miles and miles of open space, not a soul in sight. With COVID-19 on the mind, it’s imagery that might conjure up thoughts of Mad Max or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But when Australian-native, Brooklyn-based...
Names are a strange thing. As a musician, a band name can become a costume of sorts, something you put on, but ultimately disregard as a caricature of yourself. It can become something one fights with their label about,...
Asy and Chloe Saavedra enjoyed cutting the hair off their dolls as girls, cropping it short to match their idols: the feminist icons of Sleater-Kinney. Back then, the sisters were exploring jamming out on the upright piano in their...
America is having an identity crisis. As the talking heads on national news programs remind us daily: we’re in the midst of a pandemic that is calling into question the very foundation of our state. Releasing new music during...
It’s one of those days. The sun is bright, but the news is bad and everyone’s eyes are on the clouds, peering from the windows of our hermetically-sealed homes, perfectly composed as if to somehow stave off chaos. On...
Survivors of abuse are too often portrayed as victims: quiet, sullen, spoken for. But Nashville-based melodic metal duo Friendship Commanders seeks to rewrite that narrative with their latest EP Hold On To Yourself, in which the band confronts abuse,...