Jess Viscius is going to break your heart, gently and slowly. In August, Fire Talk Records released Everything – her dreamy, fuzzy, captivating debut album as Bnny. It shows off the intense musicality and vulnerability the Chicago singer-songwriter has...
Chicago post-punk quartet Ganser transcend genre with their five-song remix EP Look at the Sun, which dropped on Felte Records May 6. Using tracks from their 2020 LP Just Look at That Sky, artists Bartees Strange, Sad13 (Sadie Dupuis...
For Mia Joy, journeying into the insular, mystic world captured on her debut LP Spirit Tamer has been her life’s work. A meditation on the connection to self, creating and debunking personal myth, enduring changes post-heartache, and believing in the...
It’s fair to say Moontype wouldn’t have become what it is today, a full-fledged rock band, without the interconnectedness of Chicago’s music ecosystem. That, and the power of friendship. The trio, made up of singer, songwriter and bass player...
It’s regrettably easy to get sucked in to the cycle of surface-level validation we get from scrolling through social media – but Eleanor Rose Lee, aka Fever Queen, has a simple solution: “The world’s gone shallow/Find the ones who...
“We got music. We got rhythm. Don’t exploit us with your algorithm!” That was just one of the slogans chanted by dozens of musicians and supporters outside of Spotify’s Chicago offices on Monday, March 15. Organized by the Union...
Spring is just around the corner – but this is Chicago. Anything can happen. It has snowed in April here (cue Prince). Luckily, neither the lingering chill in the air nor the ongoing pandemic can stop the city’s creative...
In the past decade, it has felt as though the concreteness once known as “fact” is shifting. What were once black and white truths have now turned grey, good and evil have grown nuanced, genre and labels are infinite,...
A week-long bootcamp for The Voice was Piwa’s window to the music industry – and its cruelty. At age 17, the singer-songwriter, then known as Tapiwa, was in California with her mom for rounds of auditions after a successful...
Anyone who has seen the Spice Girls’ 1997 film Spice World will remember their incredible tour bus. The group’s multi-level home-on-wheels was decked out with fire poles and a swing, and personalized nooks for each member that, while varied to...
An oft-wigged and glittered, latex and leather-wrapped Midwestern daughter, Emily Blue is a pop star, period. One of the first Chicago artists I’ve ever seen appear on stage flanked by dancers who not only made their choreography and transitions...
In the early 2000s, serendipitous road trips to venues in church basements and abandoned warehouses were still considered priceless and precious moments. Kids with their ears tuned to the underground traveled far and wide off the beaten trail, and...
“The best way to break a habit is to call it what it is,” says Chicago-based singer-songwriter Elizabeth Moen. Over the last several months, she’s taken some time to examine her own holding patterns – especially those that have...
When Indian-American singer-songwriter Subhi went to LA to record a new song in March, she’d just begun hearing news about COVID-19. Tasked with improvising a song in the studio, she began offloading her feelings about the rising pandemic. The...
If you haven’t heard Kiiara’s name, you’ve almost definitely heard her impossibly catchy 2015 single “Gold,” where she sings confidently about nonchalantly exiting parties and leaving her ex in the dust. Since then, she’s released a remix of the...
Amidst a pandemic largely impacting people of color, during a summer that’s seen some of the most racially-charged unrest in recent memory — surprise! — a lot’s been happening in the American city with the third largest Black population....
It feels appropriate for an album loud with nostalgia to kick off with a track about memory called “1990.” The opening licks of Half Gringa’s sophomore release, Force to Reckon, took me back to the early 2010s, when I...
After queer Chicago punk band 8 Inch Betsy wrapped up a 30-day U.S. tour in 2010, many things appeared uncertain for the members. Their original drummer Stephanie Levi had left the band, and the transition from life on the...
Dance Loud’s The Moment has been more than ten years in the making. It’s what happens when an electronic duo whose career has been as energetic and careening as their namesake, has to pause — literally. Chicago-based artists Kristin...
Can techno music be a site for climate activism? That was the big question posed by a virtual panel held on Friday, May 22, where Chicago DJs Ariel Zetina and Club Chow (Kevin Chow) as well as British musician...
When I’m sitting with an album, I’m listening for something a live performance can’t give me. I have an anxiety disorder that limits how much live music I consume, so recordings have always felt precious for the way they...
Zell’s World released a fun video for his new single, “That’s What It Is.” The turn-up track marks the first offering from Zell’s forthcoming sophomore effort, Welcome 2 Zell’s World. The Chicago-bred and Cincinnati-based rapper last dropped his 5-track...
Fay Ray is not a defunct new wave band. Okay, Fay Ray IS a defunct new wave band, but it’s also a very active eight-person funk-tastic soul-pop band out of Chicago. The band’s latest double single, “Restless Sleeper /Up...
With her latest video, Emily Jane Powers proves there’s more than one shade of blue when it comes to feeling sad. The Chicago-based art rocker’s clip for “Sullen Days” is an atmospheric meditation on the spectrum of emotions contained...