News

In 2020, the Illinois teenager Kyle Rittenhouse became a right-wing cause celebre after shooting three men at an anti-police brutality protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing two of them. Rittenhouse was charged with homicide, and he was acquitted after pleading self-defense. Later this month, Rittenhouse will appear as a VIP guest at the Orlando metal festival Shell Shock II.  » Read More

Young Jesus, the cult-beloved Los Angeles band led by John Rossiter, have a new release out today for a good cause. A couple of good causes, actually. Profits from the John Case EP will be split 50/50 between BeLoved Asheville, which is doing relief work for victims of Hurricane Helene,  » Read More

These days, everyone is covering Chappell Roan. I’m talking about Kelly Clarkson and Miranda Lambert, Cindy Crawford and Kaia Gerber, Vampire Weekend, MUNA, the Kidz Bop Kids — that’s just the past week and a half. Chappell Roan,  » Read More

In 1979, Donnie and Joe Emerson, two young brothers from Fruitland, Washington, released a deeply obscure album called Dreamin’ Wild. It took a long, long time for that record to find an audience, but it happened. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti and Dâm-Funk covered the Emerson brothers’ song “Baby”  » Read More

Last month, Hinds unveiled Viva Hinds, a memorable album of party anthems like “Boom Boom Back” with Beck and dreamy sprawls such as “Stranger” with Grian Chatten. Today, the Spanish rock duo is back with another bilingual banger with the bonus track “Bats.”  » Read More

On Wednesday night, I saw New York legends Vampire Weekend play an absolutely astonishing two-and-a-half-hour set in Charlottesville, Virginia. I went to plenty of Vampire Weekend shows back in the day, and they were always fun, but I was not ready for the overwhelming force of their present-day live show. They’ve got a big,  » Read More

Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips’ musical sequel to his divisive 2019 hit Joker, is out today. It once again stars Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, aka the Joker, and this time Lady Gaga is on board as his Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn. A week ago Gaga released the companion album Harlequin,  » Read More

This year, the Virginia singer Tommy Richman surged into the spotlight out of nowhere by falsetto-crooning over big, 808-heavy old-school beats. Richman’s singles “Million Dollar Baby” and “Devil Is A Lie” have met with resistance, but both were hits on streaming and rap radio. (Both are also really good songs,  » Read More

From a distance, Blood Incantation’s work can seem forbidding. The Denver death metal experimentalists have spent the past decade fleshing out a universe that encompasses not only their frequently challenging music, but also a codex of hallucinogenic imagery that can seem inscrutable at first glance. That iconography permeates their album artwork and ephemera as well as their lyrics;  » Read More