Organized by the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), the 15th annual Takin’ It the Streets Fest in Chicago is one of the few celebrations where music takes a definitive backseat to social politics. Across the [...]
Having already collaborated on three separate projects, including an appearance on each other’s respective solo albums, Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson - together known as The Uncluded - make collaborations between bombastic rappers and soft spoken singer-songwriters [...]
Vampire Weekend’s third offering, Modern Vampires of the City, experiments with pitch-shifting, recording onto tape and even a spectrum analyzer. The 43-minute tour-de-spirituality was made with the ethos: ‘if it sounds familiar, throw it out’. Outside of [...]
She & Him are nothing if not an aesthetic wonder – before lyricist and frontwoman Zooey Deschanel was Fox’s “New Girl,” she was still a full-time “manic pixie dream girl” in just about every previous [...]
Justin Vernon is no stranger to mystique. While his breakthrough debut album as Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, tugged everyone’s heartstrings with Vernon’s oddly-masculine falsetto, the music was overshadowed by its romantic, backwoodsy legend. [...]
Phoenix may have been around since 1999, but it wasn’t until their 2009 breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix that ubiquitous indie-pop tracks like “1901” (aka the “Falling” song no one could avoid hearing) became household ear-worms. A [...]
Mac DeMarco is a born performer, a musical vanguard with a commanding presence – confident and cool, but self-deprecating as all hell. If he wasn’t a musician he’d be a stand-up comic or maybe a [...]
I once had a conversation with an acquaintance about my favorite sub-genre, “math-rock,” knowing full well I’d have to explain its definition. He’d heard it meant “emotionless, show-off music.” I was both pissed at whoever [...]
Despite being a baby-faced starlet barely old enough to drink Lady Lamb the Beekeeper approaches her songwriting with gutsy professionalism. Her debut album, Ripely Pine, illustrates those abilities in broad strokes, never wavering and full of courage. [...]
Kishi Bashi - real name K Ishibashi - is best known as the violinist behind Regina Spektor, of Montreal, and Sondre Lerche. In his solo work, you’ve heard him musically making your gadgets seem cultured yet quirky. However, anyone [...]
