When Canadian post-punk act Ought broke up in November 2021, it was an unlucky loss for rock music. In just three full lengths, an EP, and a remix collection, the Montreal band made a name for themselves as one of the more critically acclaimed indie groups to emerge in the 2010s. Fortunately for Ought fans, […]
There are a handful of records released in the spring of 2020 that will always be associated with that time. They’re albums that spoke to widespread isolation and anxiety, but also provided a source of comfort while everyone was stuck indoors. There was Waxahatchee’s striking fifth album, Saint Cloud. There was Charli XCX’s glitchy, yet […]
Tianna Esperanza may be an artist on the rise, but she’d been holding on to one of her most powerful songs for nearly a decade. In high school, a history teacher recommended she watch The Black Power Mixtape. The documentary, which looks into the history of the Black Power movement from 1967 to 1975, includes […]
For Canadian indie rockers Ellevator, patience truly is a virtue – not least when a debut album has been years in the making. The group of childhood friends from Guelph, Ontario — who officially formed Ellevator in late 2017 — arrives with the epic The Words You Spoke Still Move Me, produced by ex-Death Cab […]
The way Wolf Bradley met Andrew Macatrao sounds like the beginnings of a teen soap opera. They were 14 years old, studying at the San Pedro City Ballet School and competing for the same parts. The ballet school was owned by the former’s parents, making Bradley and Mactrao dance academy rivals. But this wasn’t Center […]
If there’s anything to learn from Joyce Wrice, it’s that she’s unbreakable. We’re about 20 minutes into her pre-show makeup routine at New York’s Terminal 5, as she fires off answers to questions about her first nationwide tour and her debut album, Overgrown, when an eyelash mishap almost hinders her ability to keep the interview […]
Lia Metcalfe doesn’t see things in the same pink chiffon light that more optimistic folks do. To this sleeve-tattooed, raven-haired, Doc Marten-armored, ebony-garbed Brit, the outside world has always looked and felt more like Blue Velvet, both the material and the surreal suburban-nightmare film of the same name by one of her aesthetic heroes, filmmaker […]
“I was very obsessed with Jimi Hendrix when I started playing guitar, but I don’t know if it was because of guitar that I became obsessed, or if I was obsessed with him and then guitar followed,” Carlyn Bezic says over Zoom. The Toronto-based Bezic is the musical mastermind behind the electronic pop group Jane […]
Vicky Farewell loves boy bands. The bubbly, bouncy pop of the early 2000s enchanted her back when she was just Vicky Nguyen, a classical music dork from the O.C. Since then, Nguyen’s musical palette expanded. Her R&B and soul-laden productions have been used by Silk Sonic’s Anderson.Paak. She’s played piano in WILLOW, Kali Uchis, and […]
There’s a revealing lyric in Momma‘s standout new song “Speeding 72” that says a lot about the members of the New York-by-way-of-Los Angeles quartet: “Meet up on a Sunday, filling up the ashtray / Nothing gets in our way, always in a new place / You can catch us around, listening to ‘Gold Soundz’.” That […]