EDIT: 60 —> 90 - This has really grown on me. I’m so conflicted liking something this much after the Win Butler allegations, but the chemistry here is unparalleled and those synths are gut-wrenching.

I think I heightened my expectations for this track going in simply because one of my favorite bands of all time dropped it, but I do admit the track is a bit static.

For starters, I love the chemistry between Win and Régine on this track. Régine is by far the ... read more

This new track from Lana feels like a more heady, airy, and light companion piece to “Brooklyn Baby”—it even uses the same cadence as the song’s chorus throughout—from her album Ultraviolence. There isn’t as much country flair here as I was expecting for the first single off an album that is being tauted as “country,” but the production is gorgeous nonetheless.

The string sections feel like carryover from her last record DYKTTATUOB’s sparse ... read more

If you are looking for dense storyteller’s galore you’re probably better off sticking with Black Country, New Road’s 2022 album Ants From Up There. But you’ll find their new album Forever Howlong not only captures the same intense artistry that made AFUT so powerful, but also adds layers of femininity and flowery love underneath its less dark, but just as dazzling undercurrents.

The production on Forever Howlong can’t help but glow in the dark. Instrumental riffs ... read more

F*CK U SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3 is a title crazy and dense enough to make you go insane and key every car within a 10 mile radius. The atmosphere of this surprise drop matches that mood to a T as Skrillex takes you on a journey of metallic clangs, beeps, whirls, and fucked-up walls of overwhelming sound that straddle the line between a motion headache and a boiling pot of techno rave stew. Eat up!!!

The 46-minute album spans an impressive 34 tracks and an extensive ... read more

Destroyer is known for throwing together collages of lyrics that typically revolve around a loosely-defined central point. Frontman Dan Bejar could easily be called a right-brained thinker (if only that line of logic was based in science) with his deeply creative abstractions and band’s fanciful classical/jazz art style. Paired with stream-of-consciousness lyricism that’s usually probing, the words are given purpose through feeling and mood more than anything else.

Time and time ... read more

Lonnie Holley’s album Tonky doesn’t open up with a brief introduction to ease you into its complexity. What opens instead is the winding and devastating 9-minute heavy breather “Seeds” that recounts Holley’s experience being pushed through the foster care system during the harsh Jim Crow era. In a quiet multitude of expression, it reads doubly as an expression of systemic abuse in foster care and a reflection on slavery. It’s a spoken-word passage that takes ... read more

Stylistically “For the Cold Country” reminds me of Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” in structure. It starts slow and wistful, building towards a climax that struck me as oddly anticlimactic.

Maybe the hype around this track was too immense, causing it to not meet my grand expectations, but this feels like a more-drawn out version of “Chaos Space Marine” that doesn’t really go anywhere. It just kind of lingers. Where “Besties” and ... read more

This is the most cathartic release of emotion I’ve ever heard. I have no one in my life who will understand the power “Doves” holds, so I thought I’d do a write-up on here. Pirouette is truly shaping up to be a Godsend.

The contrast between the abrasive verses and softly-spoken vibrational choruses over guitars stretched so thin they sound like an earthquake shaking picture frames off of the wall bless my ears by puncturing through their soft tissue all the way into my ... read more

“Savage Good Boy” was the lifeblood that flowed through Japanese Breakfast’s exhilarating 2021 release Jubilee. It’s a song written from the man’s perspective about the ultimate greed and carnal desire being human beings put over a beat so bright you’d never even begin to think the subject matter could be so depressingly straightforward and hot to the touch as a kettle on the stove letting off steam.

For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) takes a ... read more

“Yea, a loser never wins / And I’m a loser, always been,” MJ Lenderman says at the end of each verse of this Lorelei track remake in a way that encapsulates everything gripping and good about the slacker rock genre he’s so good at.

We all have artists we pine for that just clicks with us, and in the wise words of @Mellesteen: I am a self-proclaimed MJ Lenderman meatrider. This song is absolute proof why. He doesn’t just do it better, he owns it with authenticity ... read more

Maybe this new Viagra Boys track puts too much bitterness in my cup of tea, but it simply isn’t my taste. While it feels a lot grimier and funkier than the other two singles from the upcoming album, it feels lacking lyrically and instrumentally, leaving me longing for more.

The vocal style is grating for the sake of being grating, like running nails on a chalkboard just to piss off a sworn enemy. The guitars are extremely grimy and ear-piercing in a way that doesn’t do any favors ... read more

If you would have told me the guy who cosplayed as Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton would write the most intelligible and artful sounding industrial cybernetic noise rap music made maybe ever, I probably would have possibly believed you. Experimental noise rap group clipping.’s frontman Daveed Diggs has the background that makes you believe a melding of preppy and deviant could collide in cocktail fashion.

I would also be wearing my mirrorshades after hearing the group’s latest ... read more

Guys!! Guys!! A new Brian Eno texture pack just dropped and it’s sounding more freakishly calm and unsettling than ever before, a sonic contraction of sorts. One thing’s for sure, Minecraft would be a lot different if this was its backing track. Instead of pure nostalgia, we might find feelings of regret, uncertainty, and an overwhelming sense of tranquility also associated with the childhood game.

The noise palette found on Eno’s Apple Music-exclusive album AURUM is like ... read more

Contrary to popular belief that this song is God’s green gift to country music on Earth, I beg to differ.

Instead, “The Giver” feels like an inauthentic attempt for yet another artist to foray into the country genre when it’s at its most popular and climbing ever still. I completely understand the sentiment of “The Giver” being a lesbian country anthem with an innuendo so subtle it’s nearly unrecognizable, but the track is blunter than a bullseye, ... read more

No one hates Playboi Carti more than his own fans. And it’s well-deserved.

Carti isn’t exactly known for being a stand-up guy, making him an easy target for fan harassment and bullying. There’s allegations of him choking his pregnant girlfriend and being a deadbeat dad. The rollout of his newest album MUSIC was delayed by seven and a half hours, causing some fans to go into Cartiac arrest. “HAD TO WAIT 4 THUG 2 SEND HIS VERSE,” he explained on X, seeming to imply ... read more

Whether she’s out at the MTV music awards fighting for gay rights by wearing a meat dress or paying tribute to those afflicted by the New Year’s truck attack on Bourbon Street by playing there, Lady Gaga has always put her music where her mouth is and vice versa. In an odd way, she is one of the last mainstream pop artists of the moment to really believe her music can make a difference.

Gaga’s newest album MAYHEM pays homage to this superpower of expression by fusing her ... read more

Lil Nas X dropping a scat bar was not on my 2025 BINGO card for a reason.

DREAMBOY is one of the most scatterbrained tracks I’ve heard in a minute, switching up vocals, flows, and beats no less than three times throughout its 3-minute runtime. The vocals sound strained and nasally, the lyrics cringe and generic (Does the bar “I’m shittin’ on ****, like scat porn” really need to be apart of the Lil Nas X universe?), the instrumental consisting of bland and ... read more

I’ve never been Tate McCrazy about Tate McRae. She’s always felt like a safer version of Olivia Rodrigo, even though McRae hit the pop scene much earlier than her. McRae’s first songs were lo-fi soft-spoken YouTube bedroom pop. But after gaining traction, she completely switched her sound to become a carbon copy of the brutal punk flair comprising Rodrigo’s SOUR with a Taylor Swift touchup, a complete 180 from the quiet and subdued originality that put her on the pop ... read more

I am cautiously writing this review, as I am worried that by the time I finish I may have to subject myself to another 4 song addition to the already intensely long SZA album (or is it albums?) SOS. The now twice-revamped version of SOS—first with the addition of the deluxe LANA and now a 4 song addition on the deluxe—feels like equal parts relaxation and a chore to listen to, quite a decent balance of smooth and tedious.

I am not even sure how I am supposed to review SOS at this ... read more

Julian Casablancas really went from being one of the best simplistic, yet poetic songwriters in the alt-rock genre to creating a shoddy Beck mockup over the most ear-wrenching synths in a matter of 5 years. The lyrics here sound like they were spit out by the same chatbot that created the album artwork for The Voidz’s latest album. The instrumentation sounds just as mishmash, like it can’t decide if it wants to be shoegaze or hyperpop. And the vocals are drowning in so much ... read more