Vee Hua 華婷婷“Pop music shouldn’t always get a bad rap,” says Top Pops!, a recurring selection of indie pop highlights across a selection of styles, updated every month to keep you on your wiggly toes. This month, Gardens & Villa and Dum Dum Girls return, Howard...
Jason SimpsonThere has been much lamentation and gnashing of teeth about the decaying music industry, with many opinions and conversations about what to do about it. If you were to believe the soothsayers, we'll be reduced to a generation of SoundCloud demoes...
As the falling leaves turn to frost and hint at the impending cold to come, something happens to those of us in the Northern Hemisphere who are lucky enough to experience wintry climates but not so unlucky as to live in the frozen tundra. We turn...
Greg HealeyCate Le Bon's Mug Museum, written in the aftermath of the death of Le Bon’s maternal grandmother, are informed by the self-reflection that such shifts in family hierarchies can cause. More expressly, we are told that the album’s themes emerge from...
The fabled saxophonist, flautist and frontman Nik Turner has always sought to defy the epithet "ordinary". His showmanship, sax and flute playing and great songwriting were an essential compound in the chemical reaction that gave birth to some of...
An artist who began making music in his bedroom on his own, using an SP-303 sampler, Vex Ruffin was scooped up by the label Stones Throw after sending in a speculative demo. Subsequently he took his pared back reductionist genre-splitting music on...
Elizabeth PerryEver wanted a female artist with awesomely soulful vocals to make cool, interesting, and meaningful music? Now you have one. On her latest EP, Saudade, Valerie Teicher, aka Tei Shi, makes an impressive debut, exposing herself musically as well as...
Matthew CarterAustra's two sold out shows in Berlin are expressive of the band's massive appeal in a city that thrives upon innovative music programming, anachronisms of the 1980s, and advocation for LGBT acceptance. Touring behind the sophomore album Olympia, an...