The people on the cover of this Massachusetts quartet’s third LP are naked. So are the songs inside it: raw-hearted bursts of bald guitar churn backing lyrics that hunger for meaning in terms that’d be corny if the music didn’t hit so hard. There’s some latent emo here (one song… Source: RollingStone Link: Goodness

Following in the wake of Chance the Rapper’s critical smash Coloring Book, his Savemoney crewmate Joey Purp debuts with the bright iiiDrops, another Chicago dispatch full of soaring horns and impassioned deliveries. Purp juxtaposes optimistic beats and unflinching lyrics about growing up in “Chiraq”: “I ain’t been church in a… Source: RollingStone Link: iiiDrops

Brandy Clark’s 2013 debut, 12 Stories, heralded a Nashville songwriting renaissance, alongside pathfinders like Kacey Musgraves and Eric Church. Its sequel, and proper major label debut, ups the ante: It’s music tooled alternately for stadiums and songwriting circles, commercial and public radio, line-dance bars and coffee shops. Clark’s a badass who… Source: RollingStone Link: Big […]

On his self-titled 2012 debut, Australian producer Harley Streten (a.k.a. Flume) came off as an EDM artist with a pop side, mixing shades of R&B into his relaxed tracks. His follow-up is more aggressive (check the bass-driven banger “Wall Fuck”). Layered, abrasive electronics set a grimy backdrop for MC guest… Source: RollingStone Link: Skin

When Tom Petty reassembled his first, pre-Heartbreakers band in 2007, it may have seemed like a novelty. Now, with a second album, Mudcrutch feel like a steady moonlighting gig. This record is more of a band effort than the decades-delayed debut – all of the members get writing credits, and… Source: RollingStone Link: 2

“When you change yourself, you’ll change the world,” roars Joe Duplantier on “Silvera,” the second track from Gojira’s sixth and latest album – and “change” definitely seems to be the operative word these days for the French progressive metal giants. The highly anticipated Magma finds Joe, his drummer brother Mario,… Source: RollingStone Link: Magma

Following the breakout success of 2014’s Bury Me At Makeout Creek, 25-year-old Mitski Miyawaki takes a walk on the weird side in her fourth LP. Assisted by producer and instrumentalist Patrick Hyland, she shrugs off indie rock convention from the onset;  “Happy” opens the album with braying saxophones, beats craftily fashioned from CD skips and lyrics about a… Source: RollingStone Link: Puberty 2

“Nobody hurts you like me,” Tegan and Sara sing on the opening track from their eighth album. It’s a twist on a classic pop sentiment — a little sadistic, a little sly – floated over glistening disco synths and rising-tide drum burble, and it’s a perfect T&S moment. The Canadian… Source: RollingStone Link: Love You […]

Pianist Robert Glasper has spent the past 10 years decorously disassembling whatever walls folk may imagine separate the romantic funk of modern R&B from the abstract truths and monster chops of modern jazz. This not-having-two-effs-to-give quality alone renders Glasper a qualified son of Miles Davis and the ideal cat to aid actor/director/screenwriter/… Source: RollingStone Link: Everything's Beautiful

If vulnerability had a sound, what would it be? Does being unguarded always mean being meek and unassuming? Or do the vulnerable have some fight in them? In their debut LP, Philadelphia noise-rock duo Pinkwash bare their teeth as powerfully as they bare their wounds. Inspired by the loss of… Source: RollingStone Link: Collective Sigh