Jacob Ganz

There's something mysterious, almost opaque, about the songs of Lower Dens. The ones on the band's new album, Escape From Evil, are lush but distant, beautiful things held just out of reach. As Jason Heller writes in his First Listen review, "For an album so sculpted ...

"I've been coming here for so long," Jack Antonoff says of SXSW while waiting for a breakfast table at the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. "The first time I came, in 2003, I had one show at a sushi place that like nine friends came to. Which I thought was ...

"This song's for anybody who couldn't make into this show, if there is anybody," Courtney Barnett says before blasting through "Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go To The Party," from her just-over-the-horizon debut album, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. The modesty is cute but ...

Last year, as an April Fools' Day joke, the label Bloodshot Records announced that it had brought together 21 affiliated artists for a roughed-up roots take on the music of Prince, to be pressed as a "purple swirl colored double vinyl LP" set. To the label's surprise, fans ...

The British singer also won Best New Artist and Record of the Year, for "Stay With Me." Beck won Album of the Year for his subdued, folky Morning Phase.

Traditionally, the folks at NPR Music make a list of their 100 favorite songs of the year. But this time, they expanded the list to 302 songs and made a really long mix tape.

Though he collaborated with Talking Heads, made classic disco records and influenced countless fellow musicians, Arthur Russell was not well-known during his too-short life, which ended in 1992 due to complications from AIDS. To those who knew him he was a singular musician: a fan of ...

You can be 10 feet from The Campbell Apartment, a bar tucked into the corner of New York's Grand Central Station, and not have any idea it's there. The office of a member of the New York Central Railroad's Board Of Directors in the 1920s (and later a storage closet ...

Next week, the CMJ Music Marathon will fill New York City with even more great music than normal. Every fall, the festival brings hundreds of bands to the city's many venues, and NPR Music will be there again this year. On Oct. 22 at (Le) Poisson Rouge, we ...

The late pianist Dave Brubeck left jazz with incredible performances, recordings and advocacy — as well as a large body of compositions. His iconic music is reimagined by members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Jazz Night in America explores various Brubeck compositions, discussing the decisions the arrangers made ...

If you're feeling raw, Jessie Ware's Tough Love is a perfect companion, whether you use it as a balm or an echo chamber for your despair. On her second album, Ware comes on like a good listener offering support in the wee hours, singing direct lyrics about love and ...

For two albums, the essence of a great Perfume Genius song has been musical simplicity and lyrical depth. Mike Hadreas, the Seattle songwriter behind the project, excels at writing memorable but sparely arranged melodies designed to highlight his compact, hard-hitting phrases. His topics are often isolation and estrangement — ...

Yesterday, the ecstatic indie-pop group The New Pornographers released Brill Bruisers, its first new record in four years. Next week, it'll bring the album home. NPR Music is excited to announce that on Thursday, Sept. 4, The New Pornographers will play songs from Brill Bruisers in the Brill ...

Tom Scholz is one of those musicians whose role in rock history is easy to underestimate, but the accomplishments stack up. Scholz is the lead songwriter behind Boston, whose debut album stands at No. 12 on the RIAA's list of the best-selling albums of all time. Since it was ...

It's counter-intuitive, but making deeply emotional music often comes across as a matter of restraint and timing, calculation and manipulation, rather than as an indulgence or purging. All over its darkly shimmering second album, Hundred Waters shows a new ability to pull listeners' strings. Think of musical intensity as an ...

There are so many "whoa, stop" moments in the first three minutes of Sturgill Simpson's second album. A few selected quotes, which Simpson delivers in a stretched-out Waylon croon: "I've seen Jesus play with flames ... met the devil in Seattle ... met Buddha yet another time," "Don't waste your ...

Being a fan of the British group These New Puritans means curbing your expectations on a regular basis. The band's angular, post-punk-influenced debut, Beat Pyramid, was rigorous in its attention to style and detail; on the band's next album, 2010's Hidden, the intensity was still there, but the style drifted ...

David Lamb, who sang in the folk duo Brown Bird, died Saturday at Memorial Hospital in Providence, R.I., due to complications from leukemia. Lamb started Brown Bird as a solo project in 2003 and stayed with the band in various formations until it settled into its final lineup, as a ...

Kurt Cobain died 20 years ago today. It's hardly news. You've probably already seen plenty of tributes to his career and what might have been, along with, perhaps, a criticism of the impulse to memorialize his death simply because it's been a round number of years since the ...

"Under the Pressure," the nine-minute song that kicks off Lost in the Dream, opens with a few seconds of hair-raising electronic ticking and closes with two and a half minutes of full-band, synchronized, undulating feedback. In between, The War on Drugs shows many of the cards in its ...