Katie Presley

If Kentucky folk singer and guitarist Joan Shelley had written the stories of her second album, Over and Even, for a book instead, its cover would be the forest green of middle Appalachia, and its edges would be worn. Her voice is milky and smooth, but her songs are aged ...

Twenty years ago this week, Microsoft introduced its Windows 95 operating system on CD-ROM. One of the legacies of the operating system was its dreamy startup music, composed by legendary producer Brian Eno and titled "The Microsoft Sound." It lasts six seconds. (Microsoft's work with well-known ...

Bikini Kill, the feminist punk band at the forefront of the '90s riot grrrl movement, are about to reissue something few people have heard. The group's very first demo, Revolution Girl Style Now, is coming out not only in its original cassette format, but also on CD, vinyl, and ...

This week Atlanta band Deerhunter announced its forthcoming seventh album, Fading Frontier, and released its first single and video, the swaggering "Snakeskin." The new album is a polished, propulsive turn for the group, fronted by eccentric and charismatic lead singer Bradford Cox.

Five years ago, Deerhunter was ...

LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This song contains explicit language.

Giving someone a compliment can turn gruesome pretty quickly. One can "slay" in a great outfit. A new song can be "killer." A rapper can "murder" her verse or the other artists in a song where her flow is clearly dominant. Young ...

Opposites attract in songs by siblings Tyler and Maggie Heath, who perform as the folk duo The Oh Hellos. Their instrumentation and singing are exuberant, just this side of ecstatic, even though their lyrics deal with wandering, grief and regret.

It's a testament to the Heaths that this ...

When megawatt Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O released Crush Songs, a solo record of intimate, ukulele-based bedroom recordings, it was a surprise move. Yet the new Asli Baykal-directed video for one of those tracks, "Singalong," is just what you'd expect. It's a lo-fi production with ...

Singer/guitarist Shana Cleveland does a beautiful lot with very little. When she's not the frontwoman of understated beach-rock group La Luz, she's making introspective, quietly masterful work in her solo project, Shana Cleveland & the Sandcastles. In her Sandcastles configuration, Cleveland is working primarily with her ...

R&B singer Janelle Monáe released a blistering 6 1/2-minute protest song on Friday called "Hell You Talmbout." The song's premise is simple, and that simplicity is the source of its power. The lyrics are the chanted names of black Americans killed by police and vigilantes, followed by the ...

Chamber folk outfit Beirut has been out of the spotlight since 2011, as its founder and frontman Zach Condon suffered and recovered from exhaustion, divorced, remarried and established a second home in Turkey. Despite its negative title, No No No, the group's forthcoming album, is a return to ...

There is much magic in "Leave A Trace," the new video from Scottish synth-pop band Chvrches, and maybe the least of it is that the band appears to walk on water. More compelling than the water-walking, the dramatic, otherworldy soundstage sunset, and the perpetually billowing clouds is the ...

Atlanta art-rock band Deerhunter announced its seventh LP, Fading Frontier, Sunday, and Monday premiered the abstract video for its lead single, "Snakeskin." The song is a swaggering, infectious piece of summer rock, and frontman Bradford Cox takes that swagger to creepy Deliverance-ian lengths in the video. There might ...

"The original idea for this clip included sushi," wrote Australian singer-songwriter Ali Barter in an email about "Hypercolour," her funny, food-centric new video. "I wanted to have businessmen eating sushi off Eric," who plays her hapless manager in the clip. The type of food was changed to Chinese, and it's ...

Pop music is often overlooked as a genre capable of bearing significant thematic weight. So when Zac Little of folk-rock band Saintseneca wanted to make a record about the nature of consciousness, he packaged it in the form of what he calls "easy to swallow pop song pills."

That record ...

British performance artist FKA twigs released her latest EP Thursday. In conjunction with the release, called M3LL155X, twigs (given name Tahliah Barnett) put out self-directed videos for four of the EP's five tracks. Meant to be viewed as one 16-minute piece, these stunningly immersive videos feature imagery ranging from frankly ...

The inimitable harpist and singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom released new music this week, her first since 2010's Have One On Me. Every aspect of Newsom's work is precise and impeccable: her intricate harp work, her striking, delicate vocals and her sweeping lyrics. It's no wonder her records come out four to ...

The life of a musician is notoriously hard on friends and family. Grueling schedules, inconsistent paychecks and ease of access to any number of vices can all make caring about a band member taxing. Courtney Barnett has an entire song about her parents' worries, including but not limited ...

This week, the All Songs team picks songs that sound like revolutions. Bob Boilen is out, so co-host Robin Hilton is joined by Katie Presley in D.C. and Timmhotep Aku in New York. The trio shares big, smashy music that lets Robin engage in his once-yearly purge of emotion.

The ...

Andra Day walks the line between reverence and revelation, using both to her advantage. The soul, jazz and R&B singer cultivates an aesthetic with clear reference points in the past, but she tells stories firmly rooted in her present. It's a jarring and compelling combination.

Day's singing has much in ...

LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This song contains sexually explicit language.

Singer-songwriter Amy Bezunartea's latest single, "Oh The Things A Girl Must Do" is gently sung, but it's not an easy listen. Bezunartea's voice and her soft guitar play in stark contrast to her frank, razor-sharp lyrics about the pressures put on ...