Lars Gotrich

As icy synths undulate like black silk in slow motion, electronic producer Natasha Kmeto sings in a brassy alto, "I thought you had a boyfriend / I thought you had a man / I thought it wasn't like that / I thought you had a plan." Her words are ...

Beauty Pill's music is an invitation. In it, life whirs with plunderphonic glee and riffs are funky from the inside out, with rhythms that are equal parts hip-hop and go-go. Conceived, recorded and meticulously tinkered with over the course of eight years, Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are ...

Twenty years ago, emo was smack-dab in the middle of its defining years. The Midwestern U.S., in particular, gave us Braid, The Promise Ring, Christie Front Drive, Mineral and Rainer Maria. One of the region's lesser-known, but no less beloved, bands was Kansas City's Boys Life, with ...

Pinkish Black swings moods like none other. Since 2010, the Fort Worth, Texas, duo has stuck to synths, drums and Daron Beck's Gothic croon without the urge to expand — but it evolves expansively anyway. Bottom Of The Morning, the band's third record, all but abandons Pinkish Black's previous metallic ...

"All of my friends are getting married / All my friends are right with God / All of my friends are making money / But art gets what it wants and art gets what it deserves."

Will Toledo makes smart guitar-pop music for loners and weirdos who can't help but ...

No one's going to read Leigh Bardugo's newest book, Six Of Crows, without thinking about Ocean's 11. No one's going to hear the premise — six young criminals hired to break into (and then out of) the most secure prison in the world — without thinking of Danny Ocean and ...

If there's a secret world inside the guitar, Tashi Dorji wants to find it. Raised in Bhutan and based in Asheville, N.C., for the last 15 years, Dorji plays solo guitar music that's at once frenetic and tranquil, as his fingers flick across and hammer down strings; tiny sparks ignite ...

Groove can be an ugly word in metal. But just because some bands haven't evolved beyond Pantera's (awesome) Cowboys From Hell, that doesn't mean the groove can't find nastier pastures. Twitching Tongues has been particularly adept at the moody mosh, where angst broods with Alice In Chains-inspired melodies, a ...

The harrowing noise-punk trio Bambara smears discontent with the gloom of the Birthday Party, the spit of Swans and the lysergic mystery of Red Temple Spirits, but understands those are only points of departure. Dreamviolence, from 2013, was a promising if limited debut, mainly because its Bushwick basement ...

After a series of traumatic psychological tests of his loyalty and honesty, a mad scientist tells a young boy in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, "Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted."

"What happened?"

"He lived happily ever after."

Cue the strings, perhaps, ...

As the Olympia punks in Gun Outfit have stretched out and let their hair down, the band's vibe has followed suit, getting looser with each record. Recorded just before the duo's move to L.A., Dream All Over is a dusty piece of good-time rock 'n' roll that just wants to ...

Love is knowing what's best for yourself. We grasp at straws trying understand what that is, but even in that knowledge, we betray our best intentions to get stupid about another person. On "Call the Days," New Zealand folk artist Nadia Reid sings, "I was happy on my own / ...

We're all gonna die...someday. And if there's mass extinction, what's left of humanity will face nature's wrath, stored in centuries of environmental abuse and neglect. With its second album Litany, Dead to a Dying World plays the soothsayer of the agricultural apocalypse, reaped in a searing and gorgeous vision ...

In what remains of summer, the days are still long, but the nights are colder. Julia Holter's music has always felt right in this climate, as summer's newness transitions inward to autumn's quieter, more reflective tones. "You know I love to run away from sun," she sings in "Feel ...

You can be sad, but you don't have to be whiny. New Orleans' Woozy has a whole lot of feelings, but also a whole lot of not giving a damn. This appears to be the trio's M.O. on Blistered, its debut album after a few EPs and split releases. "Gilding ...

What is "T.O.D.D.," anyway? Taft On Double Dare? Totally Ontological Dungeons & Dragons? Totebag Offer, Done Deal? Taylor O))) Drone-Doom? Thurston's On-Deck Disaster? Thanks, ODB Dropped a Deuce?

Maybe the acronym is none of those things, or maybe it's all of them. But mostly it's the title of the new ...

Can we just take a moment to appreciate that there is a new Iron Maiden album in the world? That vocalist Bruce Dickinson kicked a cancerous tumor's ass? And that the British band still makes some of the most glorious heavy metal ever, 40 years later? Few ...

Obnox exists in the static bleedthrough of punk and soul music. It's a place where Cleveland's Lamont "Bim" Thomas has spent decades dialing in deep and ripping off the knob in bands like Bassholes and This Moment In Black History. But with Obnox, Thomas lays himself bare in mind-numbing ...

Heavy-metal album artwork can be transportive: You can depend on Paolo Girardi's mangled serpents and Kev Walker's mutant nightmares to guide you to metal mayhem that matches the cover. But maybe you bought a copy of Molly Hatchet's 1978 debut LP solely based on the

PWR BTTM's vowel-less moniker boldly announces its intentions, with the power out front and the silliness below. The name's striking, Google-able, and helps Liv Bruce (drums/vocals) and Ben Hopkins (guitar/vocals) take control of their personal narrative. "As queer people, a lot of our lives are prescribed for us ...