Robin Hilton

The Flaming Lips have always had a fondness for science fiction and fantasy, with a vast catalog of songs about robots, spontaneous human combustion, telepathy, wizards, and UFOs. The band's latest source of inspiration is the sci-fi novel (and new movie) Ender's Game, which tells the story of Earth's futuristic ...

Ryan Lott, the principal creative force behind Son Lux, is a classically trained musician well-studied in the vast intricacies of theory, composition and orchestration. As a student at Indiana University in the late '90s he studied piano under renowned pianist Jeremy Denk (among others) and, after graduating, spent ...

The inventor and engineer Rube Goldberg was known for designing elaborate machines that performed simple tasks, usually in a string of successive events, each one triggering the next. His work has been the inspiration for a lot of fantastic art and music videos (think of OK Go's "

On her latest album, The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, singer Neko Case lays her heart — and her healthy sense of humor — bare. It's a deeply personal record that, among other things, offers intimate, sometimes wry meditations ...

I grew up in a town of about 6,000 people in rural Kansas back in the '70s and '80s. I've never romanticized it much, though it was certainly a simpler time and, for better or worse, it's where I learned to make some sense of my life. The world you ...

Back in 1984, when Rush announced a stop in Wichita, Kan. for its Grace Under Pressure tour, I and a group of like-minded high school friends eagerly spent every penny we had to buy tickets to the show. We were stoked beyond belief at the thought of seeing the ...

Few albums hold a place in the hearts and minds of its fans (myself included) quite like Pink Floyd's psychedelic masterpiece The Dark Side Of The Moon. In the four decades since its release, it remains, for many, an almost sacred work of art, endlessly dissected by legions of ...

Fourteen years ago there was Jack White, a 25-year-young new guitar god. In 2013 we have Ty Segall at 25, a prolific noise maker with new generation's admiration, in love with guitars and distortion. And here's a big surprise: Ty Segall's new album, just about to be released, ...

The answer to this week's question depends on how much you know about playing music and what you want to make or record. With some apps you don't need to know a single thing about reading music notation or playing an instrument. Other apps have a learning curve beyond comprehension.

Syracuse-based rock group Ra Ra Riot's latest album, Beta Love, is steeped heavily in science fiction and futurist theories, with tales of robots, lives stranded in space and, on the song "Binary Mind," the merging of computers and human brains. In a new video for the track, the band members' ...

It's hard to keep up with Ty Segall. The garage-rock revivalist is just 26, but has already released more than a dozen full-length albums, either under his own name or with the eight or nine (we've lost track) other bands with which he plays. (Sic Alps, White Fence and ...

We've had bands from all over the world visit the Tiny Desk. Most recently, we published a set by Keaton Henson, who was in from London. Back in May, we had singer M.R. Shajarian from Iran. There was the Danish band Efterklang, the Algerian singer Souad ...

The day before Keaton Henson arrived to play the Tiny Desk, we hosted a group called The No BS! Brass Band, a nearly dozen-piece horn section with an almost brutal (and totally amazing) sound. It was one of the loudest and most thrilling, heart-pounding Tiny Desk sets we've ever ...

We hope you caught some of our live coverage of the Newport Folk Festival over the weekend. If not, you can still hear a bunch of the shows we recorded in our archives, from Phosphorescent and The Mountain Goats to Amanda Palmer, Frank ...

It isn't the biggest or the flashiest festival of the year, but Newport Folk, which NPR is covering all this coming weekend, is certainly one of the country's most prestigious and historic annual musical gatherings. Its legacy stretches back more than 50 years, with a long list of memorable ...

Earlier this week week we asked you to look ahead 20 years from now, and guess what music from today you'll be the most nostalgic about. There were some great suggestions, including Wilco, Outkast and Sufjan Stevens.

We've put together some of your picks in a couple ...

The latest in a series of videos for David Bowie's album The Next Day isn't a big budget spectacle, but it is thrilling and intense. The video, for the song "Valentine's Day," places Bowie in some sort of industrial, concrete warehouse with just his guitar. But Bowie's penetrating gaze and ...

For a long time, my go-to karaoke song was "Sweet Child Of Mine" by Guns N' Roses. I'd really let loose at the end on the "I-ee I-ee I-ee I-ee I's." I remember singing it in what I thought was a private booth at a karoke bar in ...

My first stereo had a built-in 8-track player, a turntable and a radio. My parents bought it at a local discount store for what probably seemed like a fortune to them at the time, and I used it for years. My mom eventually sold it at a garage sale. It ...

I won't lie to you. The new video from Majical Cloudz, for the Canadian electro-pop duo's song "Bugs Don't Buzz," is kinda gross. There are scenes so strange and slimy, I'm not even sure what's going on. But, set to what is an undeniably gorgeous, if plaintive love song, the ...