Stephen Thompson

Looking at a ukulele, the instrument shouldn't be able to do everything it does in Taimane Gardner's hands.

It's hard to pin down Porridge Radio's sound from song to song, or even from moment to moment.

Petrol Girls' sonic intensity is barely contained by the boundaries of a single song; the band's rage at corrupt and exploitative systems is never contained, period

Quinn Christopherson's songs sketch out raw, vivid character studies that reflect on his family, addiction and the dramatic shift in perspective that took place when he came out as a trans man.

Luke De-Sciscio found his songwriting voice the old-fashioned way: by writing dozens upon dozens of folk songs, spread out across a decade, often while living on a boat with no electricity or heat.

Cable Ties' songs wrap a clear purpose — its raucous anthems tackle gender inequality, environmental devastation and the flickers of hope that somehow shine through anyway — in speedball ragers.

Music performed with remarkable patience, as Katie Pruitt's languid, shimmery songs unfurl gracefully and with expert care.

Kate Davis started out as a jazz prodigy, studied the standards... and now has an album full of alternately spiky and ethereal indie-rock.

Control Top's jagged post-punk has a cheerful quality that somehow meets in the middle between the rowdy chaos of punk and the sly precision of new wave.

Williams' brightly rendered Americana songs dispense poppy, anthemic uplift and earthy grit in equal measure.

Black Country, New Road packs a career's worth of frenetic force and stylistic detours into a single nine-minute song.

Korean singer and producer CIFIKA moves breezily across genres and languages, crafting intoxicating electro-pop earworms that couldn't go down more smoothly.

The band commands a big, vibrant sound that calls on its influences — just about any anthemic indie-rock band of this century — while still sounding distinct.

Audrey Nuna's a fast-rising rapper whose flow captures a bleary-eyed swirl of aspiration, hedonism and deeply complicated romance.

Bethlehem Steel's Becca Ryskalczyk writes songs about finding motivation and strength amid a deluge of negative forces: depression, lousy relationships, feelings of apathy and futility.

The coronavirus pandemic shut down SXSW this year, so we're bringing SXSW to you. Meet 100 of the bands and artists we intended to see at the 2020 music festival.

Australian singer-songwriter Alexander Biggs works with simple ingredients — an acoustic guitar, soft and distant piano lines, a hushed and heavily accented voice — but mines them for haunting drama.

Within the Puerto Rican music world, Andrea Cruz is a throwback: She constructs softly flowing folk songs that reflect on humanity's connection to the natural world.

A bicoastal kid now based in Virginia, Angelica Garcia pulls a rich array of sounds from a young life spent straddling boundaries and transcending barriers.

Mutono's infectious, blissed-out R&B reflects on a desire for comfort and community amid arrangements at the midpoint of the cool vulnerability of Frank Ocean and the sleek balladeering of Khalid.