Stephen Thompson

Minneapolis singer-songwriter Jeremy Messersmith sings sweet, timeless songs about love, desire, death and grief — not, it would seem, the stuff of grandiose artistic ambition. And yet Messersmith stands out by trying harder, doing more and always reaching farther than it seems. This is a guy who, whenever possible, ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the deluxe coffee-table book about The Jesus Lizard that we can't believe exists is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, how to catch up on a veteran artist ...

Side projects often provide a chance to take wild left turns; to indulge a desire to experiment outside the formulas dictated by a musician's primary creative outlet. For The Autumn Defense — which features bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, both of Wilco — it's actually a chance ...

Dee Dee Penny and her band Dum Dum Girls made their name on primitivism, only to demolish the expectations they'd created for themselves. Even the name Dum Dum Girls suggests adherence to the garage-bound basics, and the group's early recordings follow suit. But the new Too True is different: ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the periodic reminders that our next two months will be spent ignoring loved ones in favor of South by Southwest preparation is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, how ...

A few years back, the band Low sold T-shirts emblazoned with a fine unofficial motto for its music: "I don't like cool, I like beautiful." For the four women who make up Warpaint, those two qualities aren't mutually exclusive: The L.A. group's swirling sound is full of mysterious ...

The bracingly political Florida punk band Against Me! has been a going concern since 1997, but Transgender Dysphoria Blues can't help but feel like a debut: It's the group's first album since singer Tom Gabel came out as preoperative transgender. Now named Laura Jane Grace, she still barks her ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid a deluxe version of the Ashley Monroe record in which "deluxe" means "packed in a 10-pound wooden crate" is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, how and whether to ...

It's a testament to singer-songwriter Damien Jurado's versatility that he's made nearly a dozen albums of largely inward-looking folk and rock music, and yet has never made two records that sound the same. He's released collections of sad solo acoustic music, hard-charging up-tempo rock, subtle psychedelic wanderings, and even ...

For veteran soul singer Sharon Jones, 2013 was a year of frustration, fear and false starts: She'd just announced the summer release of her fifth album, Give the People What They Want, when she was diagnosed with cancer and had to put her career on hold. Tours were canceled, ...

This isn't our first live episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour: Almost exactly a year earlier, we recorded a show in an abandoned bank during an NPR merchandise sale. But this one, recorded Dec. 10 at NPR's Studio One, is the first live show we've recorded on an official ...

For weeks now, we've been compiling lists of 2013's best music — favorite albums, favorite songs, individual staff members' personal Top 10 lists and so on. Applying a rank to the year's best can be a stress-inducing, conflict-intensive process behind the scenes, but we wouldn't dare attempt such ...

The same caveats apply to every individual writer's year-end Top 10 list: This is one person's favorite albums of 2013, based on one highly individualized set of tastes, level of desire to reflect the culture at large, life circumstances and genre preferences, as well as mood swings and a capricious ...

Part of the Twin Cities hip-hop collective Doomtree, rapper, singer, poet and songwriter Dessa divides her time between singing and rapping, often landing on a spoken-word splitting of the difference. The week she performed this Tiny Desk Concert, she appeared at an All Songs Considered live listening party, during ...

When NPR Music started inviting musicians to perform at Bob Boilen's desk back in 2008, we never could have expected that we'd one day host The Dismemberment Plan. For one, the D.C.-area group had long since disbanded; for another, its fleshed-out and periodically funky sound wouldn't seem to lend ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the detergent sampler that broke and spewed suds all over our mortgage bill is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, what makes a successful solo album.

Rick Simineo writes ...

Among many other accomplishments, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen helped change the direction of contemporary music with the soundtrack to their 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? Winner of an Album Of The Year Grammy, among other honors, the collection — produced and compiled by T-Bone Burnett — sold ...

Jason Molina sang the blues, but as a state of mind rather than a musical genre — songs of desperation and desolation, and of unwinnable battles with unseen demons. But Molina also chronicled survival, trying, wallowing but also walking, one tentative step at a time. His voice conveyed pain, ...

In the last few years, Ashley Monroe has cobbled together an impressive country-music pedigree by working alongside both upstarts (Pistol Annies with Miranda Lambert and Angaleena Presley) and longtime Nashville veterans (Vince Gill produced Monroe's solo album Like a Rose), and even collaborating with Jack White ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the 500 pounds of generic Circus Peanuts we intend to melt down for home insulation is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, a request for a unifying theory of ...