Stephen Thompson

Daughter first popped up on our radar when we heard the London band's song "Landfill" while preparing for SXSW early last year: Achingly pretty and melancholy, the track builds to an absolute gut-punch of a line — "I want you so much, but I hate your guts" — that ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and along with the quilt my kind sister couldn't possibly have made me herself came a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, a request for ideas on music awards that double as ...

As lead singer of the youthful Manchester band The 1975, Matthew Healy has cranked out a batch of enjoyably wiry songs, most notably the singles "Chocolate" and "Sex" — each of which has attracted more than a million YouTube plays. The group has been bubbling up, here and ...

San Fermin is the brainchild of a Brooklyn songwriter and pianist named Ellis Ludwig-Leone, but he's no frontman: Three singers share lead-vocal duties on the chamber-pop band's self-titled debut, and he's not one of them. Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig also sing in Lucius, but they don't harmonize so ...

Lou Barlow has been reuniting with old bandmates left and right in the last decade or so, even as his personal life has broken apart. In 2005, the rock veteran rejoined Dinosaur Jr., having long since moved past the acrimony surrounding his departure, and he's now back with ...

Many members of the L.A. quintet Grouplove have had their bodies emblazoned with "Grouplove" tattoos, so they're nothing if not committed to the project. That full-bore, all-in approach comes through in their songs, too: Like Grouplove's ingratiating debut (2011's Never Trust a Happy Song), the new Spreading Rumours positively ...

As summer was giving way to fall, preseason football was giving way to actual football, and Linda Holmes' week was giving way to the Toronto International Film Festival, the Pop Culture Happy Hour gang managed to gather just long enough to look back on a divisive summer full of big, ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the helpful slips from FedEx reminding us that we have to be at home to receive their package even though most people work during the day, for pete's sake is a slew of smart questions about how music fits ...

Willis Earl Beal made his debut album, last year's Acousmatic Sorcery, after a period of desperate loneliness and homelessness. Recorded on a karaoke machine, it can be generously described as "lo-fi" — all vulnerability and rough edges, it's true to both the circumstances that spawned it and the haunting, haunted ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid our next-door neighbor's copy of Soldier of Fortune is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, multiple requests for help deciding when it's time to bail on an outdated music ...

Just a few weeks ago, when Linda Holmes was out of town, we decided to extend the opportunity for a scrappy newcomer named Audie Cornish to get a bit of much-needed NPR airtime. Today? She's one of the hosts of All Things Considered. (Okay, she was one of the ...

Sarah Jarosz was still in high school when she signed her record deal, and she released her debut album (2009's Song Up In Her Head) shortly thereafter, but the versatile bluegrass star seemed to emerge fully formed. For one thing, the 22-year-old keeps her music sounding warmly pretty ...

It's human nature to romanticize a specific time and place in the past — a moment when everything felt just right, or opportunities were laid out like a banquet. For Okkervil River's Will Sheff, it's been impossible to let go of Meriden, N.H., circa 1986: That tiny town ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the monthly bale of sunflower seeds we've decided to order from Amazon Prime via subscription is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, a request for advice on when and ...

As leader of Bon Iver, Justin Vernon has been extremely sparing with new material, releasing maybe two dozen songs in the six years he's been on the cultural radar. But it's hard not to goggle at the sheer quantity of his creative output in 2013 alone: He's released an ...

"Reveal myself when I'm ready / I'll reveal myself invincible soon," Neko Case sings in "Ragtime," the mid-tempo ballad which closes her new record, The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You. But she's hardly concealed her identity or evaded ...

When it comes to Tiny Desk Concerts, we're suckers for milestones at NPR Music: We're gearing up to acknowledge No. 300, for example, and are constantly taking note of the first time a musician trots out a particular rare instrument or does something else no one has done in front ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the irksome noisemaking doodads people keep sending Bob Boilen is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives. This week: tips for parents who want to throw dance parties for their kids.

Mara writes via ...

Alpine's music doesn't instantly present itself as Tiny Desk material: The Australian sextet crafts busily impeccable pop music with a danceable sway, prominent synths and the charming shared lead vocals of Phoebe Baker and Lou James. That's a lot of ingredients to strip down to a semi-acoustic set in ...

The L.A. duo No Age got its start playing weird, bruising, arty punk and noise, but its sound keeps morphing into something trickier to describe: Its fourth full-length album, An Object, finds No Age withholding bruising rushes of power and blistering payoffs as often as it doles them out. ...