Stephen Thompson

For Superchunk, of all bands, calling a record I Hate Music is too on-the-nose ironic to be particularly provocative: Its members have been immersed in music, and clearly in love with it, for virtually their entire lives. Singer Mac McCaughan, in particular, has made a huge string of vital ...

For one more week, our host and pal Linda Holmes has been roaming the desolate plains of Los Angeles at the Television Critics Association press tour, with only catered lunches and lavishly appointed meet-and-greets to provide sustenance.

So the rest of the Pop Culture Happy Hour gang must soldier on ...

Jim James has spent his career singing big, booming songs that echo into the sky. With My Morning Jacket, he specializes in letting his gigantic voice ring out past the rafters in songs that boom and blare. But on his first solo album under his own ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the heavily taped packages that can't be opened without the aid of a utility knife and a blowtorch is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives. This week: an array of tips for anyone ...

It hasn't even been 11 full months since The Avett Brothers released The Carpenter, the North Carolina band's most recent collection of poignant and infectious, bluegrass-inflected folk-rock. And, given the lengthy touring cycle that each major album release generally spawns — the Avetts just headlined a day of ...

The Montreal pop band Stars wears many faces, literally and figuratively: Singers Amy Millan and Torquil Campbell swap lead vocals in songs that range from effervescent pop-rock to grandiose dance music to melancholy, string-enhanced dirges. With so much to choose from in the group's toolbox, a few gems ...

The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle spent the 1990s recording his songs — just a voice, an acoustic guitar and bracingly articulate lyrics about catastrophe and survival — on low-fidelity equipment like boom boxes. It got to the point where the tape hiss felt like another instrument, but in ...

Jason Isbell was once one of Drive-By Truckers' great songwriting weapons — he wrote the jaw-dropping "Outfit," among others — until his career spiraled into substance abuse and he left the band. As it so often does, sobriety has served Isbell well: The Alabama singer-songwriter just ...

Julianna Barwick makes grand, gracefully sweeping choral music that's so swoonily lovely, it's far too easy to lose sight of the craft that went into making it. Barwick takes small vocal phrases and bits of instrumentation, samples them and loops them impeccably to create a sound that tentatively recalls ...

The Lumineers may have on the pop scene out of nowhere — scoring a worldwide hit with the band's self-titled 2012 debut album and its multimillion-selling single "Ho Hey" — but the Denver group had tooled around in obscurity for quite a few years before its breakthrough. These ...

It's our 150th episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour — in case you want to visit the "Sesquicentennials" section of your local greeting-card store — and we've celebrated by scattering to the four winds. Host Linda Holmes is still in Los Angeles at the Television Critics Association press tour, while ...

Nashville-bred singer-songwriter Rayland Baxter is your classic folk-rock rambler: He's traveled the world to find inspiration and written songs to reflect his observations along the way. Of course, when it comes to inspiration, it helps that Baxter's father — Bucky Baxter, who's played with Bob Dylan, ...

The Newport Folk Festival understands the value of a good palate-cleanser — not to mention the way folk and gospel's roots intertwine — so this year's lineup taps the rich vein of talent at Boston's Berklee College of Music to bring fans the Berklee Gospel & Roots Choir.

Hear the ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the helpful $40-a-pop reminders not to speed on North Capitol Street is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives. This week: a discussion of cellphone recordings at concerts.

Katherine writes via email: "Last night, ...

Houndmouth may record for taste-making U.K. label Rough Trade, but everything else about the telegenic folk-rock group bleeds Americana: All four members of the Indiana band share lead vocals throughout their warm, rambling songs. Houndmouth's full-length debut, From the Hills Below the City, just came out.

Hear Houndmouth perform as ...

Iris DeMent is as credible as folksingers come: The 52-year-old singer-songwriter grew up singing traditional gospel and country music alongside 14 siblings in rural Arkansas. Once endorsed as "the best singer I ever heard" by no greater an authority than Merle Haggard, DeMent seems to emerge ...

After a long flurry of activity culminating in the release of The Decemberists' 2011 album The King Is Dead, frontman Colin Meloy announced his long-running, best-selling band would take a lengthy hiatus. Several of the remaining group members began to focus on the side project

Andrew Bird's records have grown quieter and more intimate in recent years, but he remains a remarkably dynamic live performer: Last year's Break It Yourself wouldn't seem to be the stuff of blockbuster live shows, and yet when he took it to the stage, he injected its characteristically ...

A young, Niger-born Tuareg guitarist inspired by the wizardry of Saharan rock bands like Tinariwen, Omar Moctar (a.k.a. Bombino) has helped make African music more relatable to U.S. fans, thanks to both his own instrumental gifts and to collaborators like The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, who ...

Michael Kiwanuka's voice sometimes seems to glide out of another era entirely — he frequently brings to mind the sepia-toned grace of Marvin Gaye or Sam Cooke — but his music is no mere throwback. Still in his mid-20s, the Londoner conjures up the ...