Stephen Thompson

The Boston band Kingsley Flood has spent the last few years polishing, refining and expanding its folk-rock sound, in the process incorporating horns, more strings and ever-brighter production. The sextet sounds more confident than ever on its new album, Battles, which continues to explore some of Kingsley Flood's ...

We recorded this week's episode during the brief interregnum between the end of Glen Weldon's trip to the San Diego Comic Con and the beginning of Linda Holmes' two weeks at the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles. So it seemed a perfect time to mine the two ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the jury summons disguised as refund checks is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, a search for entry points to country-music fandom.

Emily Carol Schmidt writes via

The Newport Folk Festival's history is dotted with historic moments involving musical icons — Bob Dylan plugging in jumps immediately to mind. But, while organizers still take care to stack each festival with huge names and star veterans, the margins are smartly and lovingly curated, too. The 2013 Newport ...

In the years since she first surfaced as a suitably rustic duet partner for Will Oldham — the two Kentuckians released an EP together back in 2010 — Cheyenne Mize has broadened and deepened her sound, injecting it with slinkiness and sparkle. Her new album Among the Grey continues that ...

With host Linda Holmes taking the week off to focus on suffering and nose-blowing, we needed only to ask our beloved producer Jess Gitner into the room with us to complete a full Pop Culture Happy Hour lineup. (In historic Studio 44, Jess is usually sealed in an adjacent room, ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the aluminum-siding pamphlets disguised as jury summons is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, a blistering rebuttal of last week's column.

Last week's installment of The Good Listener offered ...

It's hard to imagine a less descriptive (or less searchable) moniker than Weekend — a word so ubiquitous in music, it even spawned its own handy checklist of band names on this website back in 2011. But the San Franciscans' sound is thankfully more distinct than all that, as ...

On the live stage, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' music is intoxicatingly celebratory, as 10 or more musicians combine to create a joyously uplifting mass clamor. Its good-natured live presence — a perfect vehicle for the group's achingly sincere tone of compassion and whimsy — is genuinely inspiring, ...

Frank Turner writes folk songs that harness the fury of punk and the majesty of Springsteenian rock 'n' roll. But more than anything else, his music is playful: There's conversational wit and bite to Turner's music, even as he's bellowing to the back rows. His songs ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the shampoo samples we accidentally tossed into the fireplace is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, the etiquette surrounding the giving and receiving of mix CDs.

Kevin writes: "I've ...

In the course of three studio albums, Michigan-bred soul singer Mayer Hawthorne has refined his gift for songs that emulate and update his home state's Motown sound. As he's picked up major-label backing — as well as guest assists on the new Where Does This Door Go from the ...

Andrew Cedermark used to play guitars in the New Jersey band Titus Andronicus, whose songs are so stuffed with words, they're often sent flying out like spring snakes — as a listener, you're left wondering how they all fit in there in the first place. But as a ...

Click the audio link on this page to hear The Good Listener columnist Stephen Thompson and Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin discuss the intricacies of wedding music — where and when to play everything from sacred music to Salt N Pepa's "Push It." (The column below originally appeared on ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the package of Omaha Steaks that sat on our front porch for the duration of a three-week vacation is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, how to incorporate music ...

Listen to Laura Mvula's terrific full-length debut, Sing to the Moon, and you'll hear soulful pop music in Technicolor. The U.K. singer's sonic ambition is boundless: Her intricately layered songs straddle genres, locations and eras in ways that sound entirely original.

Squeezing that sound behind Bob Boilen's desk is ...

James Chapman, a U.K. musician who records under the name Maps, writes earnest synth-pop songs in the tradition of The Lightning Seeds, Erasure and other artists whose use of machines is incidental compared to the pursuit of thoughtful songwriting. Chapman's charming songs sound fizzy and bright throughout Vicissitude, Maps' third ...

Patty Griffin has always had a gift for locating a song's nerve endings; for surveying her subject matter and identifying the most efficient possible pathways to listeners' emotions. Her warm, wise voice is comforting, inviting and relatable, even — perhaps especially — as she tackles weighty subjects like middle ...

Though she'd released a fine full-length debut earlier in the year, singer, songwriter, music therapist and multi-instrumentalist Cheyenne Mize first entered the public consciousness with a 2010 mini-album full of 19th-century parlor music. Titled Among the Gold and recorded with fellow Kentuckian Will Oldham, it's by definition rustic ...

Given that Smith Westerns' first record came out when its members were teenagers, it makes sense that the Chicago band has evolved from a garage-y pop-rock outfit — all shambling T. Rex-isms and impeccable hair — to something sweeter, dreamier, slicker and sunnier. Just in time for the season ...