Mabe Fratti and Bill Orcutt’s cozy collaborative album is worthy of cult-classic status. Read our review of 𝘈𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘞𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨:

This week, we've got a futuristic bounce teamup from two legends of modern music, gauzy jazz-rap, yacht rock that sneaks up on you, noise rock gone electro, and a Must Hear banger for Obama's next playlist.

A concept record about a duckling trying to take down a soul-sucking media conglomerate? Sure, sign us up.

Invocations of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘳 notwithstanding, Puerto Rican rapper Álvaro Díaz was smart to frame his new album around an omakase meal. Read our review:

As a member of Cannibal Ox, Vordul Mega was one of the most adventurous rappers of the 2000s—until he all but disappeared. After nearly two decades of struggle, he's back to claim his legacy. Read our profile of the underground icon

Through his use of 7/8 time on his new record 'Now You Exist,' the Field's Axel Willner has found a new way to grasp at infinity

“The unfortunate blessing of his departure is that we can now all go back to loving him as we first found him, without shame, despair, or complication,” wrote great critic Greg Tate when Michael Jackson died. MJ's estate is capitalizing on that belief with the biopic.

Our latest Must Hear is an album of fretless guitar, funky drum machine, rave beats, and Byzantine religious chant by an Orthodox priest in coastal Greece!

It brings us back to an Obama-era version of Drake, to a time when megalomania could still scan as charming pop-star eccentricity www.hearingthings.co/the-one-new-...

Endlessly fascinating, Walters’ book is a profoundly needed bible of queer music history in a country that is, in fits and starts, constantly on the warpath to erase LGBTQ people from public life

Myaap has helped put Milwaukee on the hip-hop map. We spoke to her for our Credit HIstory series, where she broke down purchases including meals for her girlfriend, custom sets of fairy wings, and a bustdown Tinkerbell pendant

Is "Rock Music" rock music? www.hearingthings.co/charli-xcx-a...

The long-running European fest C2C found its footing in New York City last weekend with a night of gloriously freaky beats, noise, and sex

Hiding the real Michael Jackson in the era of 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘭

This interview with Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew includes thoughts on [*big inhale*]—kaleidoscopic grief, Spotify, the band's new album, recording conversations with your mom while you still can, and that time Drew was voted prom queen in high school

This week in Five Songs, we've got Must Hear stunners from artists who may not be on your radar, new music from Afrobeats' great provocateur, and more www.hearingthings.co/jpegmafias-b...

𝘞𝘩𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘨𝘶𝘺?, I asked myself after five straight minutes of head-nodding.

For our latest edition of The Producers, we spoke to LA beatmaking pioneer Flying Lotus about his favorite songs from producers Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Queen, Madlib, J Dilla, & more

This week in song recommendations: a different side of "Dilla," a UK rap banger reccomended by at least one doctor, and more www.hearingthings.co/lucy-dacus-m...

This week's Five Albums: Kehlani threading the needle for R&B nostalgia! New Orleans-based art-rock! A rapper-producer duo putting the avant-garde in plugg music! Analog-y synth pop! Analog-y synth-pop! And a medical student making delectable dream-pop!

Heavensouls is an algorithmic playlist’s worst nightmare

“He fits this trajectory of a folk troubadour who’s always on the road, hiking and staying in people's homes, and moves every couple of years,” says Ryan Davis. "But really, there’s nobody like him. He’s a singular force of nature.”

On the latest Waste or Taste: What are Olivia Rodrigo and Cameron Winter really up to?

This week's Five Albums: legends of industrial pop and electronic dance music meld minds, musicians from Congo and Cuba flex their ingenuity, a New York songwriter embraces jazzy art-pop, and a storied hip-hop duo contemplates what all this rap shit means.

Maybe the real dress was the toxic relationships we made along the way

Read @akramherrak.bsky.social's dive into how the Moroccan metal scene he came up in developed into the thriving community it is today—from bootleg VHS tapes of 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘉𝘢𝘭𝘭, to the brief 2003 jailing of metal musicians, to local bands gaining fans worldwide:

Hudson Freeman is a viral artist who knows that, for a certain sect of the music world, going viral is lame—even though it’s one of the only ways people without connections or rich parents can get noticed in the modern music industry

Must Hear dreamy DMV rap about kicking the habit and world-weary R&B from a modern great; plus sensory-overload electro-pop, new heat from everybody's favorite Andean electro-folk futurists, and more

Something that lives rent-free in my head since reading the Hole bassist's memoir: Courtney Love once called Melissa Auf der Maur "Billy Corgan's purse."

Dijon live from Coachella! Jazzy guitar-synths that go haywire in unexpected ways! Songwriters on the outer limits of art-rock! Two rapper/producers—one extremely storied, one still just starting out— challenging convention! Five Albums has it all!

On their latest albums, Earl Sweatshirt, Mike, and Sideshow acknowledge that hip-hop doesn't have a chosen one, but they all rap like they are anyway

Ticket prices remain out of control, but most of the tours we're looking forward to are actually... affordable?

“Man Like U” is even more relevant now, deep into the manosphere era, than when it came out seven years ago—a sentimental hymn steeped in ’80s pop balladry that rolls its eyes at “phallic repetition” and implores males everywhere to, simply, “improve.”

Who are all these people hanging out in the shop, shouting at each other? And why do I find myself yearning to shout along with them? www.hearingthings.co/revival-of-t...

New Waste or Taste: on horsegiirL, Gelli Haha, and Flea's jazz fusion take on Frank Ocean

We're getting a strong duality from this week's Five Albums picks, with two dance artists primed for self-actualizing in the streets, a rapper and an indie-rock musician both contemplating various manifestations of their worst nightmares, and more.

Is the era of 3 a.m. booty call R&B giving way to another epoch of MAKING LOVE—even, perhaps, one with the devotion and ferocity of Johnny Gill or Babyface?

If so many people hate American boys right now, why do so many of those same people love this song about crushing over American boys?

We had New York rapper-producer, and one-half of Armand Hammer, Elucid explain why he'd want songs by Funkadelic, Rakim, Maze, & more played at his funeral (he prefers the title "homegoing service").

This week, we've got an important message for the frauds

"We spent $255 at Johnny Rockets in four days somehow. That’s amazing."

Our Five Album picks this week all seem to be wrestling with themselves, whether a would-be computer-scientist seeking a path with a guitar strapped to her back, or a composer searching for humanity in an orchestra

Here we have a European woman who catalyzed a worldwide hit that’s mostly about lusting after American boys saying she thinks American boys are broken

“A visiting writer told me my work was like background music in a restaurant,” recalled fiction writer/songwriter Jana Horn. “Like something you don’t really listen to, it’s just there. It was extremely traumatizing, but it also changed my whole writing.”

Yes, “Stateside” is a fun little pop song about wanting to date a guy who might have grown up next to a cornfield. But it can also be a wishful plea for American boys—and America, at large—to be better.

The fan thought he'd uncovered a hidden alternate-reality game buried deep in Lip Critic's lyrics and Discord posts. Instead, he’d stolen the frontman's identity and went on a shopping spree.

"This is one of those lyrics that I can show to someone as a test as to whether I’m going to vibe with them or not—because if you listen to this line and you don’t gel with it, then we can’t be friends."

The viral popularity of Hudson Freeman's country-folk tune "If You Know Me" seems like a glitch in cyberspace—or maybe a collective SOS signal from those who are scrolling their way toward oblivion

“There’s all this slacker rock where people pretend they don’t care. We care a lot. Our veins are popping out of our necks trying to make this music.”

Now on our podcast Waste or Taste: J Balvin, Amber Mark, and Steve Vai's methed-out World Cup song, horny country music, Earl Sweatshirt, and more