Sharon Van Etten finds remarkable might in vulnerability, and her latest does what good EPs should: bushwhacks new paths. “Just Like Blood” pares imbalanced love down to the bone (“You set me off just like a gun/Then you run just like blood”) with a string section suggesting unfinished business. The… Source: RollingStone Link: I Don't […]

In April 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed a group of U.S. newspaper publishers on the value of a free press in a world threatened by “a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy,” a government by “intimidation instead of free choice” where “dissenters are silenced, not praised.” He didn’t mention communism by… Source: RollingStone Link: Drones

Girlpool show how punk a band can get with just two women, a guitar, a bass and two raging hearts. Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad come from the Los Angeles underground scene, working a vibe that goes back to the Softies or Marine Girls — raw, minimal, yet emotionally fierce. After… Source: RollingStone Link: Before the […]

Everything Is 4 opens with the lush disco of lead single “Want to Want Me,” creates dance-floor havoc with a few off-kilter EDM breakdowns and dips its toes into breezy Swedish island pop. Jason Derulo jumps into every track with equal enthusiasm, his reassuring voice adapting easily to each new… Source: RollingStone Link: Everything Is […]

Willie and Merle coined the modern country-bromance LP with their 1983 hit Pancho & Lefty; their latest looks back. The title — referring to Django Reinhardt and Jimmie Rodgers, major influences on both men — suggests a rich dig into country archaeology à la Haggard’s 1970 Bob Wills tribute. Instead, we get a… Source: RollingStone Link: Django and […]

What Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” was to the hippie era, Jamie xx’s solo debut is to British club culture: a wistful valentine conjuring a more innocent time. Exhibit A is “Gosh,” which flips a sound bite from a pioneering U.K. jungle broadcast. But the track isn’t jungle per se, because the… Source: RollingStone Link: In Colour

Florence and the Machine’s 2012 MTV Unplugged set was startling. Here was Florence Welch’s magnificently wayward choir-girl voice laid bare, shorn of cathedral reverb and synth swaddle, singing hits and covers (including Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness”) backed by wooden instruments and candles. The band’s first LP since that… Source: RollingStone Link: How Big […]

Diplo has spent the past few years as the guy Madonna, Beyoncé and Justin Bieber dial up when they want their hits to have a little next-level studio science. But it’s his electro-reggae project Major Lazer that really lets him unleash his inner beat freak. The crew’s third album is… Source: RollingStone Link: Peace Is […]

This Brooklyn duo had one of the best indie hits in recent memory with 2012’s “All of Me,” a beautifully sculpted nugget of sad-Eighties dance pop. On their second album, singer-guitarist Eric Emm and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Cohen sound like they burn prayer candles to the moany ghosts of OMD and… Source: RollingStone Link: Highlights

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell met in 1974, but it took them until 2013’s Grammy-winning set Old Yellow Moon to make a record together. The original duets on their follow-up range from heartbreak (Crowell’s superb “No Memories Hanging ‘Round”) to social consciousness (the bluesy “The Weight of the World”). Harris’… Source: RollingStone Link: The Traveling […]