Music Features

Sabrina Carpenter is as good as any current pop star at cultivating controversy and attention —the latest evidence was the now-subsided furor over her absurd Man’s Best Friend album cover, which seems to take cues from Spinal Tap’s Smell the Glove. “She’s leaning into it and laughing about it at …

“People say I need a viral moment,” Tannery Usrey says. “But you know what? That moment happens every time I write a new song, and every time I step onstage. If you chase that viral moment, it’ll eat you to death.” For a decade, Usrey has toured relentlessly, with the …

As a teenage musician, Jon Batiste used to call himself “a new-age blues artist.” Now, many genre-jumps later, he’s taking a deeply enjoyable left turn towards roots music on his seventh studio album, Aug. 22’s Big Money — and reminding the world he’s always been a bluesman at heart. “I’m …

Guitar fans — especially Gen-Z ones — need no introduction to 31-year-old virtuoso Tim Henson, who has been reinventing the instrument for more than a decade with his wildly experimental future-prog quartet Polyphia, who play fractured, trippy instrumentals that often seem more influenced by hip-hop, electronic music, and even video-game …

Welcome to our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more.This week, Justin Bieber surprise-drops his first album in four years, Blackpink reunite for a high-energy club banger, and Tyla serves up a sultry dance-hall inspired summer hit. Plus, …

In the wake of the deadly July 4 flooding in central Texas, a growing list of artists from the Texas music scene, as well as across country music, have pledged donations, launched campaigns, or arranged benefit concerts. On Wednesday evening, Robert Earl Keen announced on social media that he will …

Right before the Eagles played the final encore of their two-year, 109-date History of the Eagles Tour in July 2015, Glenn Frey walked up to guitarist Bernie Leadon and gave him a big hug. Leadon is the band’s founding guitarist and a co-writer of many of their early songs, including …

W hen Nate Newton, bassist for the band Converge, first learned how steep the suicide rate among Native American teens was, he was shocked. “I was like, ‘That can’t be right. That’s so absolutely fucked up,’” he tells Rolling Stone. Native Americans have the highest suicide rate of any ethnic …

Early in our Zoom interview, which Givēon takes from a moving vehicle, I ask him point-blank: “Who hurt you?” He’s on his way to California’s Lucerne Valley desert to perform songs from his excellent sophomore album, Beloved. Set on a reflective stage in the sand for a Spotify exclusive, he’ll …

The jam band scene – long reigned over by groups like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band – exploded in the Nineties as newer artists like Phish and Widespread Panic began filling arenas and fomenting their own rabid vagabonding fanbases. A new book by rock journalist Mike Ayers, …