Music Features

At this year’s just-concluded SXSW, hip-hop/pop artist Kimmortal was scheduled to play a showcase with other rising acts from Canada. About a month before, though, they heard the event had suddenly been canceled over concerns related to Donald Trump‘s escalating threats toward Canada, including tariff hikes. That meant Kimmortal, an …

A s soon as you hear their celestial harmonies, you need to find them. If you happened to be looking for them on a cold afternoon in February 2024, you would have found the band of four siblings sitting in the Rolling Stone offices, strumming acoustic guitars. Their layered voices …

B obby Weir has been on the road virtually without a break since 1965, but the past few weeks have been crazy even by his standards. In December, he and his band the Grateful Dead were honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Now, in late January in Los …

From the moment Palestinian-Canadian singer-songwriter Nemahsis stepped on stage at Chicago’s Ramova Theater last fall, she had the crowd locked in. Her movements were understated and free, her presence magnetic — graceful twirls one moment, piercing eye contact the next. Performing as part of a benefit concert for Gaza, she …

Becca Harvey, the 26-year-old Atlanta musician who performs as girlpuppy, speaks the same way she writes songs. She’s funny and sharp, talking with an air of whimsy and an earnest self-awareness that turns every almost-too-somber observation she makes on its own head. Just listen to her talk about her second …

It is 10 p.m. in Seoul when Starship Entertainment’s latest girl group, KiiiKiii, pop up on Zoom for their first-ever global interview. The five members, who range in age from 14 to 19, greet Rolling Stone in Korean: “Hello, we are KiiiKiii!” But for the remainder of the conversation, they …

Though Nigerian rapper Odumodublvck’s thunderous baritone sounds predestined for fame, he didn’t go looking for music at first. It found him. He had originally hoped to become a professional soccer player before a bad injury; after that, he pivoted to business and got a degree from University of Lagos. When …

The world first met gyrofield because of a joke. It was 2019, and Kiana Li was a teenage music producer making beats on her computer from her bedroom in Hong Kong. She had 2,000 Soundcloud followers. “That was a good time,” she says with a smile. “I was feeling like …

Laila! has flourished more in the year leading up to her 19th birthday than some artists do in decades. The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and producer first broke through on TikTok with spacey viral ditties “Like That” and “Not My Problem,” showing her intrinsic ear for R&B’s current wave and its off-center …

Egyptian artist TUL8TE doesn’t want you to know anything personal about him. He is here to make you listen — not to his story, but to his music. We spoke over a camera-less Zoom call in December, around 4 p.m. Jordan time, while he was mid-tour. Any question that veered …