Before she hit Coachella’s Gobi Stage this spring, Elyanna took a moment to pray with her tightknit team. Taking a cue from her brother Feras, who accompanied her on keyboard, the Palestinian Chilean singer visualized herself as the star of a music video. Then she powered up with her go-to …
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Backstage at New York’s Webster Hall, about 30 minutes before he’s due to go onstage, Babyface Ray sips lean from a white Styrofoam cup while a photographer snaps pictures of his extremely bright platinum chains. Born Marcellus Rayvon Register, he’s one of the top voices in Detroit’s street-rap scene, with …
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When the genre-mashing aggro-rock collective Soul Glo formed in 2014, frontman Pierce Jordan liked to joke around by visualizing wild, seemingly unachievable goals for the group. “I would be like, ‘Yo, if we play Coachella, I’m gonna play that shit fucking naked,” he says. This year, the gag lost some …
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“Experimental pop” is probably the most succinct descriptor for the music made by Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes. But it’s also a little bland, which is why singer/vocalist Rachel Brown follows it with the more expressive “dance punk, question mark?” and “art rock, shrug.” They also admit they do, …
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Far too often, the rap community doesn’t embrace the full scope of literature the way we should. Artists might champion books of advice on ascending through capitalism, but we too rarely reference probing, disruptive writers like the great Toni Morrison, who asked questions of us that we’re too afraid to …
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When Annie Blackman was 13, she met Taylor Swift. It was the fall of 2011, and like countless middle schoolers, she’d been listening all year to Speak Now, marveling at perfectly phrased darts like “Dear John” and “Mean.” “I started the whole music journey as a big Taylor Swift girl,” …
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Everything about Jasmine Rose Wilson is a rarity, from her zodiac chart as an Aquarius rising (which astrologically means she’s seen as a unique individual) to the distinctive sound of her voice — low-ranging and contralto —down to the vintage green pants from the Seventies that she’s wearing when we …
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When global audiences think about the most exciting acts from South Korea, their minds likely go first to blockbuster pop phenomenons like BTS and Blackpink. But there’s a thriving underground scene taking shape in Seoul, too, led by groups like Balming Tiger — a multimember, wildly eclectic-sounding collective that made …
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When Katherine Paul thinks back to the experiences that inspired her sweeping new album, she thinks about Sčičudᶻ, a forested path near the Salish Sea, and the salmon berries that grow there. Salmon berries, for those who live outside of the Pacific Northwest, are sweet, tart fruits resembling blackberries or …
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