When Kelsea Ballerini first emerged a decade ago, she got compared to Taylor Swift, but her pop-wise country has been defined less by big artistic swings than low-key relatability. On career highlights like the 2016 infantilized bad-boy takedown “Peter Pan,” the playful 2022 Thelma and Louise/”Goodbye Earl” riff “If You …
Read More »
On “M,” a jangly, spacious solitary-feeling song from her fourth album as Soccer Mommy, indie rock singer-songwriter Sophie Allison drops a line that’s at once heartbreaking, haunting, and courageous: “I don’t mind talking to empty halls.” Allison has been making records since she was an ambitious Nashville teen putting songs …
Read More »
In pop music, there’s no such phenomenon as a sure thing — except for Kylie. She’s the constant in the equation. One thing you can always count on is the way the dance-floor queen will always step back into our lives with another effortlessly sparkling pop statement in her signature …
Read More »
Yeat’s latest album, Lyfestyle, whirrs by in an hour-long blur, its details distorted in a cacophony of electronic noise. The Portland rapper surfs amid chiptune beats and synthwave stabs, and freestyles lines that he transmogrifies with adlibs and distortion effects. There are references to “big body Tonkas” and “geekin’.” He …
Read More »
Just a few hours after dropping his already jam-packed 22-track albumBeautifully Broken, Jelly Roll issued an extended version featuring five additional songs, each with special guests like Halsey and Keith Urban. They’re perfectly fine bonus tracks that show off Jelly’s gift for collaboration — “just cause I ain’t reaching for …
Read More »
Last year, Becky G releasedEsquinas– a tribute to her Mexican grandparents that was meant as a one-off foray into the comforting contours ofmúsica mexicana. But as anybody who’s marginally familiar with the songs of Grupo Frontera or Carín León will tell you, this particular genre offers a bottomless reservoir of …
Read More »
From the ashes of Brat Summer, all hail the rise of But Also Still Brat Autumn. Charli XCX’s world conquest with her zeitgeist-seizing Brat just keeps surging on her fantastic remix album, recruiting a dream team of big names to admit that it’s obvious, she’s their number one. The auteur …
Read More »
GloRilla’s major-label debut Glorious harkens back towards the glory years of the dirty South. One track, “Hollon,” adopts the chorus from DJ UNK of “Walk It Out” fame’s “Hold on Ho.” Another, “Let Her Cook,” flips the same Isaac Hayes sample that girded C-Murder’s “Down for My Niggaz.” Then there’s …
Read More »
The Linda Lindas broke out in 2021, four teenage/pre-teen rockers making the world a less fallen place with every buzzsaw riff they struck. The band went viral that year with their song “Racist, Sexist Boy,” a grunge-punk scorcher inspired by anti-Asian taunts their drummer had been subjected to on the …
Read More »
Some bands make their journey to the Fountain of Rockness to take a sip or two; others merely to gargle. But the Hard Quartet dip their four sets of lips into those waters and drink deep. They gather together for an indie-rock supergroup of kindred spirits, resulting in a shaggily …
Read More »