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Kitty and Ricky Eat Acid team up to create the undeniable Pom-Poms
In the summer of 2017, rapper Kitty, who’d gone viral via Soundcloud earlier in the decade, released Miami Garden Club her long-awaited crowd-funded debut album, which captured her shift from the...
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Ayanna Woods presents her ‘wildly improvisational and mathematically...
If you’ve ever heard of Chicago composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Ayanna Woods, it might have been at Constellation, where groups like Fifth House Ensemble and ZRL have performed her works....
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Chicago indie-pop band Jungle Green play as sweet as their homespun beginnings
Last winter singer-songwriter Andrew Smith posted flyers around Chicago to promote the oh-so-sweet solo recordings he made as Jungle Green, and he’s since completely transformed his bedroom project...
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Chicago's Fran provides an impeccable guide for indie rock
In a 2017 interview with Sixty Inches From Center contributor (and Reader staffer) S. Nicole Lane, Fran front woman Maria Jacobson talked about her nightly routine of playing her acoustic guitar just...
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Scandinavian quintet Atomic find hidden possibilities in the music of others
Scandinavian quintet Atomic first convened in 2000, and even after nearly two decades, they never have trouble generating material in-house. Saxophonist and clarinetist Fredrik Ljungkvist, trumpeter...
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Sparkle Hard shows another step in the evolution of Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
The music of Stephen Malkmus can roughly be divided between his three main bands: Pavement, The Jicks, and Silver Jews. For better or for worse, Pavement tends to overshadow the other two—their rough,...
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Grails brings their inimitabile instrumental rock to Chicago, with support...
Post-rock, psych rock, western film scores, krautrock, heavy dirges. there’s little Grails can’t deliver stylistically, and they always deliver their music well.…
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Long-running desert rock founders Yawning Man release their best record yet
Formed in La Quinta, California (“the Gem of the Desert”) in 1986, Yawning Man are largely considered the fathers of the desert rock movement. The band’s now legendary “generator parties”—all-night...
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Chicago pop mastermind Victor Cervantes knows what the future sounds like
In March, 2017 local pop wunderkind Victor Cervantes, aka Victor!, sold out the first run of his self-released debut CD-only EP, Glitter98. Now 18, he’s doubled down on his music career, transforming...
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Carl Testa’s Sway gives the computer a say
People often talk about machines taking over society like it’s a bad thing, but Connecticut multi-instrumentalist Carl Testa envisions a relationship in which musicians and computers coexist just...
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Deca makes goofy hip-hop profound—and vice versa
Denver-born, New York-based MC and producer Deca wallows gleefully in the loopy psychedelic end of hip-hop. In the past, his albums have owed debts to the Native Tongues collective (groups who were...
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Egg-O-Holic puts together Gujarat's vast eggetarian street food
Eggs: they're not just for breakfast anymore. The famously vegetarian state of Gujarat in northwestern India is also famously dry. And yet after dark in many large cities, out come the laaris, street...
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Black Praxis Sound Project carry on the tradition of exploring...
For decades, musicians around the world have found free jazz to be an ending and flexible platform. Musicians as varied as German reed player Peter Brötzmann, South African drummer Louis...
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The Soft Moon confront the past through moody, industrial darkwave
Led by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Luis Vasquez, Oakland’s the Soft Moon creates a visceral mix of darkwave, industrial, and post-punk music that recalls the heyday of 80s...
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Emerging Chicago pop artist Thair does a lot on his solo debut, Summer Luhh
As the singer for local R&B band Astro Samurai, Thair has shown he has the fresh skills and magnetic allure to hypnotize a crowd. That serves him well in his solo project under his first name, in...
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Iconic Texas emo band Mineral are reinvigorated on One Day When We Are Young
The surge of interest greeting new bands recontextualizing 90s emo and the torrent of 90s emo bands either reuniting (even for just a few anniversary tours) earlier this decade has been petering out...
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Shamir continues path of twists and turns with Resolution
Shamir rose to the spotlight with the release of his 2014 song “On The Regular,” but though the dancy, cleanly-produced music made the singer-songwriter what he calls an “accidental pop star,” it...
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The songs on MØ’s Forever Neverland are mostly club bangers—and that’s just fine
After my first listen to MØ’s recent full-length, last year’s Forever Neverland (Columbia), I realized that I had stumbled into a bizarre experiment. When I listened to the electro-pop album on...
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The Lemon Twigs reach high on their rock opera about a chimpanzee, Go to School
On Do Hollywood, the 2016 debut full-length from Long Island’s Lemon Twigs, the duo of barely drinking-age brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario show off their impressive chops and unending...
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Nao sings retro R&B for the future
Nao is a British singer whose music nestles in the space between neo-soul and the new generation of alternative arty R&B. Her light, dextrous vocals have some of the texture of Billie Holiday,...
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