June saw a host of protest songs released. Anderson .Paak came out with his intimate and paced-down ‘Lockdown,’ Meek Mill put out the high-energy elegiac, ‘Other Side of America,’ Lil Baby released his gray-area-in-a-difficult-time auto-tuned rap, ‘The Bigger Picture,’ and JPEG Mafia showed up with a Fuck-Trump art trap, ‘The Bends!’

DJ Boring’s latest project, Like Water, is a four song EP that likens life and experience to water. At first the name and theme seem too on the nose. But as the EP progresses, real depth and emotional acuity reveal themselves. …

Rheji Burrell has been in the game a long time. Pioneering deep house in the early 1980s with his twin brother Ronald “Rhano” Burrel, the two found their sensibilities shaping the low-fi and patchwork aspects in their recording …

Medhane Olushola, recording under his first name, Medhane, is here with his latest full-length Cold Water. It’s an album focused on virtues: “soul,” “love,” “pain;” things that find themselves summed up in faith. The album’s thrust …

Venezuelan born, Swiss raised, Berlin based Gianni Competiello aka Arutani has found a home for his debut album in the German record label family Laut & Luise. As his biographical blurbs attest, Competiello takes his artist name …

Studio Barnhus’s May compilation Serenity Now, Insanity Later comes right in what we hope is the middle of a global pandemic and not the slow-creeping beginning. Already a difficult year, Serenity Now, Insanity Later aligns itself with …

The Strokes have come out with a new album. I forget what it’s called. Long-time fans that were still counting on them to make music will be thrilled. It’s exactly the Strokes but in the year 2020 instead of 2003. That’s a good track …

Yves Tumor, known also to people as Teams or Sean Bowie, has let loose their genre eschewing Heaven to a Tortured Mind. Embracing pop elements to weave an album of dark love languages, fans of Yves will recognize a penchant for …

Cenizas finds electronic producer Nicolás Jaar sinking into tonality and space. Cenizas, which translates to “ashes,” is a study on what movement in music sounds like, what atmospheres are possible when a song is relieved of its traditional forms. Ashes provide the …

MGMT launches another zoom-in from-outer-space-track with ‘As You Move Through the World,’ their March 2020 single release. Dulcet pads illicit embryonic development or a deep meditativeness, both of which suggest the empty space at the very center of your …