The Brooklyn-based band Savoir Adore, French for “to know love” consists of songwriting team Paul Hammer (Yes! Son of composer/producer/keyboardist Jan Hammer) and Lauren Zettler. Lately, they have crafted mostly electro-pop songs intent on dispensing magic and dreams, showcased in a two-part album, First Bloom, released last year, and most rec ...…

Miami-born, New York-based songwriter and electronic musician Helado Negro, (artist Roberto Carlos Lange) makes spacey folky electro-pop that is introspective, yet wide-reaching, utterly inviting and open; it pulses with the gentle power and warmth of loving and being loved. The record, This Is How You Smile, is a collection of delicate and pai ...…

The band Luther Dickinson and Sisters of the Strawberry Moon is a musical pot-luck with friends put together by Dickinson, the guitarist and co-founder of the North Mississippi Allstars. On their new record, Solstice, the guests at the gathering include singer-songwriter and upright bass player Amy LaVere, the secular gospel duo Birds of Chicag ...…

London-based trio The Comet Is Coming are often described as a jazz band, although this is cosmic funky jazz where young musicians have incorporated elements of electronic music, hip hop, psych, and rock. This apocalyptic dance party jazz features Shabaka Hutchings on sax, Max Hallett on drums, and Dan Leavers on keys. Fresh from inciting rooms ...…

Montreal-based Inuk folk-pop singer and songwriter, Elisapie, is from the Far North, and her music draws from and takes pride in her Inuit and First Nations origins – while also journeying through some heavy emotional territory. The JUNO-nominated Elisapie (Élisapie Isaac) is originally from Salluit, Nunavik, but has lived in Montreal for 20 ye ...…

“Shamstep” band, 47SOUL, take their name from the Arabic name for the Levant region – Bilad al-Sham, with members from Jordan, Washington DC, and Israel - spanning the divides of the Palestinian Diaspora. The music is a mix of dubstep, hip-hop and electro-Arabic dabke with lyrics in both Arabic and English, which are intensely political in thei ...…

The classic sound of soul – the bright horns, the snappy hi-hat in the grooves, and expressive, heartfelt vocals – has never really gone out of fashion. There are singers like Lee Fields, who has been at it since 1969, when he released his first single. This April, he’s about to put out a new album called It Rains Love – with tender melodies an ...…

Singer, writer, pianist, and activist Amanda Palmer is also a listener, a “love-lover, rule-hater and co-founder of the Brechtian punk cabaret duo, The Dresden Dolls” (Bandcamp). She has a way of connecting with people and directly asking for what she needs, as well as giving back to her fans. Her latest record, There Will Be No Intermission, i ...…

Composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Emily Wells works in the space between art-pop and neoclassical chamber music using electronic and acoustic instruments: synths, strings, and hip-hop production in elegant layers to support her singular and dramatic vocals. For her latest, This World Is Too _____ For You she has expanded her sonic pa ...…

New York-based drummer Allison Miller is also a composer, teacher, and the leader of the band Boom Tic Boom, a group featuring violinist Jenny Scheinman, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassist Todd Sickafoose and pianist Myra Melford, who celebrate ten years of working together this year. Miller's experience in leading this s ...…

Nashville-based singer-songwriter, guitarist, and poet Adia Victoria crafts Southern Gothic pop deeply rooted in the blues. On her new record, Silences, produced by The National's Aaron Dessner, she clothes her plaintive melodies with a velvet-robed ferocity, like a self-dubbed “Dope Queen”; the fully fleshed, orchestral-pop arrangements of woo ...…

J.S. Ondara is a Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter whose love for Bob Dylan spurred him to move to Minnesota from Nairobi, Kenya in 2013. Since he won a Green Card lottery that allowed the move, he learned to play guitar and has lived the so-called “American Dream.” He learned English both in school and because he wanted to understand the lyr ...…

British singer Jacob Banks was born in Nigeria before moving to Birmingham, England. There he has developed a large following for his remarkable voice and his equally impressive storytelling gifts – stories he tells in songs and in a series of videos – short films really. His debut LP, called Village, features electro-enhanced R&B with deep pow ...…

Los Angeles trio Cherry Glazerr, led by singer/guitarist/founder Clementine Creevy, is fierce, furious, but also weary. Creevy has found some inspiration by looking inward, and just hanging out with the demons of self-doubt instead of fighting in some of the songs from the new record, Stuffed & Ready. Creevy is self-deprecating, but at the same ...…

Guitarist and songwriter Nilüfer Yanya writes songs that, while dark and a bit twisted, yet direct and elegant, ultimately embrace imperfection. Her music might easily flow between Nina Simone, pop punk, crisp jazzy chords, and the dynamic, sweaty explosiveness of The Pixes. Nilüfer deploys her impressive voice in all kinds of styles - falsetto ...…

Mandolin Orange is the folk duo of North Carolinians Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz, who blend traditional Americana roots music – folk, country, bluegrass – in their warm and intimate, bittersweet acoustic songs. They met at a bluegrass jam, and have been known to wield mandolin, guitar, banjo and violin between them, with Marlin mostly doing ...…

The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble is a musically free-ranging band of seven brothers from the south side of Chicago. Their music draws from funk, funky jazz, Afrobeat, hip hop, rock, reggae, and R&B, and they’ve performed with Tony Allen, Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul, Prince, Femi Kuti, Gorillaz, Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), and the B52's, to name a few. Gr ...…

Buke and Gase is an experimental pop duo that’s collaborated with everyone from The National to the Blue Man Group. The band is named after two of the instruments they’ve invented, a baritone ukulele and hybrid guitar-bass. Their songs are tasty slices of angular melodies and problem-solving off-kilter percussion that are creatively stacked lik ...…

Dancey and dreamy, Brooklyn-based Rubblebucket makes psychedelic and jazz-conscious pop swimming in a strange and lovely mix of celebration and melancholy. Their latest record, Sun Machine, is a celebration of the connection between trumpeter Alex Toth, and saxophone player Kalmia Traver, The two have survived momentous life-challenges like can ...…

Grammy-winning singer/songwriter/producer India.Arie has returned to spread love and joy through music and words. Her latest album, due out in February, is a collection of enchanting and soulful electro-acoustic pop songs, full of smart observations, sensuality, spirituality, and yes, empowerment. On one tune, “That Magic,” she lovingly describ ...…

Meet RaaDie, which is the latest musical project of Vienna-based trumpeter Lorenz Raab (Volksoper Vienna, XY-Band, Bleu) and the composer, bassoonist, and zither player Christof Dienz (Die Knoedel, Quadrat:sch, XY-Band). With a balance of composition and improvisation, the duo crafts music using trumpet and e-zither with electronic effects and ...…

Mexican-American rock musician, songwriter, and singer Alejandro Escovedo draws from DIY punk, Tex-Mex country, and Americana rock for his latest record, The Crossing, a growly and crunchy guitar-filled, instrumentally cinematic, and in-your-face loud search for the American dream. In a cool twist, Escovedo has co-written the album with an Ital ...…

London-based quintet Ezra Collective makes music with an irresistible blend of groove that includes Afrobeat, hip-hop, grime, reggae, and jazz. Led by drummer Femi Koleoso, and anchored by his brother TJ Koleoso on bass with keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones, and featuring what looks like a hard bop frontline of Dylan Jones on trumpet and James Molli ...…

Coming from jangle-pop garage rock origins in the 1990’s in the Boston area, the band Guster is a group of talented songwriters, down to the last harmony. With electronic augmentation beyond just guitar amps, Guster long ago dropped its acoustic guitars and bongos in favor of arena rock with electrified-pysch-pop leanings. Their live shows are ...…

Montreal-born folk singer, songwriter, banjo player, and guitarist Kaia Kater grew up surrounded by her family’s ties to folk music and Appalachian music in West Virginia. Her music often touches on social issues, and her latest album ranges even wider, including her family’s Grenadian-Canadian background, while still drawing upon old-time banj ...…

A New York–born Haitian-American living in New Orleans, the multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla draws from traditional Creole, Cajun, and Haitian music, as well as American jazz and folk. McCalla is a former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, but her latest record, Capitalist Blues, contains very little of her signature instrument, the cel ...…

Brooklyn band Dollshot crafts experimental dream pop that is a crazy-quilt of electro-art-rock, cabaret music of Schoenberg, chamber music by Poulenc, and futuristic noir soundscapes. They offer an unusual and often unsettling combination of sounds, with breathy, featherlight vocals floating over wailing saxes and pounding drums. Their new albu ...…

Not many people can front a rock band, sing Górecki’s Third Symphony, deliver heavy works on themes of social justice for youth chorus, and compose pop songs for marching band, back-to-back. But Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond can. The classically-trained vocalist, composer, and self-taught multi-instrumentalist has continued to reinvent her ...…

New York/Canada-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and poet Vera Sola, aka Danielle Aykroyd, crafts twangy-gothic-folk that might stem from horror punk as much as Patsy Cline and Brenda Lee. With a little wry and dark humor, a streak of seriousness, a few eloquent barbs, and a whole lot of vulnerability, Vera Sola channels the s ...…

From the live in-studio performance series, here's part two of our favorite sessions from 2018. Hear everything from a Cuban orchestra to a famous South African choir, along with music from My Brightest Diamond that came from our live performance series, The Soundcheck Podcast. The big band collective Orquesta Akokán channels the spirit of danc ...…

The once-bearded Jewish-American roots-reggae vocalist and beatboxer Matisyahu found success in both the Hasidic spiritual community and beyond, back in the mid-2000’s. He has continued to reflect on seeking the divine, despite the surprise of shaving off his trademark beard, and started bringing a little more stretch and even more groove into ...…

From the live in-studio performance series, we’ll be recapping our favorite sessions from 2018. Part 1 features the Norwegian band Wardruna, Chicago-based duo OHMME, the dance-jazz band Sons of Kemet, porch and mountain music duo Anna & Elizabeth, and the qawwali devotional collaborative music by Junun. Hear the ancient Norse ritual music of No ...…

Michigan-born, Colorado-raised, but now Icelandic-based singer/songwriter John Grant crafts anguished, lush ballads and spacey electro-pop. He speaks five languages and is also a former member of The Czars, a Colorado-based band that split in the early 2000’s. After battling personal demons in New York, Grant returned to music and recorded with ...…

Larkin Poe is Rebecca & Megan Lovell -two singer/songwriters and multi-instrumentalist sisters who are originally from Atlanta, but are now Nashville-based. Combining guitar, lap steel, minimal percussion, and sibling harmonies, they make roots-infused southern heritage-steeped rockenroll, with a helping of both gut bucket and Delta blues. Lark ...…

Singer-songwriter and producer Laura Gibson was born and raised in the small Oregon logging town of Coquille but now splits her time between Oregon & NYC. She recently completed an MFA in fiction writing (Hunter College) and her sharp story-songs quietly and gracefully explore darkness on her latest, Goners. Gibson’s storytelling is both raw an ...…

Algiers is a mesmerizing band of musicians born in Atlanta, Georgia and now splitting time between London and New York. Their urgent, genre-resistant, chill-inducing, and fist-shaking music taps into and channels the frustration of locally-informed global citizens in these dark times - with a soulful and compelling roar. Their live sets feel sp ...…

Pianist, composer, engineer, and producer, Kelly Moran takes pride in trying to “obfuscate exactly what the piano sounds like. The whole point is to make it sound different.” (Tiny Mix Tapes) Moran, on her latest record, Ultraviolet (Warp Records), has also found a delicate balance of improvisation and structure in her expansive compositions. I ...…

Canadian conductor and pianist Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the incoming Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, is taking over two years earlier than initially planned. In this interview with John Schaefer for the Soundcheck Podcast, he outlines his plans to welcome more folks to the opera and to make sure that routine does not become the norm. Yan ...…

Grammy-nominated chanteuse Emily King went into the family business via a different route, that of an R&B-influenced singer-songwriter. (She’s the daughter of New York jazz vocalists who has moved to the Catskills.) Her latest record, Scenery, due in February of 2019 (on ATO Records), promises to be a clever mix of R&B, pop, and perhaps a littl ...…

With screaming and blistering guitars, power-chord-like vocal harmonies (both clean and processed through an array of guitar pedals), and a rock-solid pummeling of drums, Brooklyn trio Upper Wilds, [Dan Friel (Parts & Labor), Zach Lehroff (Ex Models) and Jeff Ottenbacher], exploits all kinds of sonic textures for a cathartic, electric explosion ...…

Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear has been around in some form since 2002, but since assembling their current quartet lineup in 2006 they’ve become one of indie rock’s biggest, most successful, and sometimes most psychedelic bands. They've also collaborated with contemporary classical composer Nico Muhly, Beach House's Victoria Legrand, the Acme Strin ...…

The band Pond hails from Perth, the Western Australian city referred to “as the most remote city on earth.” They blend blissful and mind-bending psychedelic rock, with subversive strains of funk, synth-pop, falsetto, somehow both of the moment, and informed by the past. To illustrate, in a recent video, the band went shopping at Amoeba Music in ...…

The cinematic Minnesota band Cloud Cult is a creative collective who continually celebrates life and love, and catharsis through music and multimedia performances, usually involving painting from stage, and lately, film. Cloud Cult’s emotive, melodic, orchestral indie rock is perfectly suited to the movies. Singer/instrumentalist Craig Minowa a ...…

Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch creates playful and carefully balanced works containing both space and riffs. There might be as much listening going on as there is playing, which points to a spiritual focus, trust, and discipline that comes from Bärtsch's avid practice of the Japanese martial art Aikido. In his electric group, Nik Bärtsc ...…

Arthur Moon is the moniker of composer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Lora-Faye Åshuvud. As Arthur Moon, she is the anchor who has gathered collaborators- including Cale Hawkins (Quincy Jones, Bilal, Wyclef Jean) and Martin D. Fowler (a composer for This American Life) and other folks. They trade demos and build on musical perspectives, which she ...…

In the mid-20th century, pianist Oscar Levant (1906 –1972) was a pre-digital version of a social media star – a ubiquitous, witty presence on American TV and radio, and films. He was also a bestselling author, radio game show panelist, and a talk show host. As a concert pianist, his Gershwin performances, especially a 1945 version of the “Rhaps ...…

Newark-born composer, multi-instrumentalist, collaborator, and 2017 MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey, is also the Assistant Professor of Composition and Creative Music at Wesleyan University. A recent Instagram post (Sept. 2018) of the day’s listening ranges from Nigerian King Sunny Adé and a record by legendary drummer Tony Allen to Frank Zappa ...…

Richard Reed Parry is perhaps best known as the really tall, really redheaded guy playing half a dozen instruments in the Grammy-winning band Arcade Fire. But he’s also a founder of the instrumental group Bell Orchestre, and a composer of contemporary classical music. His latest project is called Quiet River of Dust, and it was at least partly ...…

Jorma Kaukonen is a founding member of Jefferson Airplane, co-founder of Hot Tuna, a teacher, and a top-notch guitarist. But though he will always be associated with the rock music of the 1960's, he’s had a much longer and more enduring relationship with American blues and folk music, as anyone who’s heard his duo Hot Tuna or his own solo perfo ...…

The composer, singer, and tinkerer, Matthew Dear, is a DJ, dance-music producer, experimental pop artist, and bandleader. He keeps four music-making aliases and has released five albums and two dozen EPs, along with multiple commissioned remixes. On this latest record, Bunny, his weird, wild, gothic, body-shaking, bouncy electronica seems sinis ...…