#full-circle-album

#full-circle-album

I see you, and it makes me so happy to see you. There is such a disconnect between what we say America is about and what it is right now. True freedom is the freedom to be who we are, and it hurts my heart so much that in some parts of this country, it is unsafe for trans people to do that right now.

"If I put my shirt on backwards one more time, I swear, this will be the darkest Tuesday in a thousand years." This line sets the tone for a whimsical yet dark exploration of everyday life.

Ravyn Lenae's 'Reputation' is an acoustic ballad that delves into the complexities of a crumbling relationship, featuring a guest verse from Dominic Fike.

"We tried to challenge ourselves and make songs that excite us, often starting with ideas that push our comfort zones."

Los Thuthanaka sounds like nothing else. It's joyous, jagged, and sounds like it's being blasted out of a broken Bluetooth speaker in your neighbor's backyard - it's glorious.

The Sound It Made opens Two Wheels Move the Soul like the blaze is roaring to life before your eyes. Zack James' shifty drumming hammers out a drum 'n' bass redux like a panicked heartbeat while Carney Hemler's bass lurches in slow motion, replicating the gut drop of a horrible realization.

Ardeshir displays a confident command of the keys, building an insistent right-hand motif on the opening track that creates a foundation for saxophonist Rhys Sebastian's drawn-out notes.

Working in the vein of "laptop twee" acts like friends& and Worldpeace DMT, who fuse the genre-smashing maximalism promised by hyperpop with the whimsical optimism of '00s buzz bands, the material on their 2025 album Shy at first is as dense and dynamic as the songs you try to compose in your imagination.

"Ambiguous Desire feels like a deep conversation in the overwhelming throng of the dancefloor: It's both intimate and expansive; finding pockets of stillness in the chaos."

"It's slow music, the lyrics transmit good feeling and it's moody," said frontman Gustavo Raya Garcia following the album's release on March 26.

The greatest adjustment in Cornfield's new music is her lyrical framing. In the past, her songs were so littered with personal details that listening felt voyeuristic.

With Portland sextet Abronia, you sort of have to listen past the spectacle. Forget about the overtly Jodorowsky-Morricone vibes, the tenor sax and the pedal steel guitar, the contralto vocals, the gigantic bass drum, the legend of co-founder Eric Crespo's desert vision. What's really going on here?

Natanya tears genres open and rebuilds them in her own image. Her drums swing loose and jazzy over heavy 808s; synths drift dreamily before snapping into gritty guitar riffs. Writing, producing and arranging all her own work, she weaves together neosoul silk, R&B groove, indie edge, and flashes of grunge, all carried by a buttery falsetto that nods to Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, Janet Jackson and early Destiny's Child.

Early Life Crisis, the teen rapper's follow-up to Bad Ass F*cking Kid, features YoungBoy Never Broke Again (on "Masked Up") and OsamaSon ("Pain Talk"). Nettspend wrote the album with Keifa Carter, Nathaniel Campos, and more collaborators, enlisting production from CXO, Rok, and others.

The gift of skaiwater's best music is its unique shape, blown-out underground rap styles carefully folded into delicate origami. Forget every preconceived notion you might have about 'rage rap' and put on 'rain'-it's so pretty, a butterfly fluttering around a bomb site. On that album, skai harnessed beat drops like wrecking balls crashing into the walls of their heart.

What if the next No. 1 album didn't come from the industry? What if it came from all of us? Unfortunately, 'all of us' is never as simple as it sounds, and the crowdsourced Everybody's Album—which did not chart, because of a technicality—was not simple in the slightest. Somewhere in this bloated, gestating glut was a topography of internet music, all bitcrushed MIDI and fried Focusrites.

I've just given a keynote presentation at Lines of Flight: Improvisation, Hope and Refuge, a conference hosted by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. I'd been invited to talk about my performance research with D&aacutelava, a cross-genre project that is influenced by animist, Slavic cosmology and a land-based folk song tradition that has been in my family for generations.

In even the most straightforward Tanner Matt production, there's a moment where everything threatens to disintegrate. Since he began putting out leftfield house music in the early 2010s-working under aliases like Hashman Deejay, Studio Mody, and Ttam Renat, and in the groups Aquarian Foundation, Kinetic Electronix, and INTe*ra, among others-the Vancouver electronic musician has specialized in stripped-down tracks with shaky foundations and a sneaky dub underpinning.