On her new album, The Living World’s Demands, Baltimore-based musician Ami Dang uses ambient synth sounds to ask big questions about where we are today. Dang’s sitar and experimental synth conjure a dreamlike atmosphere and their vocals ask us to respond to the nightmares of our time. Dang highlights the struggle for reproductive justice, the … Read More
No one captures unrequited love like FLTY BRGR GRL. In their latest album Love You Forever, the Oslo-based garage pop duo not only highlights the heart-fluttering, adrenaline-pumping parts of crushing, but also the realizations that come once the fantasy of the crush has been shattered. They put music to the high school feeling of memorizing … Read More
In July 2020, when the pandemic was raging, and the uprisings were ongoing, Hrishikesh Hirway was missing his friends and family. Stuck at home with his wife and small dog, he expressed a yearning that struck a chord across the internet, tweeting, “I woke up with a small, specific sadness: I miss being on a … Read More
When I sit at my desk most days, I try to convince myself that it’s not winter – that the sunlight I see scattered across my view would make me sweat if I went outside. I know that if I snuggled up to my window, my nose to the cold pane, and looked down, I’d … Read More
Tasneem is a songwriter, producer, and multidisciplinary artist whose most recent EP, Just Before the World Ends, dropped late last year. Tasneem, who recently relocated from LA to Toronto, produced their own record and is sharing their experience with other artists who may feel isolated in their creative processes. Just before the pandemic took hold … Read More
A syzygy occurs when three planetary or celestial bodies are in alignment — when the sun, earth, and moon are in a straight-line configuration. Qais Essar and Alam Khan’s latest single, “Syzygy,” brings their traditional rabbab and sarod instruments into a new kind of alignment. They wrote and recorded the song all in quarantine, from … Read More
Kohinoorgasm’s newest single, “Exhausted,” dropped this month. The single is the artist’s latest exploration of themes common in her work, questioning how to navigate a world shaped by burnout-inducing capitalism. Using experimental production and her hypnotic vocals, she asks poignantly: “How can I free my mind / when I don’t own it?” The release is … Read More
Longing for closeness meant something very different in February, when Raveena’s Moonstone EP was first released. Now, Raveena’s signature sensual sound elicits something familiar during a time when everything else is incomprehensible. Attempts to make actual sense of what’s happening in the world feel misguided. Universalization feels dangerous when, despite the pandemic affecting everyone, those … Read More
Curtis Waters’s sophomore album Pity Party will get you just as in your feelings, as the title suggests. On the record, Waters flips between addressing his own emotional growing pains directly and taking on a persona of cold detachment. The result is a journey through palpable and familiar angst, a story of someone vaguely hoping … Read More
“I want to come to a place like this every day and stay in peace,” one band member says, water rushing by. Another responds, “Why not…why can’t you machan?” This is just a brief moment in The Soul’s 2019 film Where We’re From. The video showcases the Sri Lankan band exploring the nature of the … Read More
