Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter Explains ‘Escape From Evil,’ Track By Track
The singer-songwriter pulls back the curtain on her band’s beautiful-but-mysterious new album, Escape From Evil. “All of these songs are based in personal experience,” she writes.
Tag: NPR
Review: Ryley Walker, ‘Primrose Green’
Walker has developed into a thoughtful singer-songwriter who follows a tangled thread, evoking the ’70s, when unplugged music could pick the body electric.
Review: The Soft Moon, ‘Deeper’
Amid the clipped one-word titles and ominous synthesizers, there’s a desperation to connect — and a soundtrack for dancing.
First Listen: Lower Dens, ‘Escape From Evil’
Navigating the complicated circuitry of modern love, singer Jana Hunter echoes both ’80s synthpop greats and the biggest Greek goddess of all.
First Listen: Sufjan Stevens, ‘Carrie & Lowell’
A prolific, wide-ranging singer-songwriter crafts an intimate memorial to his late mother, who died three years ago.
First Listen: Death Cab For Cutie, ‘Kintsugi’
If Death Cab For Cutie’s 17-year career has focused on a single overarching theme, it’s the process of growing up and fumbling for connection.
‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ Aspires To Be Music’s Great American Novel
Kendrick Lamar’s long-awaited new album dropped late Sunday night, nine days early. On it, the rapper wades into our current moment of peril around race, inequality and brutality.
First Listen: Buena Vista Social Club, ‘Lost And Found’
The famed Cuban collective dusts off treasures from nearly 20 years of recording and touring — just in time to say goodbye.
Review: Liturgy, ‘The Ark Work’
The metal band embraces classical music, glitchy IDM and even rap on its new album. The deeper into it you delve, the more its audacity and imagination start to bloom.
Review: Laura Marling, ‘Short Movie’
The singer’s new album shakes up her rumbling acoustic arrangements with an influx of electric sounds, in the process giving her a greater arsenal with which to brood, search, seethe and menace.
Review: The Go! Team, ‘The Scene Between’
With the aid of mostly unknown guest vocalists, the group’s proven formula receives a fresh shot of youth, enthusiasm and pure pop fierceness.
Ben Khan, ‘1000’
The young British soul singer floored us last year with his debut EP, 1992. On “1000,” he proves it wasn’t beginner’s luck.
Hear Lydia Loveless Cover Prince’s ‘I Would Die 4 U’
This roughed-up, rootsy take on one of Prince’s most ecstatic pop songs — out on Record Store Day — makes good on an April Fools’ Day prank that fans wished wasn’t a joke.
Got To Give $7.4 Million Up: Jury Finds Pharrell And Thicke Copied Marvin Gaye Song
A Los Angeles jury has determined that singers Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke lifted portions of Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give It Up” when writing their hit “Blurred Lines.”
Fantastic Negrito: Tiny Desk Concert
The singer beat out nearly 7,000 other submissions to win NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert Contest. See why in this passionate three-song set.
First Listen: Chastity Belt, ‘Time To Go Home’
For a record that aims to interrupt and rewrite the machinations of college-age womanhood in 38 minutes flat, Chastity Belt’s new album is remarkably easygoing.
Review: ‘Seth Avett & Jessica Lea Mayfield Sing Elliott Smith’
Each of Smith’s records contains an abundance of small, perfectly formed gems. There are too many to pick from, but just about any would shine anew under this type of respectful reinterpretation.
Review: Inventions, ‘Maze Of Woods’
Explosions In The Sky guitarist Mark Smith and Eluvium’s Matthew Cooper make natural collaborators. On their second album as Inventions, they craft head-nodding, vaguely unsettling music together.
First Listen: Lightning Bolt, ‘Fantasy Empire’
The duo takes a few steps toward modernity on Fantasy Empire, which finds Lightning Bolt moving away from congested, low-fidelity sounds in the pursuit of studio clarity.
Review: Twin Shadow, ‘Eclipse’
In songs that go big and hit home, referencing the biggest sounds from the ’80s and beyond, Twin Shadow sets his musical register to “epic” and only looks upward from there.