Detroit is famous as an industrial city whose machines have helped remake the world. But among its most beloved exports has been the rhythm of different machines: in music that gets played at parties and in clubs, made predominantly by people of color, and consumed and imitated around the world. Motown! Detroit techno! J Dilla! These are hallmarks of Motor City quality that, for some, leave Camaros and Mustangs eating dust. Detroit music continuously updates itself, as new generations make sleeker models and younger musicians take from their elders, perpetuating new breakthroughs.

It might still be too early to add Jay Daniel, a 25-year-old producer/DJ (and son of the great house vocalist Naomi Daniel), to the city’s long list of legendary musicians, producers, DJs and beat-makers. Yet it’s certainly not too soon to note that, alongside Kyle Hall and Manuel Gonzalez, he’s part of a new generation pushing the legend of Detroit rhythm along. After a four-year drip of singles on some preeminent dance-music labels (Kyle Hall’s Wild Oats, FunkinEven‘s Apron, Theo Parrish‘s Sound Signature) comes Broken Knowz, a full-length debut that more than lives up to expectations and lineage. These sounds aren’t mainstream, but they follow a funky and accessible tradition.

The tools Daniel uses to create are relatively simple: lots of acoustic percussion instruments, various keyboards and synths, a tried and tested Akai drum machine, a couple of samples and loops (tasteful, secret) and, most importantly, a clear sense of history. Broken Knowz is rhythmically and emotionally astute in the way lots of Detroit’s great electronic music is: not loud, forceful or brashly innovative (though plenty fits that bill in the 313, too), but with quiet comfort in its creative tensions. The tensions form the music’s soul, and on Broken Knowz, Daniel has post-techno soul to burn.

As evidence, look no further than the magnificent “Paradise Valley.” While layers of acoustic, polyrhythmic percussion wrap themselves around one another — and as a Fender Rhodes plays a vamp that wouldn’t sound out of place in house music described as “jazzy” — the track’s lead “voice” mutates, and with it so does the song. At first, the “lead” is an exquisite alien sound (a glass bowl being rubbed) utterly foreign to the rest of the environment; then it’s couplets played on a synth (all laid-back funk!); and, by the end of the narrative, it’s a solo played on an Arp monophonic synth, invoking Funkadelic and Dam-Funk and In A Silent Way. Then the three begin conversing with one another. And where is this “Valley” that the song attempts to invoke? It was another name for “Black Bottom,” a Detroit neighborhood that served as the entertainment center for the city’s black community until the 1950s, when it was torn down to build I-75. This is how a “house track” effortlessly and without pretense can also function as a history lesson.

Such moments of groove and intent are all over Broken Knowz. They’re in “Yemaya,” named after the Yoruban goddess of the ocean, wherein Daniel’s live drums talk in South African house riddims but the synth arpeggios are all about local techno deities. And they’re in “Squeaky Maya,” where the upfront drum-machine programming and its metamorphosing broken-beat signatures seem part of the great ongoing conversation between Detroit and London club producers. The hazy background melody recalls Michael Jackson‘s “Black Or White,” while the keyboards that join in the massive musical uplift at the end seem to form a concrete statement.

And what is that statement, exactly? It’s all in your perspective. What for some may just be dance music is, for others, a profound social statement. Jay Daniel seems to recognize that the ghosts inhabiting Detroit’s finest machines and rhythms tell many tales. The work you put into translating those stories is its own reward.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Appalachian old-time, folk and string-band music has too often been heard as the crude, naturalistic output of unstudied musicians who operate primarily on instinct. No duo has more profoundly recast those expectations over the last two decades than Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, who’ve mainly performed under her name. (On occasions when he sings lead, they’re the Dave Rawlings Machine instead.) Together, these two highly educated singers, songwriters and instrumentalists have approached antique musical forms as an exalted craft, acclimating audiences to a refinement nested in austerity. Without their body of work, it’s difficult to imagine a subsequent generation of acoustic artists — Sarah Jarosz, The Milk Carton Kids, Aoife O’Donovan, Lewis & Leigh, Mandolin Orange and Dori Freeman, to name a few — finding such smooth passage into sophisticated, contemporary exploration of rustic environs.

Welch’s debut album Revival arrived at its 20th anniversary this year, which was motivation enough for Welch and Rawlings to sift through their vast musical archives and select 21 tracks that document what they were up to — a combination of emulation, experimentation and cultivation — before they emerged as leading lights in an ascendant Americana scene. That they’ve titled the project The Official Revival Bootleg drives home that this granting of behind-the-scenes access is a considered move by its creators, and a savvy one. It’s fascinating to follow along as Welch and Rawlings feel their way to their singular sound, whose essential ingredients include “the rawboned refinement of their songwriting, the comely and lilting crooks in Welch’s phrasing, the shimmery dissonance of their harmonies and the prickly, surging ecstasy of Rawlings’ guitar runs.”

In the early- to mid-’90s window captured on this collection, Welch was a different singer than the one listeners have come to know, swinging a little harder at times and bearing down a bit more. She plays off of Jim Keltner’s fitful drum groove in an alternate studio version of “Pass You By,” skims through a countrypolitan-style songwriting demo of “Paper Wings” and adopts a poker-faced swagger in the rock ‘n’ roll number “455 Rocket,” which found a home on a Kathy Mattea album after failing to make the cut for Revival. “Dry Town,” a droll talking-blues in the tradition of Johnny Cash, likewise landed in the dustbin, only to be fished out by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Miranda Lambert, while the Memphis Minnie-influenced down-home blues number “Georgia Road,” delivered with studied insouciance by Welch, had never seen the light of day until now.

There’s a slightly unfamiliar quality even to some of the duo’s better-known songs. In the 1993 living-room demo of “Orphan Girl” — the tape from which Emmylou Harris learned her Wrecking Ball version — Welch chirps her lament in a considerably higher register than the one she eventually settled into, and the at-home recording of “Tear My Stillhouse Down” is similarly lighter than the song’s bleak sentiment. Those were mere starting points; the destination, as we well know, was a long-suffering suppleness that bears up beneath the grimmest storytelling. The “bootleg” also rounds up some of Rawlings’ initial romps on a newly acquired archtop guitar, as his flurries of capricious notes reveal a restless intelligence. And so much of the narration — especially in “One More Dollar,” “Barroom Girls,” “Only One And Only” and “Red Clay Halo,” the last of which got shelved until Time (The Revelator) — was already finely etched, even fastidious. The whole thing serves as a tremendous reminder of how and why this partnership came to matter so much.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

When the Brooklyn trio Highly Suspect played the Grammys in February, it had a lot of viewers scratching their heads. The band’s performance of “Lydia,” the lead single from 2015’s Mister Asylum, wasn’t particularly innovative or exciting; apart from an exhilaratingly abrasive squall of noise from singer-guitarist Johnny Stevens, the song fell squarely into the area between the grunge revival and the garage-rock revival, all vein-popping angst and gutsy snarl. Mostly, people were asking themselves, “Who are these guys?” — and also, “How did an unknown band whose first album came out just a few months ago score nods for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song?”

To answer the first question: Highly Suspect came together playing covers as a bar band in Cape Cod, where Stevens and twin brothers Rich and Ryan Meyer (on bass and drums, respectively) had been friends in high school. From there, they moved to Brooklyn and got signed. And that’s about the whole story. What’s more remarkable is that Mister Asylum captured the ears of the Grammys — and that its follow-up, The Boy Who Died Wolf, may be poised to push the band far wider. “Serotonia,” the album’s first single, rides on an edgy-yet-fluid riff that hints at the group’s early days playing Jimi Hendrix classics. Smoldering, bluesy and subtle, it’s an odd choice for a single — and Stevens’ opening line, “I wish that everyone I knew was dead / So that I’d never have to pick up the phone,” isn’t exactly the stuff of which jingles are made. Like Queens Of The Stone Age at its sludgiest, “Serotonia” feels far more organic and atmospheric — right down to the epic, Pink Floyd-esque solo. That atmosphere doesn’t work as well in “Send Me An Angel,” a forgettable cover of Real Life’s ’80s hit, but Stevens and crew get points for tackling it with slinkiness and gusto.

In recent interviews, the members of Highly Suspect have made no apologies for their embrace of the sex-drugs-and-rock-‘n’-roll cliché, nor do they have a problem with being pegged as a throwback to the mainstream grunge of the ’90s. That said, there’s more to The Boy Who Died Wolf than brooding attitude or warmed-over Bush riffs. “My Name Is Human” is raw and nervy, paced slowly and saturated in Soundgarden-like menace. There’s no small amount of Nirvana lurking inside “Little One” — the track’s eerily strummed intro pays bracing tribute to the darkness of In Utero — although on the other hand, “Chicago” is a bare-bones, piano-driven confessional wreathed in smoke and memory. It all makes for a monolithically moody experience. Thankfully, the band is smart enough to break it up with barnstorming grunge-punk gems such as “Look Alive, Stay Alive” and pummeling, hook-packed rockers like “Postres.”

Coming off a couple of precocious Grammy nominations, the trio has a lot to live up to. Not that the band is entirely an underdog. Like Mister Asylum, the new album is backed by heavyweight label muscle, but fans get the final say: Will Highly Suspect become the next breakout success à la Kings Of Leon or Imagine Dragons, or will it be a blip? Either way, one thing is already certain: With The Boy Who Died Wolf, Stevens and the Meyer twins have taken a big step toward fine-tuning their retro-grunge attack into something far more dynamic, soulful and alluring.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service is both a reunion and a tribute, arriving just a few months after the death of Phife Dawg, whose lyrical interplay with fellow MC Q-Tip was the backbone of the group for much of its history and who contributed to the album before succumbing to complications from diabetes in March. In that way, the album is a throwback, the first true collaboration between Tip and Phife since the group broke up in 1998. But within its first few tracks, We Got It from Here announces itself as a product of its moment.

“The Space Program,” a treatise on black unity, kicks off the album with an instructive spoken-word sample: “It’s comin’ down hard. We’ve got to get our s*** together.” A head-snapping snare and kick drum introduce “We the People,” in which Q-Tip details an America hostile to African-Americans, Mexicans, Muslims, gays and the poor. The opening verse of “Whateva Will Be” could be the height of Phife’s lyricism on any ATCQ track ever. “So am I ‘posed to be dead or doin’ life in prison? / Just another dummy caught up in the system,” he begins, examining society’s expectations for him as a black man before finally proclaiming, “F*** you and who you think I should be, forward movement.”

Sonically, We Got It from Here picks up where the best of Tribe’s work, in particular the winning streak of People’s Instinctive Travels, The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders, left off. At a time when James Brown samples were ubiquitous in hip-hop, Tribe’s early albums gravitated instead to outlier sounds: snippets of Jimi Hendrix, Ron Carter and more obscure 1970s jazz. “Can I Kick It?”, one of the most essential songs of the ATCQ oeuvre, samples the famous twin bass line of Lou Reed‘s “Walk on the Wild Side”– a move that attracted rock fans like Jack White to the group’s fan base. We Got It from Here features White’s guitar playing on “Lost Somebody” (a Phife dedication by Tip and Jarobi) and the superlative “Ego.” Elton John, the kind of artist that the Tribe of the early ’90s could only have conjured by sampling, appears in the flesh on “Solid Wall of Sound,” interpolating his own lyric from 1973’s “Bennie and the Jets.”

White and John are only two of a packed list of guests. Kanye West delivers the hook on “The Killing Season,” which also features Talib Kweli, and André 3000 trades electric verses with Q-Tip on “Kids…”. Observant fans will recognize those rappers as part of a lineage, all direct descendants of the ATCQ style in one way or another. On “Dis Generation,” Q-Tip hat tips Joey Bada$$, Earl Sweatshirt, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole as other “extensions of instinctual soul,” and Lamar himself shows up on “Conrad Tokyo.” Consequence and Busta Rhymes, both of whom guested on Tribe records in the ’90s, go toe-to-toe on “Mobius.” “Movin Backwards” features the modernist Anderson .Paak, whose brilliant sophomore album, Malibu, might be We Got It from Here‘s only competition for hip-hop album of the year.

Perhaps the most stunning revelation here is Jarobi White’s evolution into a stand-up MC. On People’s Instinctive Travels, he was a master of ceremonies, hosting the album in a running musical skit. He backed away from the studio after his rhymes for The Low End Theory didn’t make the final cut, and eventually chose culinary school over a rap career. Now, on “The Space Program,” “The Killing Season” and “Movin Backwards” in particular, he makes a vital, impressive return.

Groups have largely faded from view in rap music, and so the mere existence of We Got It from Here, a true team effort, feels vintage. Even the way Q-Tip repeats Phife’s rhymes underneath him on “The Space Program” sounds as old-school as the Cold Crush Brothers. And on “Solid Wall Of Sound,” with Phife flexing his Trinidadian roots with patois-inflected lines, you can hear Tip flipping his usual flow (“Like marauders on a mission when we killin’ dancehalls,” he offers) in order to keep up. Though he’s always been the group’s main producer and its most visible member, thanks in part to a matinee idol aura that landed him roles in films by Spike Lee and John Singleton, Q-Tip takes an egalitarian approach on this album, ceding the mic entirely on some songs to showcase his partners.

Even so, he grants himself the last word on “Ego,” technically the penultimate song but a stronger conclusion than closing track “The Donald.” “This is the last Tribe and our ego hopes that you felt us,” he says, indicating that with this release, A Tribe Called Quest may truly call it quits. If so, long live A Tribe Called Quest.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Pink Martini is just showing off. To take in Je Dis Oui! is to experience a globetrotting victory lap across no fewer than eight different languages — English, French, Farsi, Armenian, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish and, in a cover of Miriam Makeba‘s glorious “Pata Pata,” Xhosa — all tackled with cosmopolitan sophistication and the playfulness of pop. Everything the 15-piece Portland band touches has an air of precision, but these surprising songs don’t feel sterile or studio-bound, either.

It helps that Pink Martini spreads its vocal duties around, well beyond singers China Forbes and Storm Large. Rufus Wainwright, a natural guest participant in this Technicolor spectacle, turns up to sing “Blue Moon,” while a seemingly less-natural collaborator, fashion icon Ikram Goldman, takes the lead in “Al Bint Al Shalabiya.” Portland civil-rights activist Kathleen Saadat lends growling power to “Love For Sale,” while NPR’s own Ari Shapiro — who’s been popping up on Pink Martini records dating back to 2009’s Splendor In The Grass — returns to sing lead in “Finnisma Di.”

Pink Martini founder and bandleader Thomas Lauderdale has been carrying out this vision since 1994, during which time the group has performed worldwide, often with orchestras to back it up. His ageless music has only gotten bolder and farther-reaching on the nine albums Pink Martini has made, while never shedding the sense of joy around which its sound revolves.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

For nearly 20 years, guitarist, singer and label head John Dwyer has followed an incredibly circuitous creative path: Charting the course of just one of his bands involves breaking down a discography that includes records by Orinoka Crash Suite, OCS, Orange County Sound, The Ohsees, The Oh Sees and, now, Thee Oh Sees. (This says nothing of his work with other groups around San Francisco, most notably Coachwhips.)

Aided by bassist Tim Hellman and drummers Dan Rincon and Ryan Moutinho (yes, there are two of them), Thee Oh Sees’ sound is similarly mutable. Though its sound generally works from a psych-rock template, no two records fit neatly side by side, even when — as in the case of An Odd Entrances and its predecessor, A Weird Exits — they come out a mere three months apart. Where A Weird Exits was a pummeling bruiser, An Odd Entrances lets Thee Oh Sees’ members wander artily through alternately jittery and hypnotic jams.

At just 30 minutes, An Odd Entrances qualifies as a sort of mini-album, with three of its six tracks devoted to instrumentals. But it’s plenty ambitious. The set’s wordless pieces embark on especially unpredictable journeys — in “Jammed Exit,” synths burble like water as flutes flutter in a compact but free-flowing jam — but its best song brings Thee Oh Sees’ many component parts together. “The Poem” captures a restless band at relative rest, as a beautiful guitar line snakes through a thoughtful and lovely rumination. Though far from An Odd Entrances‘ only highlight, it’s a refreshing detour for a group that, by definition, never slows down for long.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

There was no room to move, yet the room moved. We found open spaces to jump and gyrate, enraptured not only by the pulsing future-club music, but also by its maker. Just before an ambitious run of gigs during SXSW, Dawn Richard — who records under the name D∆WN — was our body-music guru in a small Washington, D.C., venue. She sang hard, danced harder and partied hardest with an already-ecstatic crowd; she achieved goddess status from her radiant energy alone. But that’s Dawn Richard’s standard operating procedure: Take it all, and bring everyone with her.

With Redemption, D∆WN closes an album trilogy that encompasses a wild and weird spectrum of R&B, pop, electronic and dance music. But in a field that’s seen more experimental sounds embraced by the mainstream (from Kanye West‘s noisy Yeezus to PC Music’s alien EDM), she stands apart not only for her abstract production, but also as a black woman who makes challenging pop music with soul. It’s quite a leap from her time in the MTV-made Danity Kane, but as she’s asserted herself as an independent artist, that creative freedom has driven every aspect of her career. As a singer, songwriter, producer, entertainer, set designer and animator, D∆WN owns her creativity, drawing a line through Afro-futurists like Sun Ra, Larry Heard and Erykah Badu.

Where last year’s Blackheart was beautiful and bleak in its genre ambiguity, Redemption is defiant in its celebration of the self. As Richard told NPR in June, “Whatever or whoever you are, be proud of it — that this would be our redemption. To go into this era hands up and heads high.” That celebration exists not just in the rave-worthy cuts, but also in how Richard encourages open conversation about sex-positivity and consent (the glowstick anthem “Love Under Lights,” featuring an outro that chops woozy vaporwave with street percussion), desire (the hyper, brassy “Renegades” and the slinky and string-laden, proggy slow jam “The Louvre”) and the limitations of labels (the underwater Sade smoothness of “Sands”). Machinedrum, who co-produced this year’s non-album singles “Not Above That” and “Wake Up,” continues to be Richard’s sonic ally in tracks like these — and, like a good accompanist, knows when to hype up the drama and when to hold back, always in line with D∆WN’s vision.

Noisecastle III, who was all over Blackheart, co-produces two of Redemption‘s most curious tracks. “Black Crimes” lands somewhere between bubbly ’90s house-pop and the fractured beats of Aphex Twin, with an industrial denouement — this is where Rihanna might land if she fully gave in to freaky EDM. “LA,” on the other hand, is something else entirely: an appropriately titled encapsulation of the thriving Los Angeles music scene that hears electronic music, fusion and free-jazz as one entity (think Flying Lotus, Thundercat, Ras G). What begins as an ambient space-funk jam suddenly dives into Prince/Return To Forever territory, as a proggy synth does battle with stylish hard-rock guitar and arena-sized drums.

In “LA,” D∆WN reminds listeners that Redemption is about bodies. As the crunchy guitar gives way in its closing moments, Trombone Shorty offers a minute of ecstatic brass. In New Orleans, where Richard is from and Trombone Shorty is based, the second line is a Sunday ritual, a brass-band party in the streets after a wedding, a business opening — anything, but most significantly a funeral. It’s a celebration of life, and here it’s set against a body count: “We just want to know / If we really matter? / We just wanna know,” she sings. If that D.C. crowd in March was any indication, those bodies are black, those bodies are LGBTQ, those bodies deserve to move and love — and D∆WN wants to lift them up, find allies and bring them all to the dance floor.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Daniel Bachman‘s always had a knack for simple, evocative album titles, tied to the sacred (Jesus I’m A Sinner, Oh Be Joyful), to home (Seven Pines, Orange County Serenade) and sometimes to both (last year’s River and Apparitions At The Kenmore Plantation, which he recorded under his first, short-lived moniker, Sacred Harp). At 26, Bachman is already an established and thoughtful voice in the solo guitar music scene, but he knows that evolution comes in steps, not leaps. Several albums in, Bachman has gone the self-titled route; it feels less like a chest-beating announcement and more like a wordless confirmation of where he’s at as a musician — and perhaps even as a person.

Daniel Bachman begins from mud with “Brightleaf Blues (I).” After two minutes of a squealing, acoustic drone, a bleary-eyed blues enters, slow and methodical as a tenacious tetrapod emerging from water to walk on land. There is space to his fingerpicking and chaw-smacked slides not quite heard in Bachman’s playing or composition before — it unfolds and refolds at once, like a singular flower existing in two dimensions. The same can be said of the appropriately named “The Flower Tree,” a gentle tune that bursts from its bulging buds so suddenly that you can hear the strings blister, recorded with close-up clarity by Brian Haran in Durham, N.C.

There’s a pair of food songs — the first of their kind in Bachman’s catalog — that feature the guitarist in a playful mode. Like its title, “Wine And Peanuts” is classy and trashy, a little ditty that keeps a shrewd grace under fingerpick-stabbed pressure. “Watermelon Slices On A Blue Bordered Plate” is a classic slide-guitar blues, sweaty from high noon and quenched by a wave of steel glissandi.

The 14-minute “Brightleaf Blues (II)” picks up where the first left off, sawing its way into existence with a shruti box and octotone (an instrument invented and played here by Forrest Marquisee). The earsplitting drone recalls Jack Rose‘s then-surprising sidelong piece “Sundogs,” but there is a tenderness in how Bachman quests for melody like it’s an ache he already knows. He circles the fretboard with certainty, digging in his heels until the drone overtakes the hammer-ons and pull-offs as they become sparser, piercing like a floodlight out of darkness.

Bachman closes the album with an old hymn that’s been covered by The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers and was featured on 1987’s Trio, the collaboration by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. “Farther Along,” a song about the prosperity of the wicked (a theme ever-so-present and persistent) is often rendered in bold arrangements to reflect the strength of the righteous. Its refrain — “Farther along we’ll know more about it / Farther along we’ll understand why / Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine / We’ll understand it all by and by” — is about the closest thing to hope this hymn can muster. But Bachman responds with knowing indifference, drawing out the bleakness of the melody in languid slide guitar, but not laboring over the inevitability of suffering.

Daniel Bachman has averaged one album a year since 2012, an impressive testament to his hard work. He’s always writing, always practicing, always touring, always relocating to various parts of the East Coast (currently, south of Richmond) for inspiration. But more importantly, he’s always growing. With Daniel Bachman, he presents the most rounded version of his guitar music, and there’s comfort in knowing that the next album will likely continue that thread.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The first thing we must note about this album by the Hart Valley Drifters is that it is not the most authentic bluegrass or old-time music. This is not from a long-lost box of tapes found in a dusty closet, not performed by a group of master folk musicians from somewhere in Appalachia.

No, Folk Time was recorded in 1962 by a bunch of Bay Area 20-somethings who were on an earnest quest for real American folk music. They wanted to hear it and learn to play it. So to the untrained ear, these songs will sound like what we expect that music to sound like. But aficionados will undoubtedly hear good intentions, but a serious lack of authenticity.

That’s not why this recording is so damn cool. That realization comes when the banjo player introduces himself on the tape as Jerry Garcia. That Jerry Garcia.

This is a full three years before Garcia and the rest formed the Grateful Dead. The Hart Valley Drifters also included Robert Hunter, who would become Garcia’s songwriting partner for the Grateful Dead, and David Nelson of the New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Bay Area psychedelic country-rock outfit and Garcia side project.

What you hear on Folk Time, besides pretty decent banjo playing, is the beginning of Garcia’s quest to explore every aspect of what makes American music so rich. Despite his near deification by overzealous Deadheads, what Garcia was really after — as a musical explorer in the Dead and other projects — was a seamless integration of this music, along with blues and jazz and folk, with just the right amount of psychedelic inspiration. With the rest of his Grateful Dead bandmates, he did exactly that — and that makes these songs the roots of a cultural phenomenon that recently celebrated 50 enlightening years of redefining improvised music.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

With Speedy Ortiz, Sadie Dupuis unleashes gnarled and dexterous guitar melodies that mimic and intersect with her distinctive, sing-songy vocal melodies; the band’s noisy outbursts both bolster her furious word-slinging and belie the poetic honesty at the core of her songs. Dupuis started Speedy Ortiz as a solitary songwriting outlet, but as the band grew over the last few years, Dupuis started to miss the sanctuary and creative autonomy that bedroom recording once provided. Nursing a breakup, Dupuis sought a change of scenery away from her home in Northampton, Mass., and relocated to Philadelphia. Reinvigorated by the flourishing and inclusive music scene there, she got to work on something new.

The resulting album, Slugger — Dupuis’ solo debut under the self-referential moniker Sad13 — represents a dramatic sea change. Written, recorded and self-produced in a two-week flurry, it sees Dupuis gravitating away from the grungy, guitar-based rockers she’s best known for, and moving towards shimmering synth-pop and R&B (an aesthetic she first toyed with in “Puffer,” one of the highlights on Speedy Ortiz’s 2015 album, Foil Deer). Recalling contemporary hit-makers like Kelis, Britney Spears, Charli XCX and Santigold, Sad13’s songs are brimming with the kinds of taut hooks, layers of flittering keyboards and electronic beats that’ll get everyone bobbing and moving on the dance floor instead of in the mosh pit.

The transformation can be heard from the jump — in the chiming synths and staticky squalor in the standout opener, “<2”; the woozy, waltzing feel and blipping sequencers of “The Sting”; the feverish distortion in “Line Up”; the glitzy analog leads and buoyant drum-machine groove of “Just A Friend.” Sad13 gets more sinister with “Fixina,” which uses ominous, grinding textures to embody the seductive dependency of love even when it’s bad for you: “A wonderland of narcotics / That’s our love, if I’m being honest,” she seethes, conjuring the brooding and gorgeous industrial pop of Garbage. Elsewhere, “Coming Into Powers” blurs rock with hip-hop in an anthem about championing marginalized voices: “F*** you, pay me what you owe / I sweat harder than those who got handed money cuz their birth was landed.” Then, rapper and producer Sammus proudly shouts down any remaining doubters: “…Who says that you can’t make dope art and go far? Blowhards with no bars.”

Throughout Slugger, glossy production and catchy choruses are deployed as counterpoint for Sad13’s empowering and self-actualizing feminist themes. On the highlight single, “Get A Yes,” Dupuis flips the script on pop songs that often portray women as objects to be won by men, reemphasizing their agency and making mutual consent as alluring and sexy as it is important. “I say yes to the dress when I put it on / I say yes if I want you to take it off / I say yes for your touch when I need your touch / I say yes if I want to / If you want to, you’ve gotta get a yes,” she sings in the chorus. It’s an impactful, normalizing message for anyone, but — considering the prevalence of these issues in our current national discourse — it’s especially resonant right now.

Elsewhere, Dupuis adds nuanced complexity as she addresses gender roles and platonic friendships (“Just A Friend”), and reflects on identity and balancing her internal and external selves as she denies others’ ability to define her (“<2”). And both “Devil In U” and “Tell U What” recount being mistreated and devalued in relationships with people that assert their own demons and impossible expectations as a means of control and mental abuse. “You just throw me round like trash when I’m worth every dime you have / Tell you what: I’m not worth your violence,” she says in “Tell U What.”

Later, “Hype” explores those threads more broadly as a fierce indictment of how the efforts of women, people of color and non-binary artists are undercut by insidious, institutional misogyny in media, the music industry and online. Raw and unfiltered, she later turns a corner, singing “Claws protracted, but we’re not scratching / We boost each other up… I just want to hype my best girls” — a nod to a burgeoning community of like-minded musical peers, and the safe spaces they’ve carved out for fans.

Sadie Dupuis has earned a reputation for her dynamic, literary lyrics and the way they regularly toggle between knotty linguistic wordplay (“If beauty is a terror, will the snow cover the evidence of love as something beautiful?”) and knife-twisting one-liners that cut straight to the bone (“They let in every boy but I’m the only girl in sight.”). Yet she writes with considered purpose: Regardless of whether she’s ruminating over her vulnerabilities, revealing personal details of past toxic relationships or lifting people up with ferocious rallying cries, Dupuis doesn’t mince her words. Even amid the fizzy pop embellishments that make Slugger so infectiously fun to listen to, Sad13 is thankfully as unapologetic and vital a voice as ever.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.