El Perro Del Mar rises from the same Gothenburg, Sweden indie pop scene that has produced artists such as Jens Lekman, Jose Gonzalez, Love is All, and others. What unites El Perro Del Mar (a.k.a. singer/songwriter Sarah Assbring) and these artists, besides geography, may be a certain soft-spoken way with Sweden’s famous prowess for international pop, a gentler touch than their Stockholm peers, from ABBA on down to Robyn.That touch is mostly felt in Assbring's murmuring vocals, soft-edged to the point of shushing off consonants, alluring in a way that makes you want to lean in closer. It’s a delivery that lets her songs about heartache and loneliness feel like a welcome bed of down pillows, instead of the concrete cell those emotions can be in real life.
On new album Pale Fire, Assbring combines those vocals and her typical melancholy with newly electronic backdrops--including one striking sample of Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”-- toying with faint echoes of house and especially of ‘90s trip-hop and chill-out music, as with the deep-muted funk bass, piano chords, and busy-skittering backbeat of single “Hold Off the Dawn.” – Eric Grandy, Google Play
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"Feel the conga," chants Colombian trio 
R&B used to be made for the bedroom, but now it's often made in a bedroom, which has changed the landscape of what the genre sounds and looks like. As 
Perth may be Australia's fourth largest city, but it's also relatively isolated out there on the continent's far west coast, a condition that's given 
On the first two tracks of The Heist, Seattle emcee 
In 2007, British DJ Quantic (
Whiskey & Frosting is an eyebrow-raising title, particularly for a young artist's debut EP. Yet it's an apt description of 
San Francisco musician 
Toronto, Ontario's 
DJ/producer Camilo Lara's 
If the career of 
Chatham County Line is the kind of group the term "newgrass" was invented for—i.e. an outfit that keeps evolving its bluegrass core and isn't afraid to venture into virgin territory. The North Carolina quartet's precision picking skills and tight vocal harmonies are as true-blue as you'd expect from an outfit that has shared bills with the likes of The Del McCoury Band—but for them tradition is a background, not a boundary. You're just as likely to find them ripping into an acoustic teardown of Nick Lowe's punky power pop classic "Heart of the City" as leaning into a lonesome mountain lament.
An über-sassy redhead blessed with a commanding voice, Chantal Claret has wasted little time in establishing her newfound solo career. After spending the last decade fronting New York glitz-rockers Morningwood, she quickly went to work on her debut album for The End Records. Though longtime fans will surely recognize Claret's unmistakable vocal gifts, The One, the Only… represents an audacious new direction for the singer: hyper-charged soul-rock that's simpatico with the retro stylings of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Alabama Shakes, Black Joe Lewis and the late Amy Winehouse.
Describing The Very Best's music as Afropop for people who think they don't like Afropop is, of course, a gross over-simplification. But with the vowel-less-titled second album MTMTMK, that shimmers with thickly-cut beats, hip-swiveling synth licks and a glossy dance club sheen, this trio is poised to conquer even the least-traveled ears. Comprised of British DJ duo Radioclit and Malawian singer Esau Mwamwaya, The Very Best unearth the African roots of contemporary pop, with modern Afropop music as a jumping-off point to explore everything from electro-disco, '80s synthpop and hip-hop.
George Lewis Jr. was born in the Dominican Republic, grew up in Florida and bummed around Boston playing in punk bands before finally moving to Brooklyn and breaking out as Twin Shadow with 2010's Forget. That record, co-produced with Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, landed at a moment when New York and the wider indie rock world were infatuated with undulating '80s-style dream pop (and its beat-augmented electronic cousin chillwave), and Twin Shadow ably mined that sound for both its shimmering guitar textures and melancholic moods. It was an album steeped in the past, both in its early indie rock nostalgia and, more conflictingly, in its remembrances of Lewis' childhood, which supplies the album with some of its lyrical subjects.
The Big Apple is a giant, noisy, crowded city. For industrial-strength shoegaze rock band A Place to Bury Strangers to have gained a reputation as one of New York's loudest bands is no small feat, though they're uniquely suited to carry that flag. The trio operates out of Death by Audio, a studio and live performance space that also houses frontman Oliver Ackermann's business building custom guitar effects pedals for such artists as Nine Inch Nails and U2—and where the band can make as much racket as they want.
If you're a Sons of Anarchy fan, then the chances are good you're already familiar with The White Buffalo, whose twang-drench reworking of the folk-blues chestnut "House of the Rising Sun" appeared in the finale to season four. The free download offered here, a meditation on childhood in suburbia titled "BB Guns and Dirtbikes," is cut from a slightly different cloth (less pathos, more rollicking punch). Yet the tune's success ultimately pivots on the same attribute: singer-songwriter Jake Smith's deep, brooding bass and uncanny ability to evoke comparisons to a host of country and folk legends, from Waylon Jennings to Tom Waits.