Music Features

Fred Armisen is best known for his work on Saturday Night Live and shows like Documentary Now!, Portlandia and Forever, but music is his first love. He’s been drumming since his teenage years and even though he’s usually balancing three or four comedy projects at once, he always makes time …

I t was five hours before showtime and Lil Peep was in the back of his tour bus, getting high with two young fans. They were smoking dabs, high-potency doses of concentrated weed that are vaporized, then inhaled. This was Tucson, Arizona, in November 2017, and the afternoon heat hovered …

It’s been five years since the Black Keys have released any music together, but with their new song “Lo/Hi,” the duo seem to have picked up right where they left off. Dan Auerbach‘s signature bluesy, fuzzy guitar and Patrick Carney‘s thumping garage rock drum beat are alive and well. And …

Along with his cohorts in Animal Collective, Panda Bear — a.k.a. singer-songwriter Noah Lennox — has spent the past two decades fashioning a psychedelic hybrid that defies all existing genre definitions. Yet while bandmates Avey Tare, Deakin and Geologist were at work on 2018’s Tangerine Reef, their marine-themed ambient LP, …

“RealLife Rock Top Ten” is a monthly column by cultural critic and RS contributing editorGreil Marcus. 1. Dirty Denim, “Meant to Be,” from Dirty Denim Demo Tape (7″ EP). This is the most arresting thing I’ve heard come out of the radio — in this case, KALX, the University of …

As music streaming has become widespread, global attention has become fixed on Spanish-language performers, and rightly so: That language fueled eight of the ten most-viewed music videos on YouTube in 2018. But music with lyrics in Portuguese has also experienced a major boost — the baile funk hit “Bum Bum …

In the spring of 2003, Steve Gunn spent two months drawing lines on a wall in Beacon, New York. He was in his twenties at the time, not long out of college and still years away from his current life as a highly respected singer-guitarist. The lines were part of …

S hawn Mendes was up late in his hotel room a few nights ago, scrolling through photos online. He kept seeing Top 40 A-listers with their partners — maybe it was Dua Lipa and her boyfriend, or Justin Bieber and his model-fiancée — and he was starting to get a …

At 66, Nile Rodgers has lost count of the number of lives he’s lived. The Chic co-founder and hitmaker-for-hire has battled cancer, drug addiction and multiple career nadirs to emerge as one of the most reliable craftsman and producers in the business. With the recent release of It’s About Time, …

“Don’t fuck with me, don’t fuck with me” sang a ghostly voice. It didn’t belong to Drake, but marked his return. The light, airy, acidic words on “Dreams Money Can Buy” sampled the enigmatic Jai Paul, repurposed for one of the most known quantities in the world. The sentiment was …