Christian Hoard

The single from the Phoebe Bridgers-Conor Oberst project is an earworm with a black heart

Katie Bennett’s indie-pop earworm makes for a perfect end-of-summer song

We polled artists, critics and industry insiders to create a list of the era’s truly essential moments

The singer-songwriter on his tumultuous past, unlikely rise and new, wrestling-themed LP

Bassist looks forward to first shows with Paul Westerberg in 22 years

“My conscience muscle is a fucking hammer that can crush me or anyone around me at any time,” the ‘Better Call Saul’ star says

After long holdout, select tunes from legendary rocker finally available on Spotify and other streaming services

“In all reality, Wu-Tang is before us and will be after us”

Last time out, the Lonely Island made a classic joke-rap album while somehow persuading Michael Bolton to belt, “This whole town's a pussy just waiting to get fucked!” Their third LP…

Five years ago, this Chicago rapper made Dennehy, a truly great concept album about a friendship between a working-class white dude and a troubled teen MC. His 10th album is concept-free, but no le…

The Oscar-nominated songwriter on rodeos, bulls and hanging with the Dude

On the 2004 DVD Speaking for Trees, the Georgia-born singer-songwriter Chan Marshall stands in the middle of a forest and slowly works her way through stark, mournful covers of songs by luminaries like Bob Dylan, the Stones, Otis Redding and Duke Ellington. For almost two hours, the camera stays trained on Marshall as she wanders […]

The duo cranks out dark gritty blues in hallowed halls of Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, channeling its mystical mojo

In the Nineties, Alice in Chains wentmultiplatinum on a grunge-metal sound that was like the soundtrack to singer Layne Staley’s heroin addiction, which killed him in 2002. On the band’s first album in 14 years, sludgy guitars are back, and they’recoupled with vocals by guitarist Jerry Cantrell and new addition William DuVall, each of whom […]

One advantage of actually being able to play your instruments: Midcareer crises are often less scary. In the four-plus years since Dave Matthews Band last convened to write and record a new album, its members have toured the country several times over; released four live albums and the rejiggered leftovers collection Busted Stuff; and taken […]

Having transitioned into a more grown-up sound, Beyoncé has gotten conceptual on us: Her third album offers two discs, a collection of heartfelt ballads credited to Beyoncé and a danceable set credited to “Sasha Fierce,” the pop diva’s more brash, lady-empowering alter ego. Though some of the slow songs have thoroughly memorable tunes, the lyrics […]

Free from their strict Pentecostal father, Kings of Leon‘s Followill brothers (plus cousin Matthew) spent their first two records establishing themselves as horny Nashville youngsters with a neo-garage-rock style that got them tagged as the “Southern Strokes.” Nowadays, the Kings are feeling a different sound: Like last year’s Because of the Times, Only by the […]

All the filth and fury of their Eighties heyday, finally funneled into an album Mötley Cüe have created a cottage industry out of rehashing their excesses: Their tales of debauchery have already fueled dozens of books and astandard-bearing episode of Behind the Music. Now they’ve woven those stories into their first album in eight years. […]

Inside the strange mind and brilliant rhymes of the most exciting rapper of his generation

Erykah Badu has embarked on one of the more ambitious projects in recent R&B history: This year, she’ll release New AmErykah, a series of at least two, possibly three, albums tackling sociopolitical issues like poverty and 9/11, drawing on musical styles from the Forties through the Sixties, and promising, she says, to “talk for my […]