To borrow from a story told by songwriter Jason Isbell about his first meeting with legendary interpreter Bettye LaVette, Isbell shared LaVette’s disdain at being referred to as a “soul” singer. LaVette’s retort was that the music she sang was called “rhythm and blues,” but that everything she did was soulful. Into this velvety stew we call “soulfulness,” you can safely stir in one Mr. Leon Bridges.

Twenty Emmy nominations—the most ever for the first season of a comedy—either puts a lot of pressure on Season Two of the multiple award-winning Ted Lasso, or sets the series up to carry on its razor-sharp comedy and inherent pathos.

When Caveman entered the music scene a decade ago with 2011’s Coco Beware, their music blended the chamber-pop of the era’s heavy-hitters with an atmospheric sonic palette to create an album that sounded fresh. Yet by 2016’s Otero War, the band’s inventiveness felt lost.

Go Further follows up 2019’s Go All the Way with more essays on power pop royalty.

In 2019, fresh off the release of her debut album Immunity, Claire Cottrill—known professionally as Clairo—had gone from recording music in her dorm room to playing stadiums as one of the biggest names in indie pop in less than two years.

Maverick writer-director Samuel Fuller portrayed the down-and-out with respect and without sentimentality—people are people, doing what they need to survive.

A Place to Bury Strangers return with a new EP that showcases every side of their ever expanding psyche.

Given Martin Phillipps’ well-documented absence from the music scene for several decades (not including occasional live shows and the 2006 mini-album Stand By), it was an incredibly pleasant surprise when he reconvened a new version of The Chills in the early 2010s and they started gigging and making studio albums again.

Deep Cover is a gritty piece of noir filmmaking that deals with very specific themes that remain prevalent three decades later in terms of class inequality, racist systemic structures, governmental subterfuge, and fixed social strata.