By the third day of any festival, it takes a lot to get fans to come out to shows early.

Sometimes the best way to unpack a complicated historical event is to look at it from a smaller scale. That seems to be the goal of Boxers & Saints, the new two-volume graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese.

England’s Anna Calvi is a master of moodiness. Her eponymous 2011 debut album was slightly unnerving, slightly scary, and hauntingly magnificent—10 tracks of Calvi and her guitar against the world.

Grieving Sonic Youth fans are suffering no dearth of releases to keep their ears occupied while the band rests in (possibly permanent) hiatus.

Day two of CMJ was crammed with notable bands. The problem with the festival is that it’s spread around the lower east side and Brooklyn, and you can’t be everywhere at the same time (yet, anyway). With that in mind, I ended up catching sets from The History of Apple Pie, StaG, Little Daylight, and Rebeka.

Experimental pop outfit Poliça returns with the unsettling Shulamith, replete with grisly cover art and the video for “Tiff,” which indulges in a twisted self-torture scene with singer Channy Leaneagh.

Regardless of whether one already has all of The Clash’s albums, the immersive experience of sinking into the lovingly detailed Sound System will serve as a reminder of why fans agreed with their label’s slogan, “The Only Band That Matters.”

12 Years a Slave grabs the audience by the neck, dragging it through the mosquito-infested swamps of America’s greatest mistake.

They would eventually become the Beat Generation, but before “Howl,” Naked Lunch, or On The Road, they’d find themselves accessories to murder.