By : Zach Adler / September 15, 2026 Photo Credit : Jacqui Miller The last time Lucy Dacus took the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, she was still taking it all in. The Halloween blowout to Boygenius’ triumphant 2023 tour—where Dacus was dressed in the visage of God themselves and even the Bowl managed to get dressed up with devil horns—was the first time she’d ever been to the venue. It was understandable. Unlike hometown hero Phoebe Bridgers, Dacus and bandmate/romantic partner

The “Rose of Appalachia” on her stunning sophomore album, the art-life, and freedom in motion By : Josh Kitchen / September 11, 2026 Photo Credit : Avery Norman “Sometimes the comfortable things didn’t actually make me happy or help me expand,” Angela Autumn told me ahead of the release of her sophomore album, Believer—out today from Gar Hole Records. The Western (Zelienople) Pennsylvania-born singer-songwriter, now based in Nashville, has been bubbling up with her twangy, hy

By : Josh Kitchen / September 9, 2026 Photo Credit : MACAMI What if, after going through a breakup, you not only had to sit with your feelings of heartbreak, confusion, pain, and denial, but also decided to share those feelings with millions of people? And what if, to really drive the point home, you put actual voice memos from your former partner on the record itself, allowing the audience to sit with you in those feelings of introspection, memory, and loss? An insane way to

By : Josh Kitchen / September 4, 2026 Photo Credit : Adam Alonzo “In the desert you can catch a big break / I lift a rock and see a rattlesnake,” Hannah Cole sings on the lead single, “MMA,” off her debut full-length album, Switchbacks. It’s a punishing track, recalling the heaviest shoegaze tracks of the ’90s, with Cole using the metaphor of gambling in Las Vegas for the ugly parts of the music industry that can make an artist throw in the towel. It's a visceral idea that

By : Josh Kitchen / August 21, 2026 “You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane / All they will call you will be deportees,” Ken Pomeroy sings in her cover of Woody Guthrie’s righteous indictment of the treatment of migrants and immigrants in America. Pomeroy, the 23-year-old Oklahoma native, has been cropping up on everybody’s lists of the best new singer-songwriters since the release of her 2025 album Cruel Joke, with her songs “Cicadas” and “Pareidolia” appearing

By : Josh Kitchen / August 20, 2026 Photo Credit : Max Flick In Ram Dass’ seminal work on meditation, yoga, and spirituality, Be Here Now, he wrote, “The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature.” This idea, known as the “monkey mind,” in Buddhist terminology describes a restless, unfocused state of mind, where thoughts jump rapidly from branch to branch. It’s within this framework that Pearl & The Oysters’ sixth album, appropriately titled Monkey

By : Josh Kitchen / August 14, 2026 Photo Credit : Max Flick Dent May has been baring it all for almost 20 years, his music existing in that beautiful space between melancholy and hopeful bliss. With a voice that’ll tickle the part of your brain that gives you goosebumps, and often playing multiple, if not all, of the instruments on his albums, May has become that special kind of artist who can tap into the nostalgia his listeners love to surround themselves in while still ex

By : Josh Kitchen / August 14, 2026 Photo Credit : Jeff Andersen Jnr. Much has already been said about Grace Cummings’s voice—and, in this author’s opinion, you could never cease in the attempt, because no earthly word could ever do it justice. The only way I can begin to make sense of it is to declare it tempestuous—a hurricane, a monsoon, some kind of calamitous and biblical act of God. When you look at Grace Cummings, it’s not a voice you might expect, but like the childho

By : Josh Kitchen / August 13, 2026 Photo Credit : Michael Newsted “I can see the future. It’s full of pals.” Those prescient words were spoken by Tim Robinson in his 2025 dark comedy Friendship, about a man who so desperately craves friendship that he’ll sacrifice all social norms in pursuit of it. It’s a heightened take on how difficult finding and securing real human connection has become for so many of us. For Johanna Samuels, the future really is full of pals. On her new

By : Josh Kitchen / August 12, 2026 Photo Credit : Lukas Sunderlin Listening to Martha Reeves talk about her first album in over twenty years, the excellent set of new gospel, jazz, funk, and R&B songs that span 11 tracks over 40 minutes, it’s impossible not to feel just as excited as she is. She’s calling from her home in Detroit, and she tells me there are rain clouds in the sky. We need the rain, she says. I think of the Temptations classic “I Wish It Would Rain.” The Temp

By : Josh Kitchen / August 11, 2026 Photo Credit : Silken Weinberg These lyrics are how Nina Winder-Lind begins a final tribute to all of the women who came before her on “Foremothers,” the explosive and transcendent closer of her debut album, Wild Love, out on Friday. In a thunderous crash of electric guitar solos, Winder-Lind puts a final mark on the themes she has been singing about throughout a record about the ways in which we, as human beings, owe everything not only to

By: Josh Kitchen / August 10, 2026 Photo Credit : Athen Smith After ten years of burning down the road, Daisy the Great are at a point in their careers where they’re feeling the communal love of artistry. After last year’s great record, Rubber Teeth Talk, Daisy the Great, led by former classmates and now creative partners Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker, return with a new version of the record—but unlike a normal deluxe edition, it’s so much more than that. The Rubber Teeth Talk

By : Josh Kitchen / August 7, 2026 Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels There's a moment toward the beginning of Phoebe Bridgers' new album Lost Weekend, where, after slowly reemerging from the proverbial Hobbit-hole she's been living in for the past few years, an ominous yet itchingly familiar male voice begins droning after a truly epic, Christopher Nolan The Odyssey-decibal level bass drop, followed by a fleeting guitar solo—a micro-epic of pent-up fury, cut short before it can f

By: Josh Kitchen / July 23, 2026 "Second wind, fill my sails and carry me again into the night / I will not be giving up the fight," Dent May sings on "Second Wind," the latest single from his upcoming seventh album, The Big One. It's another superbly polished and expertly crafted pop tune ahead of the album's release on August 14, but its optimism isn't immediate. In the new video for "Second Wind," May quite literally dances his way to salvation. "The song itself takes you

By : Josh Kitchen / July 3, 2026 Photo Credit : James Duran "I fucking knew it. I knew there was a piece of pencil stuck in me." ...is what Izzy DeVroede told me while discussing her brand-spankin'-new band, MOBY CLIT, and its debut single, "Lead Pencils," out today. She's not kidding either; she went on to show me a photo of a real jagged piece of graphite in her knee that had been there since she was in elementary school. [pictured below] It serves as a metallic razor-sharp

By : Josh Kitchen / June 29, 2026 Photo Credit: Ryan Faist fans who've come to know you and enjoy how you think about—and share your love of pop music have been really blessed by this record. I think at my core, I'm always going to be a punk and hardcore kid, really. So I think, try as I might, that's always going to be there, and I'm happy about that. Finding that music when I was younger changed my life in a very positive way. I met my best friends and family that way, so t

By : Josh Kitchen / June 26, 2026 Photo Credit: Josh & Kathryn Brolin Atta Boy have been at this a while. The Los Angeles-based quintet consisting of Eden Brolin (guitar/vocals), Dashel Thompson (keyboards), Freddy Reish (guitar/bass), and Lewis Pullman (drums) met in middle school, bonding over the albums they were obsessed with before discovering they had something special when they started jamming together. On their fourth album, Silt, Atta Boy dig through a lifetime of sh

“This one really feels like the truest version of me.” By : Josh Kitchen / June 26, 2026 Photo Credit : Dana Trippe Susannah Joffe has been building toward this her whole life. Growing up in Texas, she spent weekends tagging along with her parents to folk and country open mic nights in the Hill Country, soaking up the sounds of singers belting Tammy Wynette and Willie Nelson covers before she was even in the first grade. But when she moved to New York to pursue music, she tri

By: Josh Kitchen / June 25, 2026 Photo credit: Chris Maggio Not that there was ever much doubt, but one of the most exciting things about Phoebe Bridgers' comeback single, "Lost Boys," is that it dispels any lingering question that she is a generational talent. Oh yeah—the song is a revelation, too. "Lost boys, never grow up, never go home. / Lost boys, never spend their lunch money," Bridgers croons in her familiar silky-smooth delivery over an arrangement that constantly su

By: Josh Kitchen / June 24, 2026 Photo Credit: Silken Weinberg "Girls can walk on pure starlight, girls can crack your skull if they like," Nina Winder-Lind croons on "Girls," the new single from her debut album Wild Love, she announced today - out August 14 via Transgressive Records. The track builds toward a sparse, shimmering guitar solo complemented by sweeping strings as Winder-Lind reflects on the realization of her own power—and the power of women more broadly—an epiph