In one version of the backstory, Major Lazer is a Jamaican warrior who survived a zombie attack to gain lasers for hands. In reality, Major Lazer is a collaboration between su...

By 1940, Woody Guthrie was sick of hearing Kate Smith sing Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” which he thought ignored the incredible divide between the nation’s ric...

On Election Day in 2008, Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman found himself all alone in Washington. The night before, he had played a set at the House of Sweden for Swedish ...

Horror films make for especially animated audiences. Moviegoers laugh nervously, cower in their seats, cover their eyes and even talk back to the screen. This is the biggest d...

It’s been eight years since the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion — former D.C. resident Jon Spencer, guitarist Judah Bauer and drummer Russell Simins — released its last albu...

It’s not often that folklorists get mistaken for crazed killers, but when Stephen Wade visited a small Mississippi town to research his new book, “The Beautiful Music All ...

On “Shepherd,” a harrowing song off her fourth album, “Young Man in America,” Vermont-born singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell tells the story of a farmer working his ha...

In her controversially titled new book, “What’s the Matter with White People? Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was,” Salon.com editor and MSNBC analyst Joan Walsh...

Taj Mahal’s song “You Ain’t No Streetwalker, Honey but I Do Love the Way You Strut Your Stuff” opens with a curious bit of studio chatter, as the man born Henry St. Cl...

It’s taken nearly two decades, but the D.C. post-punk trio Lorelei has finally made a follow-up to its cult debut, 1995’s “Everyone Must Touch the Stove.” In the inter...

Much like chocolate and peanut butter, indie rock and hip-hop are two great tastes that taste great together, as the Hood Internet has discovered. Since 2007, the Chicago-base...

When Johan Hugo and Esau Mwamwaya were in Malawi recording “MTMTMK,” their second album as the group the Very Best, they would take new tracks out to play at clubs in the ...

In 1999, fiddle player Ketch Secor and a few other members of string band Old Crow Medicine Show put live shows on hold and spent a summer harvesting tobacco in the Appalachia...

Natalie Hopkinson’s new book, “Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City,” isn’t your typical history of D.C.’s music scene. The former Washington P...

Inside French-Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux’s mind is a constantly unfolding film. “I’m super fond of DVD commentaries,” she says, explaining the inspiration for her lates...