Kanye West is not a regular person. According to his new record, “Yeezus,” he is “a god.” He is one of the best, most unpredictable rappers of today. And he’s rude (...

Lou Barlow always worried me. He and legendary ’90s indie rockers Sebadoh put out an amazing, weird record nearly every year between 1989’s “The Freed Man” and 1996’...

MYKKI. BLANCO. That’s all an entire page of my notebook says. Blanco repeated her name a lot when she played Comet Ping Pong in March, like a mantra. And now her new EP “B...

Daft Punk helped lead the charge for the EDM (electronic dance music) genre. Being one with the machines is kind of the point of being an EDM DJ/producer. It’s a quest that ...

There’s a little old lady partial to cardigans who has earned a place in rock history. Her stuff goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay. She retired two weeks ago, and Los Lob...

“How Soon is Now?” The Smiths cryptically wondered on their self-titled 1984 debut. I can name that tune in one shimmering, echo-pedaled guitar note. So when ex-Smiths gui...

Sonic Youth was born in 1981, three years after I was. We did not grow up together, however: While I was learning to walk and read, they were recording album after album of dr...

My partner, Jaime, lost her dad on Holy Thursday. Her family lives in Los Angeles, and I’m writing this riding down the Pacific Coast Highway so we can put his ashes in the ...

Lil Wayne lives! For a while, we were worried. When the sizzurp-loving rapper was hospitalized two Fridays ago following seizures, fans — myself included — were on Twitter...

You should be listening to new bands. All the time. Reading about a band in a magazine? Too late, lame-o. You should be trading playlists with a 17-year-old reggaeton DJ in Li...

Relevance: It’s what every musician strives for. But how to stay hip when you’ve been in the game for 20 years? Much less the club-music game, which is both fickle and nic...

There are a lot of serious female shredders out there these days. Perhaps the most mind-blowing of them all is Marnie Stern, whose intimidatingly technical playing I can compa...

In 1977, NASA sent recordings into space on board the two Voyager probes. The compendium of sounds — rain, heartbeats and Chuck Berry among them — was meant to give aliens...

A few weekends back, I saw flashy Georgia rapper 2 Chainz at the Fillmore in Silver Spring. Everyone looked cute for the sold-out show that night. 2 Chainz lays down one rule ...

Willow Smith is sad. Except she isn’t just locked in her room listening to Radiohead; she’s sampled the band’s song “Codex” (from 2011’s “The King of Limbs”) a...