In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of the release of Batman V Superman, we’re picking songs with some form of “versus” in the title.

I feel fortunate to have been introduced to PJ Harvey earlier, and differently, than how much of southeast Washington D.C. was introduced to her.

The title of The Body/Full Of Hell collaboration makes a promise that the album delivers tenfold. Released on Neurot Recordings, the LP combines murderous grind, nihilistic sludge, and hopeless industrial to create a black hole of despair. This is the antithesis of feel-good music.

Eric Bachmann is a songwriter and musician of three distinct voices, having guided Archers Of Loaf and Crooked Fingers, and now, on his second solo album, turning over a new page once again.

After developing a friendship with Hannibal Buress, forming notable hip-hop group Cavanaugh with like-minded MC Serengeti, and building an audience for his quirky podcast, Secret Skin, Open Mike Eagle has become a minor thing. That status makes him the focal point of the new Hella Personal Film Festival, a record that…

Bob Mould might have been having a self-deprecating chuckle at himself when he named his 2012 record Silver Age, but the alternative-rock torchbearer is undeniably in the midst of a ferocious late-career tear. Having explored subtler, more experimental musical terrain through most of the 2000s, his recent run…

For years, it’s been common for people to equate The Thermals with consistency, and it’s easy to see why. Across their previous six albums, even when the band was getting conceptual, the end result was always the same: a new batch of similar-sounding songs released in a new package. This is by no means a bad thing,…

Whatever the magic formula is for capturing the sound and feel of live performance on a studio album, it’s hard to imagine that prolonged, methodical preparation is the way to find it. That was The Joy Formidable’s intent in taking a year to hang in its native Wales to write and record its third full-length, Hitch,…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of the release of Batman V Superman, we’re picking songs with some form of “versus” in the title.

Throughout the mid- to late 1970s, disco powerhouse Casablanca engaged in a lucrative experiment to see how much KISS they could shove down the KISS Army’s throat before they rebelled. KISS toured constantly and cranked out albums at a feverish clip. 1976 saw the release of two platinum-selling studio albums, Destroyer…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of the release of Batman V Superman, we’re picking songs with some form of “versus” in the title.

You’ve seen the name but never heard the band. In Starting Points, The A.V. Club offers an introduction to a band with a catalog worth exploring.

After 1992’s Slanted And Enchanted, critics started writing about Pavement as the voice of the slacker generation, and on the 1994 followup Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, frontman Steven Malkmus seemed to take that tag seriously. Alongside “state of alt-rock” addresses like “Cut Your Hair” and “Fillmore Jive,” Malkmus…

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of the release of Batman V Superman, we’re picking songs with some form of “versus” in the title.

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of the release of Batman V Superman, we’re picking songs with some form of “versus” in the title.

It was perhaps inevitable that Gwen Stefani’s divorce from Gavin Rossdale would inspire her to write a breakup record. And so it’s unsurprising that on This Is What The Truth Feels Like, the No Doubt vocalist’s third solo album and first since 2006’s The Sweet Escape, she gets the occasional dig in at her ex.…

Sometimes, when we’re coming up with a Talent Show idea, we need look no further than a band’s name. With The Get Up Kids, for instance, we knew we had to do something morning related, and thus the generic vs. name-brand cereal challenge. With a full slate of name-brand vs. generic, Wal-Mart brand cereal laid out in…

Between his work with Genesis, his contributions to other artists’ albums, and the eight studio albums he’s done on his own, Phil Collins is one of the most successful musicians of all time, but in the wake of his 2010 album Going Back, Collins stepped away from the world of music, confirming in March 2011 that he was…

In October 2015, Courtney Love alleged in a Los Angeles Times interview that Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral contains a “very mean” song about her. While she didn’t provide specifics, Trent Reznor was more forthcoming in a Kerrang! interview about a NIN song that is partially about her: “Starfuckers, Inc.,” from…