When PSY’s “Gangnam Style” dropped in 2012, everything about it felt ephemeral. Funny enough to warrant attention yet unpredictable enough to sink its hooks, it lodged into the American psyche with the sensory magnetism of Beyoncé’s hand rotations in “Single Ladies.” With the globally accessible YouTube as its medium…

There are one-hit wonders and one-album wonders. There are musicians who consistently craft top-notch singles, but fall short of stringing them together into consistently compelling LPs; there are records that suddenly come to life when edited down into a 30-minute all killer, no filler playlist.

It is still possible, in 2018, to come across people who insist that hip-hop is some sort of “lesser” form of music. I know this because honest-to-god adults have said it to my face, quite earnestly. It’s all samples, they’ll cry, with no one actually pressing fingers to frets, no one reading sheet music! Rapping is…

Note: This review is based on last night’s livestream of Nasir, which hasn’t been officially released at the time of publication. You can watch the stream below.

Melody’s Echo Chamber pushes its warped psych pop to new lands on Bon Voyage, while Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever debuts with the dreamy, mature Hope Downs, and Chromeo strikes the right balance on fifth LP Head Over Heels. These, plus Immersion and The English Beat in this week’s notable new releases.

The A.V. Club caught up with Beach Slang frontman James Alex and his tour manager, Charlie Lowe, to talk about the band’s favorite songs to cover live, a list that includes entries from The Plimsouls, The Modern Lovers, and The Replacements.

What Are You Listening To? is a weekly run-down of what A.V. Club staffers are streaming. Listen to these songs and more on our Spotify playlist, updated weekly with new stuff.

Comedian Dave Hill has one of those vaguely familiar faces to TV watchers; maybe you recognize his hangdog expression from his small but recurring role as the Creep in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, or from when he popped up as the Bookstore Man in the “Tale From The Crypt” episode of The Tick. Hill hides his face behind…

1. Tony Orlando And Dawn, “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree”
2. Jim Croce, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”
3. Roberta Flack, “Killing Me Softly With His Song”
4. Marvin Gaye, “Let’s Get It On”
5. Paul McCartney & Wings, “My Love”
6. Kris Kristofferson, “Why Me”
7. Elton John, “Crocodile Rock”
8. Billy Preston, “Will It Go…

Zeal & Ardor forges an exhilarating new sound on second LP Stranger Fruit; Lykke Li turns inward on the hit-or-miss So Sad So Sexy; and bedroom pop gets a hi-fi makeover on Snail Mail’s full-length debut, Lush. These, plus Angélique Kidjo and Lily Allen in this week’s notable new releases.

Stewart Lupton, singer of influential New York band Jonathan Fire*Eater, died on May 28 at the age of 43. Below, Lupton’s former bandmate (and A.V. Club columnist), Paul Maroon, offers a remembrance. 

What Are You Listening To? is a weekly run-down of what A.V. Club staffers are streaming. Listen to these songs and more on our Spotify playlist, updated weekly with new stuff.

In a way, Ye is what everyone wanted. The word “Trump” appears nowhere on the album. Kanye only acknowledges his risible claim that “slavery was a choice” obliquely, and with regrets (“I ain’t finna talk about it another four centuries”). He doesn’t attempt to fit the hateful rhetoric of his YouTube thought leaders in…

Father John Misty reaches the apex of hopelessness on God’s Favorite Customer, while Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay (Tunng) embrace the surreal on LUMP, and New York no-wavers The Dreebs take pleasure in the claustrophobic on Forest Of A Crew. These, plus catching up with A$AP Rocky’s recent Testing in this week’s…

In a statement accompanying the announcement of her new album Hell-On, Neko Case wrote, “I don’t have a pretty voice.” And sure, maybe “pretty,” a word that implies a certain demure delicacy, doesn’t quite apply. Case’s voice is sturdy. It stands solidly, on its own two legs. Even when she was just starting out, her…

What Are You Listening To? is a weekly run-down of what A.V. Club staffers are streaming. Listen to these songs and more on our Spotify playlist, updated weekly with new stuff.

In the midst of a couple reunion shows, Rachel Haden, Tony Maxwell, and Anna Waronker, better known as That Dog, talked to us about their favorite guilty pleasure TV shows, from The Bachelor to Law & Order: SVU.

There are harpsichords all over Age Of, electronic composer Daniel Lopatin’s eighth studio album as Oneohtrix Point Never. It’s an instrument that Lopatin derides in press materials as a “perfectly dumb machine”—one that always reverberates the same, no matter how you strike the keys. That sound, reminiscent of…

Following May’s especially strong lineup of releases, June brings long-awaited returns from Neko Case, Nas, Lykke Li, and Gang Gang Dance, as well as anticipated efforts from Drake, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Zeal & Ardor and promising debuts from Snail Mail and Juliana Daugherty. In hip-hop, it is undoubtedly the…

The very first photo in Lizzy Goodman’s recent oral history, Meet Me In The Bathroom, is of Stewart Lupton smoking a cigarette, framed by enormous angel wings. It’s a fitting image to begin Goodman’s story of New York’s rock rebirth in the early 2000s—a story that really began several years earlier, when the…