Melissa Locker

You win or you...get a spot in the cabinet? "Game of Thrones" comes back Sunday, and it's hard not to draw comparisons between the fictional chaos in Westeros and the 2016 election.

A musical time machine can be found at radiooooo.com, bringing you anywhere in the world to different music of different times and places.

It's never too early to start looking for the next big thing, and Time's Melissa Locker joins Soundcheck to talk about her picks for up-and-coming artists and bands for 2014. Her list includes groups that haven't even yet released an EP -- to artists who are already signed to major labels.

Among others, Locker predicts 2014 will be a breakout year for Diane Birch, who was plucked out of a hotel lobby by Prince and has already released two albums. Locker also picks two rappers -- Chance the Rapper and Lizzo -- who each have a unique sound that she thinks will change the direction of R&B. Plus, hear the band that Locker crowns "the next pop overlords."

Read Melissa Locker's full list of artists to watch in Time.

One of Locker's picks for 2014: Lizzo

All this week in Soundcheck's House of Horrors, we’ve been posing this question: Who is the scariest musician of all time? Today, it’s time to pit some of your nominees for scariest musician against each other in a quickfire Soundcheck Smackdown. 

Chris Weingarten, senior editor for Spin magazine, and Melissa Locker, freelance music writer for outlets like Time and Rolling Stone, help decide who's the scariest in each round of our smackdown, from Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper, to Insane Clown Posse and Slipknot, to Kenny G and Michael McDonald. 

Who do you think wins each matchup? Who did we leave out? Tell us below. 

 

New York music fans traveled to Austin, Texas this week to see their favorite New York bands play the annual South by Southwest Music Conference. The festival kicked off Tuesday night and runs through Monday.

Get a sneak peek of the Whitney Biennial with a short film by artist Rashaad Newsome. Here, dancers explain what it takes to be a Vogue performer. Watch the video.

During the Biennial, Sasamoto will perform alongside her sculptures. In this short video, produced by the Whitney, she talks about tubes and dreams.

Watch this video game within a video from the Whitney, featuring artist Ari Marcopolous.

Download the country-tinged track "What's In It For?" by Avi Buffalo.

Dinosaur Jr.
"I Want You To Know"
Playing at: Brooklyn Bowl (61 Wythe Ave., Williamsburg)
Get: Tickets | Directions

Download the Baltimore band's mellow track, "Turned On."

Celeste Headlee sits down for an after-air conversation about the first mass-market rap single, "Rapper's Delight," which was released by The Sugarhill Gang 30 years a...

Today marks the eighth anniversary of the U.S. sending troops to Afghanistan. To help mark the occasion we get the personal stories of three veterans of that war: Joe Sturm, Marco Rei...

Conde Nast announced yesterday that it will close Gourmet magazine after nearly 69 years of taste making and recipe writing. The November issue will be its last. The decision came aft...

The H1N1 vaccine is being slowly distributed around the country. We talk to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Disease, about when the...

Flu season starts officially on Sunday, and while the government has been urging schools to close only as a last resort in the battle against H1N1, there have already been at least 18...

The floodwaters in the Philippines are starting to recede now that Typhoon Ketsana (locally known as Typhoon Ondoy) has passed through, but the situation in Manila and the surrounding...

Last week close to a million New Yorkers received a special edition of the New York Post emblazoned with the giant headline: "We're Screwed!" Plausible as the headline seemed, the pap...

President Obama added another TV appearance to his recent media tour last night. He stopped by the fabled couches of "The Late Show with David Letterman" and brought his bully pulpit ...

Hot on the heels of a recently-released report in which Afghanistan commander General McChrystal said the U.S. mission in Afghanistan "will likely result in failure" without calling u...