Mike Katzif

On the Louisiana band's fourth album, its catchy and dynamic songs sound invigorated, immediate and more forceful than ever.

"I had a dream where you were standing there with a gun up to my head." This is how Lucius drops us, in medias res, into "Madness," the evocative first song on the band's second album, Good Grief. What unfolds is a lucid dream-chase sequence that captures a desire ...

At some point, we've all felt isolated from the people we love most, or found ourselves stuck in a decaying relationship that has warped into something unrecognizable. In her songs, Jessica Weiss, singer and guitarist of Fear Of Men, has used a nimble touch to regularly address these ...

"We grieve so deep in disguise / The private lives of private eyes," Thao sings in "Hand To God." It's a simple yet striking line that illuminates the emotional backbone of her brilliant, jarring new album, A Man Alive. Throughout the record, Thao ruminates on how little we know ...

The cover of Santigold's 99¢ shows Santi White as she's shrink-wrapped tight like a Barbie doll amid a candy-colored clutter of lifestyle accessories. Smacked right onto the cheapo cellophane, a yellow price tag declares the album's title, as if it's a dollar bin — or, perhaps, taking a clever ...

A band is a lot like family. Musicians spend years trying to get inside each other's heads, learn one another's tics and establish a creative bond. But when your band is also your actual family, that collaborative intimacy can come more innately. That's true for TEEN, the Brooklyn-based foursome first ...

He's only in his early 30s, but Bill Ryder-Jones shoulders the heavy burden of someone far older. The English guitarist and composer writes aching songs with the somber resignation of someone still searching for answers and inner peace, and his plaintive lyrics allude to a lifetime of personal struggles ...

At its best and most socially inclusive, punk can be a source of salvation. It's a sentiment that James Snyder not only embraces, but expresses freely in his songs every chance he gets. A fortysomething punk-rock lifer, Snyder cut his teeth in the '90s with the little-known but much-loved Pennsylvania ...

With a name like Pity Sex, it wouldn't be wrong to giggle a little. But there's far more power in the Ann Arbor-based band than its self-deprecating, kinda-emo moniker suggests. On its 2013 full-length debut, Feast Of Love, Pity Sex unfurled a windswept blur of hurts-so-good distortion and ...

The doubt and heartache stirred up by messy romances and distant crushes are at the core of Carmen Perry's songs. The primary songwriter of Sports, Perry writes in emotionally direct phrases, which capture the confusion and vulnerability that often comes with being young and in love. That theme ...

It happens all the time: We see someone walking down the street, sitting on a train, or standing in line, maybe make eye contact for a split second — and then go on with our day. Normally, we don't give those interactions much thought. But for Nicole Schneit, the New ...

Michael Benjamin Lerner was stuck. After three albums of fuzzy and fizzy power pop, the singer, songwriter, drummer and mastermind behind Telekinesis felt sapped of ideas, as if he'd taken his guitar-driven sound as far as it could go. Writer's block can be a paralyzing frustration, riddled with second-guessing ...

In the wake of Ben Folds Five's dissolution in 2000, Ben Folds embarked on an assortment of new projects: He's released solo albums and composed for film and TV; he's collaborated with Nick Hornby and William Shatner; he's even served as a judge on TV's The Sing Off, which ...

As half of the guitar-and-drums duo The Black Keys, Dan Auerbach has explored, and repeatedly blown up, nearly every shade of the blues for more than a decade. The band's raw early years in Akron, Ohio, were defined by ragged, high-octane bangers full of heavy riffs and explosive ...

"I like living by the water. It's new and crazy for me," says Mac DeMarco, smoking and peering out at the bay in Far Rockaway, Queens. All around, nature blends with reminders of civilization: Behind him, sun-dappled waves are chopped up by freighter boats and the occasional jet ski passing ...

Striking out on your own during your teens and early 20s is rarely a direct or easy path — it's a breadcrumb trail of false starts and missteps as you figure out who and what you want to be. Ellen Kempner, the Boston songwriter and guitarist behind Palehound, ...

"I can't stop mourning, it's like hearing cancer spreading," singer and bassist Julie DeLano sings. "It's like hope is a fairy tale and so are the gods, and change is unheard of." In "Wake Of The World," the buoyant final track from the Brooklyn band Gold's self-titled album, DeLano unfurls ...

In the fallout of a breakup, it's natural to spiral into self-analysis, pore over the past for evidence of where it all started to go wrong, and then try to recreate the story from selectively remembered details. This is where Night Beds' Ivywild begins. With the transportive opener ...

When was the last time you saw crowd-surfing at a Bright Eyes show? Or watched a mosh pit break out at a Conor Oberst solo performance? Ever? But one late June night, in the cramped and sweaty confines of the Bushwick D.I.Y. space Shea ...

The music of Krill is all about tension just waiting to be released. Seething anxiety runs through the lyrics of bassist and singer Jonah Furman, who deploys drawn-out, sentence-like phrases that tease out pent-up emotions, self-doubt and neurosis. It makes Krill's songs feel jittery and claustrophobic one moment and satsifyingly ...