Mike Katzif

From the beginning, escapism has played a large role in the music of Trevor Powers. As the mastermind behind Youth Lagoon, Powers comes off as a curious tinkerer who pours himself into sound in an effort to escape his surroundings and anxieties. That's especially true of his 2011 ...

Shaun Fleming is perhaps best known as the drummer of Foxygen, a band with a reputation for wild on-stage antics and off-stage turbulence. (Or maybe you remember his work as a child voice actor for the Disney channel?) But on the side, Fleming steps to the ...

For years, Ryan Lott, the innovative beat-making composer and sonic mastermind of Son Lux, has sat at the intersection of pop and classical, creating imaginative and complex music for every medium. The classically trained musician has scored and constructed sound design for modern dance, TV ads and film — ...

After four years off, Spoon returned last year with They Want My Soul, a stellar album packed with tight, hummable hooks and precise rock 'n' roll bangers — and exceptional weight. The highlight of the record, "Inside Out," is the kind of song that seeps through your skin and enters ...

The story goes that members of Joanna Gruesome first met in 2010 at an anger-management group, and bonded over a mutual love of hardcore and writing songs as musical therapy. Whether fact or a myth that's grown in the telling, it's an origin perfectly matched to the Cardiff band's ...

In the dissonant opening seconds of Speedy Ortiz's new album, Foil Deer, Sadie Dupuis lays out her mission statement concisely: "I've known you not so very long / but watch your back, because baby's so good with a blade." Throughout the record, the songwriter and guitarist repeatedly references that ...

In 2015, it's easy to take for granted how important and far-reaching the space race was. But imagine yourself in 1957: News breaks that there's something in the sky — in space — and if you tune your shortwave radio to an especially high frequency, you can hear its signal ...

The songs of Sadie Dupuis, the songwriter and guitarist of Speedy Ortiz, dance a tightrope of juxtapositions: Equal parts hilarious self-deprecation and wry honesty, she can fire off lyrical phrases masked in ambiguous, sing-songy non sequiturs, then reveal personal opinions and complicated feelings that cut deep. While Speedy Ortiz's ...

So much of punk is about ratcheting up tension, whether through cranked-up amps and explosive drumming or the release of pent-up anger. That's one side to Joanna Gruesome's fast and fuzzy music. But the Cardiff band with the punny name also knows how to offset that noise by deploying hooks ...

The mad-scientist composer throws an ecstatic dance party with skittering polyrhythms, buzzy synths and a pop hook he sings in duet with himself.

Against swelling keyboards and a stark guitar melody, Katie Crutchfield sings of love and loneliness, embracing change with fragile, gutsy honesty.

The no-holds-barred comedian and TV star was a friend and frequent guest on WNYC. Rivers last appeared as a guest host on The Leonard Lopate Show in June. Listen to her here.

On Tuesday, December 17, download a special live performance of Deltron 3030's song "Nobody Can" recorded in the Soundcheck studio.