Daoud Tyler-Ameen

Laura Jane Grace and Lauren Denitzio both fell in love with music in their teens, and both turned it into a career. By the time they met in the studio this past winter, their lives had taken very different paths.

Grace quit school at 16 to found Against ...

As "Never Were," a standout from Worriers' 2013 EP Cruel Optimist, reaches the end of its charging first verse, the drums and guitars stop on a dime. In a few evocative lines, we've just learned of singer Lauren Denitzio's journey from inquisitive child to dutiful student to radicalized ...

Late last year, Queens, N.Y., songwriter Elaiza Santos quietly announced that her recorded output was about to disappear. A college student with a world-weary voice, Santos had begun her music career on two fronts: as the lead singer of Crying, an adventurous rock trio that wreathes its riffs ...

Quarterbacks empties its toolbox within the opening seconds of its self-titled full-length debut: a trebly guitar, a tight rhythm section whose home tempo lies somewhere in the Hüsker Dü range, a single subdued vocal. There's a dizzy little thrill in how deftly the three members carry off a pop song ...

Pop music's great storytellers tend to be handy with the dissolve cut — using telling turns of phrase to signal that time has passed, things have changed and we're rejoining our characters somewhere new. (Think of "Jeremy" or "Luka" or "Stan," the way their ...

"Perhaps" opens with the same steady fingerpicking that made listeners sit up and take notice when the first Iron & Wine songs surfaced a decade ago. It's a progressive sound in that it actually indicates progress, like tape threading through a cassette player or yarn through a spinning ...

Certain musical rhythms trip us up: We try to dance or count along and keep losing our place. Two musicians explain what makes some beats so slippery, and what butter has to do with making them stick.

When a performer has an exceptional night, we sometimes say he or she "left it all on stage" — the "it" being effort, energy, passion, sweat. To close a concert with a raw throat and a rumpled appearance signifies full disclosure, proof that the person on stage has held absolutely ...

On their 2012 debut, the four members of Swearin' cohered around a consistent sound: fierce and fuzzy and improbably melodic, with choruses you couldn't help shouting along to once you could make out the words. But there was a tension in hearing things turn slightly sweet or slightly ...

Alabama-born singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield broke through to a bigger audience last year by releasing an aching, bare-bones solo album. Her follow-up album came out in March. (This story originally aired on Weekend Edition Sunday on June 23, 2013.)

"I kind of came to everyone and was like, 'Guys. What if we call it ... Blue.' "

Katie Crutchfield's eyes light up as she says this last word, but her smile turns sheepish as she recounts what her bandmates, on hearing the pitch, gently reminded her: There's already a ...

Lemuria's The Distance Is So Big opens with 40-odd seconds of droning, which gradually reveals itself to be a collage of human howls. It's cold and weird; even as the voices grow louder and clearer, they still feel vacant and remote. Closer and closer they come, until you can practically ...

Consider the one-man band: those brainy, studio-savvy musicians who can get the right sound out of any instrument they pick up. Solitary reflection is a given in their process, and that helps make them natural vessels for songs about summer romance — the most poignant of which take place long ...

Film scores are, by and large, manipulative. They do their work at the periphery of the senses, signaling danger, heralding victory, prodding us toward fear and joy in time with the unfolding story. Crucially, they are also empathic, letting us in on what the actors' words or faces may not ...

Cesária Évora, the Grammy-winning singer from the West African island nation of Cape Verde, has died, the Associated Press reported Saturday. She was 70.

Évora was perhaps the most widely known performer of morna, a style of music indigenous to Cape Verde. She began singing professionally when ...

Blog-buzzy Kristian Matsson, a.k.a. The Tallest Man on Earth, plays Webster hall tonight. Download his "King of Spain" here.

Owen Pallett, the violin-pop mastermind formerly known as Final Fantasy, recently took the stage of the Grand Ballroom at Webster Hall. Stream his entire set right here.

The Afro-Peruvian singer songwriter takes the stage at Le Poisson Rouge on Sunday. Download her take on "El Bosque Armado (La Canoa)," penned by the Peruvian great Chabuca Granda.

This ten-strong group of soul revivalists plays the Mercury Lounge tonight. Download their fierce dancefloor number, "One Day."