Katie Presley

According to witnesses, on the morning of Aug. 28, 2013, a woman hailed the 4A bus in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. When the male bus driver opened the doors to let her on, she shot and killed him. The following day, on the same route, she murdered another driver. That weekend, ...

Brooklyn disco house group Escort always sounds like a party, and that's only partially because they have up to 17 musicians onstage at once. More vital to the vibe is the band's seamless blending of deep house beats and disco glitter, the product of co-founders and producers Eugene Cho and ...

Boston's Guster has been together for almost 25 years, and released its seventh record in January. But it hasn't forgotten its roots as a college band playing parties at Tufts University, angling for opening slots when other, bigger bands came through town. In that spirit, the alt-rock quartet ...

A cover song need not be a revolution. Singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin approaches her latest single, a Tom Waits cover, with a light enough touch to please her fans and Waits followers alike. It's that touch that made Colvin a household name in the '90s with her ...

Seattle hip-hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis released a new song today, their first since 2012 blockbuster The Heist. "Growing Up" is not being marketed as a lead single for any upcoming project; according to the pair's publicist, it's "a personal moment of expression" from rapper Ben Haggerty and producer ...

A major component of Katrine Ottosen's appeal in her electropop project CALLmeKAT is her ability to capture dueling moods in a single song. "Hidden Waters," the title track of her first new release since 2012's Where the River Turns Black, finds her voice and the lyrics airy and bordering on ...

The surf rock of La Luz is marked by more than just the reverb on Shana Cleveland's guitar. For, just as the art of surfing is harder than it looks, guided as it is by a deep understanding of subterranean forces, so too the heavy tides of the Seattle quartet's ...

The first line of Palehound's "Cushioned Caging" begins in the middle of a thought. "And when the organ starts a-playin," sings frontwoman Ellen Kempner, whose voice arrives in a crashing wave of sound after a twangy, beachy one-chord intro. It sends a message that resonates through the rest of the ...

The dog days are decidedly over in "Queen of Peace/Long & Lost," the new double-feature video from London indie pop-rock megastars Florence and the Machine. The nearly 10 minute mini-movie is a gorgeous ode to the Scots countryside (director Vincent Haycock filmed it on the isle ...

The guitars that open "Rider of Days," the first single from folk giant Patty Griffin's forthcoming album Servant of Love, take a moment to come into focus. They swim up from silence and surface just in time for Griffin's unmistakable voice to arrive and settle over them. Everything ...

Laura Burhenn is the travelin' kind. If the philosopher Martin Buber was right, that "all journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware," then Burhenn is a proprietor of known unknowns. Lovers Know, her latest LP performing as The Mynabirds, was recorded in Los Angeles, Joshua ...

We kick off this week's All Songs Considered with new music from Wilco. The band surprised fans by dropping a new album out of the blue late last week. It's called ... wait for it ... Star Wars, and Wilco is letting everyone download it for free from ...

Julien Baker started making her own music as a way to stay creative during the school year at Middle Tennessee State University. (MTSU is in Murfreesboro, and her band Forrister is Memphis-based.) It's this music-as-exercise mentality that lends her debut album Sprained Ankle the starkness and intimacy of a note ...

Singer-songwriter Soren Bryce sounds like the type who has more ideas than there are minutes in a day. It's a particular kind of creative person: A novelist who wakes up with words ready to pour out, a painter who sketches compulsively on any available surface, a songwriter who rises in ...

Twenty years after forming, Australian folk-rock trio The Waifs sound both comfortably loose and tighter than they've ever been. It's a best-of-both-worlds situation for the band, whose seventh studio album, Beautiful You, will be released later this year.

"Blindly Believing," the lead single from Beautiful You, features no-nonsense ...

Rhiannon Giddens is comfortable performing in many genres. Her previous band, Carolina Chocolate Drops, was a traditional/bluegrass/Americana outfit. Her debut solo record, the extraordinary Tomorrow Is My Turn, reimagines country, soul, gospel and blues standards. Her musical fluencies are many, but in the face of unbearable ...

In the best way possible, "KYBM" doesn't let its listeners get comfortable — which is apt for a song inspired by social justice activists who spend their time and resources combating complacency.

Singer and rapper Tunde Olaniran works for Planned Parenthood, and is an active supporter of the LGBT pride ...

Teri Gender Bender, founder and lead singer of garage punk outfit Le Butcherettes, has one of the best stares in showbiz. As demonstrated in her supremely memorable Tiny Desk Concert, Gender Bender (Teresa Suárez by birth) makes direct and unblinking eye contact with individual audience members and the ...

Punk is not typically where one turns for mature thoughts on self-care and ending relationships in a healthy manner. But Columbus, Ohio quartet All Dogs is not where one turns for typical punk. The band makes punk music, but calls its songs "loud pop songs," and that's exactly right, too. ...

Earlier this week, Portland, Ore. record company M'lady's Records announced a new policy. Starting today, women will pay 77 percent of list price for all of their mail orders.

That number might sound familiar: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that among full-time employees, women still make ...