Lars Gotrich

Eno's plinking chimes, rippling vibraphone and deep synth tones mirror a parallel world across a single, 54-minute track.

Across ambient, jazz, psychedelic and American Primitive styles, this year proved that the possibilities of the guitar continue to flourish.

Our resident Viking recalls 2016 in feral metal, dystopian and ocean-mimicking synths and Afro-futurist pop cubism.

Run The Yules! Killer Mike and El-P dropped off RTJ3 three weeks early.

Trent Reznor promised new Nine Inch Nails material by the year's end, and boy is it heavy.

More love songs should sound like a vintage Dodge Charger slamming into a brick wall. In "The King's Wig," the Sacramento noise-punk band channels the chaotic scuzz of Spazz with ramming speed.

Liz Harris' new 7" is a muted meditation that sighs with stark melancholy, "My head hurts."

Stacey Brown-Downham's rootsy alterna-rocker understands that solemnity during the holidays doesn't always mean sadness, but resilience with the one you love.

Before making a pot of black sesame porridge, Eskimeaux performed "Tour Mate Sex Dream" and "Rearview" live for #WAXnEGGS. Watch that and a set from Japanese Breakfast, filmed in a D.C. home.

Two weeks from our bleak midwinter, New Orleans' Queen of Bounce is coming through for y'all.

What better way to soundtrack the fraying of nerves of America than with a new At The Drive-In song?

There's something perversely funky about New Fries' freaky no-wave radiations. The band's video flips through a bizarro cable landscape in thickly brushed, brightly colored, MS Paint-style animation.

Released as a free download via Adult Swim's singles program, "Hate Power" is a brisk and blistering three minutes and 45 seconds, a vertiginous metal-punk spew.

The chorus-less, frenetic power-pop song narrates a string of feelings — the laundromat, the grocery store, the angry dad, the White Castle — that regulate our existence.

For two decades, the band has maintained a mix of thoughtfulness and savagery unparalleled in metal. This is peak Zao, back with its most feral and fully realized offering in years.

To celebrate City Of Caterpillar's reunion tour, here's a gloomy and suspenseful track that got left off the Richmond post-hardcore band's sole album, released in 2002.

As electronic dance music continues to experiment, D∆WN stands apart by making challenging pop music with soul. Redemption radiates defiance in its celebration of the self.

Lætitia Tamko's music exists in the seam of our own history and memory. For Vagabon's debut album, she reworks a fuzzy rocker into something more delicate and subdued.

There's an ancient, pastoral thrill to Jaime Fennelly's harmonium/synth music, aided here by Califone's Jim Becker and Death Blues' Jon Mueller.

At 26, Bachman is already an established voice in the solo guitar music scene, but he knows that evolution comes in steps, not leaps. Here, he presents the most rounded version of himself.