Robin Hilton

This week's puzzler comes courtesy Michael Lerner, drummer for the band The Antlers. Lerner is on the short list of current favorite drummers. His work is always melodic, never too busy or indulgent. But he also never settles for the straight up four on the floor. I found the fills ...

This video shows Neil Young cramped with his guitar in a small space about the size of a phone booth. It's actually a refurbished 1947 "Voice-O-Graph," a sort of self-contained studio that records and presses vinyl records. Guitarist and producer Jack White acquired the booth for his Third Man Records ...

"Needles River" is the first single from Melaena Cadiz's upcoming album Deep Below Heaven. She wrote and recorded the song with her husband, Mikael Kennedy. Kennedy also conceived and directed the video.

"I was thinking about that idea of fleeing, of a community exodus towards a hopefully better life," Cadiz ...

The question you have to ask yourself is, how juicy do you like your science fiction?

And I mean that in terms of a spectrum. To me, classic space operas are saltines — dusty and dry and fit only as a calmative after a long binge of weirder, more foreign ...

The new video from London-based duo Cloud Boat, for their new single "Carmine," unfolds in an eerie laundromat, where customers channel the hauntingly beautiful voice of singer Tom Clarke.

Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan formed The Milk Carton Kids in Los Angeles in early 2011, quickly drawing well-earned comparisons to The Everly Brothers and Simon & Garfunkel. Their performance at Columbus, Ohio's Lincoln Theatre was filmed as part of the tour for their ...

Ian McDonnell and Dara Smith are the creative force behind Lakker. They've been recording together for the past decade. Smith, who's also a motion graphics designer and art director for a Dublin design company, produced the breathtaking visuals for "Thermohaline."

"Thermohaline" is from the band's new EP, Containing A Thousand. ...

This week's drum fills (and intros) were hand-selected, using only the finest ingredients, by Sean Carey. The Bon Iver drummer, who writes and records as S. Carey, just released his second solo album, Range Of Light. I thought some of his picks for this week's puzzler ...

The video for "The Messenger" was shot at Rodrigo y Gabriela's home studio in Zihuatanejo, in southern Mexico, shortly after they completed their upcoming album 9 Dead Alive. It's meant to depict what it was like making the album, with Rodrigo and Gabriela, eye-to-eye in a studio and limited production. ...

The video for Sebastian Grainger's "The Streets Are Still A Mess," directed by Eva Michon, was shot on 35mm film, taking visual cues from classic gang stories such as Rumble Fish and Warriors, crossed with the dance staples West Side Story and Beat It.

"The Streets Are Still A Mess" ...

Tom Brosseau possesses one of the most arresting voices in folk music today. Many people who hear him sing, without knowing his name or face, assume the voice belongs to a woman, as he hovers somewhere around the countertenor range, with an unusually pure tone.

The beauty of Brosseau's ...

This week, we asked you to think about the end of your life. If you could pick it, what would you like the last song you ever hear to be? For me, it was easy. Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky," from Dark Side of the Moon would send ...

People often stop me on the street and ask, "Dude, what's with Drum Fill Friday? How are you picking that stuff?" Most of the fills come to me in peyote-induced fever dreams. Otherwise, I mostly just pick songs that have moments in them - fills and intros - that make ...

This week's batch of drum fills comes from a mix of classic rock and pop, and more recent cuts. As always, I was drawn to them simply because I love the songs themselves and was captivated at some point by the percussion. Pro tip: If you don't recognize a fill, ...

You know what's awesome? Drum fills. A killer bass line is pretty great, too. And guitar solos. And melodies and chord progressions. But a really great drum fill is often the one thing that makes a song truly take off. Think of Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" and try ...

Don't let the precious name fool you. Mr Little Jeans, a.k.a. Norwegian singer Monica Birkenes, makes propulsive, sometimes epic pop music with gnarled synth lines and alluring textures. In this brand new Mr Little Jeans video, for the moody song "Good Mistake," a trucker hopped up on meds finds himself ...

Few things make us cringe quite like hearing about the untimely death of a musical instrument. A table or an appliance may be swept away by a hurricane, or a set of golf clubs may be mangled by baggage handlers, but they don't hold quite the emotional pull of seeing ...

Every year Bob Boilen, NPR Music's Stephen Thompson and I prepare for South by Southwest by listening to songs from roughly 1,500 artists. And when you go through that many bands you start to see trends in the names. The two most commonly occurring words are always — always — ...

It wasn't an easy road to the Tiny Desk for the four guys from Louisiana who make up Brass Bed. Their tour, for the band's debut album The Secret Will Keep You, was plagued from the start: Singer Christiaan Mader had the flu, there was a death in the ...