Stephen Thompson

If you've followed the history of Pop Culture Happy Hour live shows, you know that they have a history of selling out quickly. Our last D.C. appearance, at NPR's Studio 1, sold out in two minutes, while our New York debut, at Brooklyn's Bell House, sold out in 10 seconds. ...

It's hard to divine, on paper anyway, a formula for effectively covering The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirety. It's not an album that had been crying out for improvement — to put it mildly — nor has it ever receded far enough toward the ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the shoes our kids outgrew in the time it took to have them shipped is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, thoughts on remedial music fandom.

Michele K. writes ...

Late in Horse Feathers' fifth album, So It Is With Us, singer-guitarist Justin Ringle unleashes a provocative little five-word phrase — "softly screaming, 'woe is me'" — that's summed up a lot of the band's music over the past decade. Ringle's songs generally set wearily fatalistic lyrics against a ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the promotional ghost peppers we unwittingly spilled on our pants is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, a request for music to fill your head with sound, but not ...

Brooklyn's The Lone Bellow seemed to arrive fully formed: Its self-titled 2013 debut came stuffed with intricately assembled bundles of crowd-pleasing folk-pop, each more dramatic and infectious than the last. Charismatic, photogenic, endlessly hooky — The Lone Bellow has been the complete package since day one.

A follow-up album, ...

Chad Ubovich spent the last few years as a member of Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin's respective backing bands. Along the way, he's learned to put his personal spin on the surf-strum mutant beach party championed by California psychedelic rock bands like Thee Oh Sees, Wand and

Whether playing string-infused melancholia or insistent dance-floor fodder, Stars' members infuse their songs with the weariness and wisdom of someone who understands the realities behind our worst fears. Knowledge of death and disappointment and war lies barely concealed beneath even the most effervescent exterior of a Stars song.

Still, ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the ingredients to an Ozzy Osbourne costume that'll fit a 10-year-old girl is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, thoughts on managing a library while maintaining one's connection to ...

When LPs and cassettes gave way to compact discs in the late '80s and early '90s, many bands seized on the format's 80-minute time limit as a challenge: If a disc can hold that much music, the thought process went, then why shouldn't it? This led to some legendarily ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and among the Penzeys Spices catalogs that help us remember our ex-roommates' names is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, thoughts on pop music's nadir.

Josh in Chicago writes via email: ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the unsolicited phone books we toss straight into the recycling bin is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, thoughts on words we'd prefer never to hear associated with music.

For more than a decade, Norwegian-born singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche has made pop music his primary weapon in a full-frontal charm offensive. A slyly charismatic presence, he sings with an air of playful whimsy — it's no mistake that he was cast to write and perform the songs in the ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the Amazon Prime order containing items we could have acquired at the nearest vending machine is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, thoughts on fatigue and embitterment.

Matt S. ...

With the ever-intrepid Linda Holmes attending the Toronto International Film Festival — more on that next week — Glen Weldon and I get to welcome our Code Switch pals Kat Chow and Gene Demby to this week's show.

As you might imagine, we open with a few words about ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside a stuffed Pikachu the size of an ottoman is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, thoughts on music to accompany the new football season.

Joe writes via email: "While ...

As you no doubt know if you've consulted a media source at any point in the last few weeks, the Fox-owned FXX channel recently completed a 12-day marathon containing every Simpsons episode yet made. Regardless of the marathon's value or newsworthiness — which our panel discusses and debates here — ...

Once known as a poster child for heedless prolificacy, Ryan Adams now seems to have discovered how to live at a human pace. His self-titled 14th album is his first in three years — a span that would have seemed inconceivable a decade ago. But the former Whiskeytown singer ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and alongside the gigantic bottle of Marmite we probably shouldn't have ordered on a late-night whim is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, thoughts on getting your parents into your favorite ...

Interpol once seemed like a candidate for a quick post-debut flameout. Its 2002 debut, Turn on the Bright Lights, broke through with seemingly instantaneous intensity, setting the band up for an equally ferocious second-album letdown. So many bands in its fickle New York scene were playing a variation ...