Stephen Thompson

Everything in Austra's music is painstakingly engineered to maximize drama, from its relentlessly pulsing arrangements — performed by a live band, no less — to Katie Stelmanis' sweepingly grandiose, Siouxsie-sized vocals. Stelmanis is a classically trained veteran of the Canadian Opera Company, so her soaring Gothic swoops are ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the perfume samples that inadvertently leave our fingertips smelling like a soap factory is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, the challenge of describing our favorite bands to the ...

On his two albums, the young English singer-songwriter James Blake has crafted dense and dramatic electronic music, for which vocals are among many features evoking warmth and beauty. On For Years — the first album by Blake's collaborator and boyhood friend, Rob McAndrews, who records under the name Airhead ...

For a band whose songs are a model of airy, summery, beachy pop-rock consistency, Surfer Blood has experienced a turbulent three years since the release of its debut album, Astro Coast. Aside from the usual pressures new bands face after releasing a hit debut (high expectations, signing to a ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the hair oil we order online as a means of avoiding Whole Foods is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, the importance of instrumentation, lyrics and the combination thereof.

As half of the brother-sister act The Fiery Furnaces — presently on hiatus — Eleanor Friedberger indulges some of her artier and more experimental, unpredictable impulses. As a solo artist, she's the epitome of subtle, un-showy cool. Friedberger's first solo record, 2011's Last Summer, was a marvelous exercise ...

For composer, remixer, producer, prolific collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Jon Hopkins, sound is a three-dimensional medium: It billows out in every direction, mixing artful throbs and animalistic thrusts that can be felt under the skin. But as driving as his beats can be — and on his new album Immunity, ...

Queens of the Stone Age's first album in six years follows an unusually chaotic stretch for the band: Lineup and label changes, frontman Josh Homme's lengthy stint in the hit supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, and what Homme calls "a manic year" all inform the brooding, stormy sound of ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the booklets of money-saving coupons we use to light kindling in the fireplace is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, tips for obsessive music fans in an age of ...

Laura Marling has accomplished an awful lot at 23 — four strong albums, armloads of awards — but what's more remarkable is the way the U.K. folksinger has gotten to this point. Marling's songs dig well beyond the everyday, with each sung in a wise, dusky, brooding voice that ...

In the playfully faux-autobiographical "Kicking Me Out of the Band," Harvey Danger's Sean Nelson closes his solo debut by painting a comical portrait of a deluded former frontman whose hedonistic exploits get him booted from the band he'd founded. It's a stinging, clever bit of satire — the sort of ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the CDs in which the Vitamin String Quartet plays the songs of 30 Seconds to Mars is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, the dos and don'ts of covering ...

For nine studio albums spanning more than two decades, The Handsome Family's Brett and Rennie Sparks have crafted a sort of glum Appalachian fatalism. With Brett singing his wife's evocative lyrics, the Albuquerque-based duo examines the underbelly of the human psyche — demons, depression, death — with a sound that ...

Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins (a.k.a. Declaime) have worked together and separately for years now, trafficking in funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, psychedelic space-rock, spoken-word poetry, protest music and more. But they've rarely combined all of the above as ambitiously as they do throughout their two albums as ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the ironic promotional cassingles is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, how a regretful fan of vinyl records can re-create her discarded collection.

Kirsten Elbourne Mathieson writes: "I'm big-time ...

If you've ever been poolside on a hot day, you know what it's like to have your senses bombarded with leisure; to feel the sun radiating and shimmering off everything around you. Watch the first few moments of this Field Recording, with its bobbing inner tubes and lounging vacationers, and ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid enough Verizon Fios solicitations to sink a barge is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, tips for rediscovering the music we once loved.

Sam Williams writes: "There's no chance ...

The term "garage rock" too often suggests a disregard for craftsmanship — the idea that distorted guitars and agreeably blaring arrangements leave no room for impeccability. But Mikal Cronin's second album, MCII, mixes shambling rock with a perfectionist ear with quality control, as its star (who plays most of ...

For what was once a fairly mysterious project, She & Him has stuck to a straightforward formula. The "She" is actress Zooey Deschanel, the "Him" is M. Ward, and there's a pecking order: The occasional cover aside, these are Deschanel's songs, sung almost entirely in Deschanel's voice, ...

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the solicitations disguised as tax refunds is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, what role parents can and should play in teaching their kids about classic albums.

Mike Liderbach ...