Will Hermes

Will Hermes reviews the most heartening record he's heard this year. It's A Sailor's Guide to Earth by Sturgill Simpson.

Music critic Will Hermes reviews the new album from David Bowie which is being called Blackstar.

The musician and multimedia artist Laurie Anderson has long made America one of her great themes; her panoptic, early '80s magnum opus was titled United States, and her work has shown enduring fascination, and disquiet, with the way our national culture conducts itself. But Habeas Corpus, a multimedia ...

Music critic Will Hermes has been won over by the remarkably beautiful, pure voice of Joan Shelley. He reviews her new album, Over and Even.

With a name like Destroyer, you might expect a heavy metal band. Led by musician Dan Bejar, the band's latest album, Poison Season, has a lighter sound with interesting, uniquely delivered lyrics.

Music critic Will Hermes went to one of the Grateful Dead's last shows that broke all kinds of records.

Music critic Will Hermes says the new album, Platform, from electronic musician Holly Herndon invites deep listening.

NPR's music critic Will Hermes reviews the deeply personal new album by Sufjan Stevens titled Carrie & Lowell.

NPR music critic Will Hermes reviews an album that contains the best storytelling he's heard in a long time. It's the debut album from Courtney Barnett.

Native North America, Vol. 1 sketches out an entire chapter of American music that, remarkably and shamefully, largely had been lost until now.

Pop music has been defined this year by young women who come across as self-assured and self-directed. And, while Taylor Swift sold more records and pulled more headlines, Charli XCX (née Charlotte Aitchison) has made the year's most fabulous pop record — in part by updating a ...

Music critic Will Hermes reviews the latest album from Perfume Genius, Too Bright.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman follows her Oscar-nominated contribution to the Her soundtrack with Crush Songs, a collection of stripped-down recordings that take their tone from the album's name.

Sean Rowe has been playing a haunted cover of Bruce Springsteen's "The River" on tour this year, usually using only his battered Takamine acoustic guitar, a harmonica and his well-deep, Old Testament baritone voice. It might give an impression — abetted by his impressive beard — that ...

The duo's self-titled debut brims with slow tempos and spacious electronic arrangements, making plenty of room for the gorgeous vocals of folk veteran Amelia Meath.

The former president said Republican strategist Karl Rove's recent remarks about Hillary Clinton's health are "just the beginning" of the attacks that are headed her way.

Though she's been a popular singer since the '80s, Natalie Merchant has often worn the air of one who finds pop stardom distasteful. On her new self-titled LP, she dredges that tension to the fore.

On its self-titled debut, the charming Brooklyn pop-rock band Hospitality burst out of the gate like a batch of 4.0 GPA indie-rock students, not unlike their forerunning New York City bros in Vampire Weekend. With songs that crushed out on coworkers and wrapped heartache in cheap ...

Even if they're brokenhearted, R&B singers tend to come off as cool customers who can make love seem like an achievable ideal. But The Weeknd is a hot mess.

Driven by a voice that's generally pushed up to a verge-of-hysteria falsetto — it makes you think of