Cover Story
I’ll Be Your Mirror: How the xx Found Themselves—and Their Vibrant New Sound—in Each Other
Staying close with childhood friends is hard. Staying close with childhood friends while being in one of the most painfully vulnerable bands on earth is even harder.
Natural Selection: How a New Age Hustler Sold the Sound of the World
Before Irv Teibel, listening to nature meant leaving the house. Here’s the story of the man who brought the rain, thunder, and crickets to your stereo, one satisfied, relaxed customer at a time.
Fall Down Laughing: The Story of Majical Cloudz
Somewhere between sadness and absurdity lies the stark art of Majical Cloudz. Jenn Pelly traces their unlikely path—from tear-jerking house shows to playing massive arenas with Lorde—as they prepare to release a new album.
Panda Bear: The Wanderer
For a decade, Noah Lennox has lived within the shimmer and shadow of Lisbon. Philip Sherburne travels to the Portuguese capital to see how its unique character has shaped the life and work of the artist best known as Panda Bear.
Strange Visitor: A Conversation With Aphex Twin
Richard D. James may be far from his days as electronic music's enfant terrible, but he's still on a quest to reconfigure our brains, one alien frequency at a time.
How to Dress Well: Soul to Keep
Tom Krell is trying to capture true meaning in a world hellbent on snuffing it out. After spending years blurring his voice while testing the outermost limits of pop and R&B, the singer is channeling his hopes and hurt with a startling new clarity.
Station to Station: The Past, Present, and Future of Streaming Music
From YouTube, to Pandora, to Spotify, streaming music is piloting our listening habits in fascinating new ways. Eric Harvey explores how these developments are affecting ideas of taste, access, and ownership in the 21st century.
Mac DeMarco: Mannish Boy
Thanks to his gap-toothed smirk and carefree tunes, Mac DeMarco has quickly become the goofball prince of indie rock. But now he wants to be taken seriously—while still reserving the right to crack a fart joke if necessary.
MGMT
With their third album, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser continue to chase their psych-rock whims while falling deeper into a musical abyss that's as goofy as it is dark. Will their legion of neon-clad followers come along for the ride?
Janelle Monáe
Praised by big thinkers like Prince and OutKast, Janelle Monáe wants to expand the boundaries of R&B-- but first she'll need to find a way outside of her own head.
Daft Punk
After 20 years, the world has finally caught up with Daft Punk, so the helmet-clad retro-futurists are embarking on a new mission: to make music breathe again.
Savages
In an era of endless distraction, this London quartet wants to focus our fleeting attention with guitars and drums and fury. Turn away at your own risk.
Ty Segall
Aaron Leitko trails garage-punk prodigy Ty Segall on the road as he tries to reconcile the past, present, and future of rock, along with his own divided self.
Bat for Lashes
With The Haunted Man, Bat for Lashes' Natasha Khan transcends the cosmic fairy tales of her past to uncover an ecstatic peace within herself. It wasn't easy.
Ariel Pink
Visionary? Charlatan? Doomsayer? A dispatch from Ariel Pink's warped world.
Passion Pit
Inside the brilliant and troubled mind of Passion Pit leader Michael Angelakos