The Swedish Fishing Village Behind Tove Lo’s ESTRUS
The first sound on Tove Lo’s ESTRUS is a whirling metallic pulse. It rushes in fast, hard to place, and then the track it opens,... Read More
Music
Slayyyter Booked Thirty Shows Across Three Continents
The Basement East in Nashville holds a few hundred people. The Roundhouse in London holds around three thousand. Both are on the same routing sheet,... Read More
The Retro Synth Sound and Where 90s Double Vision Takes It
An Irish Vocalist and a Brazilian Composer Build a Nocturnal Pop Record Across Two Continents The hook on 90s Double Vision arrives on a synth... Read More
Sugar Relics Put Can’t Stay Awake Back in Play on Caught in the Middle
A 2022 Dark Electro-Pop Single, Returned to Service on a 2026 Album The synth line on Can’t Stay Awake arrives before anything else does. It... Read More
Empire of the Sun Follow a 220,000-Ticket Tour With 31 More Shows
Two hundred and twenty thousand people bought a ticket to the last one. That is the figure sitting underneath the Ask That God: Afterlife tour,... Read More
Kid Ørbit Slide: the 808 Sound, and Where It Went After 1983
How A Melbourne Melodic Rap Single Inherits the Drum Machine That Built Trap Roland discontinued the TR-808 in 1983, and the machine refused to disappear.... Read More
Sarah Giles Made Don’t Whisper Inside Her Own Live Band and You Can Hear Where It Went
How a Nashville Producer Who Plays in the Band Built a Four-Minute Single Start with one line on the credit list. Chris Kuskey produced Don’t... Read More
Estasi E Veleno Runs on a Programmed Pulse and Giuseppe Cucè Knows Where to Take It
How Two Players and One Sicilian Studio Turned a Cantautore Lyric Into Dance Pop Start with the credit list. It explains the record. On Estasi... Read More
Shygirl Made a Love Song That Sounds Like a Chase Scene
Set those words over piano and strings and you get a ballad. Set them over drums that sound like something is about to happen and you get a different claim.... Read More
Miss Kittin Turned Deadpan Speech Into a Club Vocal
The most influential thing Caroline Hervé ever did was refuse to sing. On Frank Sinatra and 1982, both from a 1998 EP made with The... Read More
The Hip-Hop Dance-Pop Sound and Where It Went on Hold Me Close Now! By Gloria May Byron 
Why Chillwave Keeps Coming Back: Goodbye Gravity by Attaboy 
Why Synth-Pop Keeps Coming Back, as Shoshan Dunamis Shows on Have a Sense 
Bright Arpeggios Under a Heavy Heart, and How to Hear Them on LNNY’s Gehen Rafatape Remix