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Julia Holter- Ekstasis “Avant-pop.‰” “Ambient experimental.‰” “Ethereal.‰” “Baroque-pop.‰” Try as they might, the blogs cannot pin a clean tag on Julia Holter‰'s sophomore album Ekstasis. Though they are not entirely wrong. Underneath the layers of antique atmosphere,...

Holograms – Holograms Holograms‰' self-titled debut evokes the gray energy of Joy Division and the synth based percussion of the ’80s. Though a bit odd in theory, the Swedish quartet takes all of their frustration and despair and produces something that‰'s more than...

Zammuto – Zammuto When The Books broke up, music fans mourned. The band produced some of the most thoughtful, inspiring, and creative music of this generation between Nick Zammuto‰'s found-sound samples and Paul De Jong‰'s cello loops. Zammuto is Nick‰'s first solo...

Sharon Van Etten – Tramp We can thank heartbreak for an endless wealth of classic albums‰ÛÓ Blue, On the Beach, Funeral, For Emma. But rarely has an album inhabited heartbreak so well that it universalized it. And rarely has one succeeded with such fire and passion as...

Regents – Antietam After Party 2012, thankfully, was a year full of quality punk albums, and post-hardcore supergroup Regents capped it off with one of the year‰'s hardest releases, Antietam After Party. Made up of veterans of the fertile D.C.-and-Virginia hardcore...

Lambchop  Mr. M Is it really any surprise that Lambchop has ended up on a list of overlooked records? After all, Mr. M sounds like some bizarre collaboration between Burt Bacharach and your piss-drunk uncle who claims to have invented the earmuffs. Overlooked, indeed....

As part of la nouvelle rock sc̬ne fran̤aise (“the new French rock scene”), BB Brunes formed in 2005, joining the ranks of what the French media called Les BÌ©bÌ©s Rockers (“Baby Rockers”), marked by their youth, good looks and post-punk influence. Lead singer Adrien...

If you wanted to dive into the world of K-Pop and were turned off by PSY‰'s atrocious foray into the music industry (please do not even try to defend “Gangnam Style”), give it a second chance and start off with BIGBANG. While the rest of the world was slowly warming...

I was first drawn to the music of Oddisee through his uniquely focused album, Traveling Man. This D.C. artist hopes to explain the world through his music, labeling the tracks in this album after different cites he visited while on the road. Oddisee describes his...

Hailing from sunny Mexico City, Hello Seahorse! (exclamation point always included) reminds us how globalized this world has become. Images of mariachi bands and suave Spanish guitars have been replaced by a new generation of young musicians with more international...