Soundcheck

Boston-based Marissa Nadler writes intimate, sweeping dreamy and eerie songs, that shimmer with gothic melancholy. On her 2018 record, For My Crimes, she enlisted accomplished musicians: harpist Mary…

The band called English Teacher is from the northern English city of Leeds, although as their debut LP This Could Be Texas suggests, one place is very much like another when it comes to how people tr…

Composer, guitarist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli is from the Italian island of Sardinia, and his instrument began as a chiterra sarda, a large, slightly deeper member of the guitar family. Bu…

British singer, songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson OBE was part of the groundbreaking folk rock band Fairport Convention in the 1960's, made records with his then-wife, Linda Thompson, and has…

The NYC group Zelenaya mixes traditional folk music with heavy metal in ways that are both surprising and convincing. Haunting three part harmonies, doom-laden guitars, pummeling drums – somehow it a…

The Tuareg singer and guitarist Mdou Moctar is from Niger, and his music career began with his songs being shared across mobile phone trading networks in West Africa. Now, as an ambassador of the Aga…

The duo called Ringdown makes what they refer to as electronic cinematic pop from Portland, Oregon. But there are also elements of folk and classical music in their songs, which makes sense given who…

The band called Tipa Tipo comes from Brooklyn via Peru. The trio plays an unexpectedly danceable mix of tropical Latin funk, cumbia, disco, and yacht rock. With their synthesizers, guitar, and tight …

Julia Holter’s could be in the realm of contemporary classical music, experimental pop, and ambient music. Often dreamy and elusive, her songs defy easy description. As likely to work with adventurou…

The alternative rock band Guster, formed over bongos and acoustic guitars at Tufts University in 1991, has built its reputation on their striking vocal harmonies, their close connection to their fans…

Grace Cummings, the Australian singer and songwriter from Melbourne, has a strikingly rich and commanding voice, the kind that can cut through a big production. Which is good because Cummings has bec…

Graham Haynes, the Bahia, Brazil-based composer, cornetist, and bandleader, “expands and confounds what we understand as jazz and electronic music.” His work grows out of a keen sense of New York’s m…

New York’s The Jazz Passengers – despite the name – don’t just play jazz. Founded in 1987 by sax player Roy Nathanson and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, the band has worked with spoken word artists, rock…

Alice Merton burst out of the starting gate with her 2016 single "No Roots", a song that celebrated her nomadic upbringing in four different countries. Since then, the British-based German-Irish-Cana…

Singer Kiran Ahluwalia was born in India, grew up in Canada, and is largely based here in New York. Her music reflects her transcontinental upbringing, as she mixes the sounds of traditional South As…

Shabaka Hutchings, now Shabaka, has been a crucial and connected London-based musician for years, leading arena dance-jazz band Sons of Kemet, cosmic psych-dub-funk trio The Comet Is Coming, and the …

José James has often been called a “jazz singer for the hip hop generation,” having come to jazz through tracing hip hop samples and over the course of twelve records, he’s also incorporated R&B, sou…

American indie rock-chamber collective, San Fermin, has been making lush, wide-angled Baroque-pop songs for more than a decade. The band was founded by Brooklyn-based keyboardist Ellis Ludwig Leone, …

France-based Cameroonian musician and composer Blick Bassy’s quiet and beautiful songs fall somewhere on the spectrum of R & B, pop, and folk, while the sounds of West and Central Africa have continu…

Vocalist and songwriter Lizz Wright is usually referred to as a jazz or gospel singer, and she certainly does sing both of those styles. But she’s also comfortable with blues and R&B and the Great Am…