Deep dives into the sounds that define us.
Footwork did not ask to be discovered. It emerged from Chicago’s South Side in the late 1990s as an evolution of ghetto house, built for battle: two dancers...
There’s been a quiet but unmistakable shift happening in pop music. Call it the return of the low-key. After years of maximalism, hyperpop production, and the relentless sonic...
Indie folk is a genre that nobody wants to name and everybody is willing to inhabit. Ask someone who makes it whether they play indie folk and they...
Dream pop is one of those genre names that does too much explaining and not enough describing. It tells you the mood, roughly, and it tells you the...
Shoegaze was supposed to be a joke. The name came from music press critics in the early 1990s who thought it was funny that these bands stood at...
Power pop has a branding problem. The name sounds like it should mean something louder and more aggressive than it does, which might be why it never achieved...
Ska is one of those genres that never entirely goes away and also never quite gets the sustained critical respect its influence deserves. It shows up in waves,...
Country music has never really been a single thing. It has always been an argument. Between tradition and change, between Nashville and everywhere else, between the people who...
R&B is the most elastic genre name in popular music. It has covered territory from jump blues to doo-wop to soul to funk to quiet storm to contemporary...
Hyperpop started as a provocation and became a genre by accident, which is appropriate for a sound built on accidents being turned up too loud. The origin story...
Jazz has been dying for as long as anyone can remember, which is one way of saying it has not died. The more precise way of saying it...
Ambient music has a paradox at its center: it is the most demanding genre disguised as the most passive one. Brian Eno, who more or less named and...
Into The Music