Culture
Film, literature, fashion, and the ideas moving through the world.
Vlad Dascalu and the Nomadic Nature of Truth
He posts from a room lined with Orthodox icons and a framed page of what looks like scripture, wearing a red shirt and a gold cross, and...
SAULT Released UNTITLED (Black Is) on Juneteenth. Then Refused to Explain It.
On June 19, 2020, a British music collective called SAULT uploaded an album called UNTITLED (Black Is) to Bandcamp. The price was whatever...
June McDoom: The Folk Singer Who Never Saw Herself in the Genre She Loves
There is a particular kind of patience required to pursue an art form that was not built with you in mind. June McDoom grew up in a...
Moses Sumney Is Not Trying to Be Understood
The first fifteen seconds of "Quarrel," released in August 2017, do more than most songs accomplish in four minutes. A keening falsetto...
Seven Artists Worth Your Time This Week
The week of June 22, 2026 offered an unusual concentration of records worth taking seriously. Tierra Whack chose Juneteenth to release her...
Abel Tesfaye's Last Chapter: How The Weeknd Became Mythology
On August 31, 2025, Spotify confirmed that "Blinding Lights" had become the first recording in the platform's history to reach five billion...
Cate Le Bon Has Always Made Records That Look Like Rooms
On September 26, 2025, Cate Le Bon released her seventh studio album, Michelangelo Dying, on Mexican Summer. The record reached number nine...
Julia Holter Is Making Music That Grows Up With You
When Julia Holter contracted COVID midway through finishing her sixth record, she had no choice but to rent a studio and record the vocals...
Jamila Woods Named Her Songs After Dead Artists and Made the Living Ones Listen
When Jamila Woods titled the songs on LEGACY! LEGACY! after Black and Brown artists who had come before her (Zora, Frida, Eartha, Baldwin,...
Burial Recorded Untrue on Dying Software and No One Has Made a Record Like It Since
William Bevan made Untrue in 2006 on a copy of Sony Sound Forge he described as "rubbish and dying," on a computer that could barely run...
Sudan Archives Is Building a World the Industry Was Never Designed to Hold
In September 2022, Pitchfork gave Natural Brown Prom Queen a score of nine out of ten and a Best New Music designation. That is not a small...
Amyl and the Sniffers Built Their Biggest Record in Someone Else's Studio
Nick Launay recorded "Cartoon Darkness" at the Foo Fighters' 606 Studios in Los Angeles. That choice of location is not incidental. Amyl...