This New Jersey native first emerged in the early ’00s as part of the post-David Gray pack of male singer-songwriters eager to set their sensitive-dude pain to the timeless sound of strummed acoustic guitars. Pop’s moved on to less earnest fare since then, but Yorn’s still worth hearing, thanks to…

On their two studio albums, these Massachusetts indie dudes show off the instrumental chops they honed at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. The knotty, densely composed songs on last year’s self-titled disc shapeshift, Frank Zappa-style, moving from tightly wound surf-punk to delicate post-Zombies guitar-pop to shaggy West Coast folk-rock with…

This week’s big hip-hop shows couldn’t be more different, which is no reason for you to avoid catching both. Boots Riley, main man of Oakland’s the Coup, is hip-hop’s pre-eminent Communist; he raps about putting power in the people’s hands but doesn’t gloss over the specifics like so many backpack…

The Brooklyn-based dance-punks in Radio 4 expressed their dissatisfaction with the Man on 2004’s pissed-off Stealing of a Nation, but they forgot to have any fun in the process, which made joining their underground resistance a very hard sell. Though it doesn’t match the punk-funk intensity of 2002’s Gotham! (produced…

Greg Dulli has been churning out sorrowful soul-rock for so long–throughout the 1990s with the Afghan Whigs, and for the past six years with the Twilight Singers–that each new record he makes seems to carry the threat of shtick. Until you hear it, that is: More than any other member…

Last year’s With Teeth stressed the rock half of Nine Inch Nails’ industrial-rock attack, layering blistering guitar fuzz over Dave Grohl’s pounding drums. The band’s live shows since the album’s release have seen Trent Reznor re-embracing the assertive-front man role he seemingly abdicated in the late ’90s, back when dude…

When this Boston post-punk outfit reunited in 2002 after nearly two decades, observers didn’t hold their breath in anticipation of what maturity had done to Mission of Burma’s sound. After all, guitarist Roger Miller, bassist Clint Conley and drummer Peter Prescott sounded mature right out of the gate, outfitting their…

Like a janitor carting off hunks of the obsolete office equipment he’s always rhapsodizing over, bearded central-Californian techno-mystic Jason Lytle has finally pulled the plug on Grandaddy, the shaggy dream-pop combo he’s led since 1992. Just Like the Fambly Cat, the band’s fourth full-length, will be its last. As final…

Owner of San Francisco’s Tiny Telephone recording studio (a favorite of indie stars like Spoon and Okkervil River), John Vanderslice makes solo records like you’d expect an engineer to, tricking out his singer-songwriter pop with lots of headphone-ready bells and whistles. But he’s also a gifted storyteller, one who rarely…

The title of this Scottish post-rock outfit’s new Mr. Beast is indicative of both their predilection for raw amplifier noise and their skewed sense of humor. Unfortunately, the album doesn’t quite live up to its excellent name: Though they’re still more interesting than their more celebrated Icelandic peers in Sigur…

The sound of R&B radio has been defined by super-producers like Timbaland and the Neptunes for so long that it’s difficult to remember a time when that wasn’t the case. For Teddy Riley (who actually discovered the Neptunes), it’s not such a trick: History might well single him out as…

News flash: Al Jourgensen is pissed. On Rio Grande Blood, Ministry’s frontman (the closest thing industrial music has to an elder statesman) continues to whack away at his trademark formula: drill-bit guitars laid over jackhammer beats, with spoken-word samples providing context for Jourgensen’s man-with-a-megaphone diatribes. The sound is typically brutal…

This affable Bay Area rapper has toiled in the no-man’s land separating hip-hop’s under- and overground for the past decade. His stature among fellow MCs and his unflagging work ethic mark him as an industry heavyweight, yet commercially he’s never given stars like 50 Cent or the Game cause to…

Brooklyn-based Rainer Maria used to be one of late-’90s emo’s most frustrating bands. They could make music that spoke powerfully and eloquently of the struggle to keep afloat in the overflowing waters of teenage romance, but they could also succumb to those waters and sound like the most hilariously overheated…

No band in indie rock today has a more bad-ass name than this Austin quintet’s. Say it with relish: I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness. Makes you just wanna break up with somebody, doesn’t it? The bad-assness doesn’t stop at their name, either, like with that other noisy five-piece…

Is Scott Herren gunning to become the Ryan Adams of slice-and-dice electronica? Like Adams, who released three alt-country albums last year, the Barcelona-based musician behind Prefuse 73 has been making records lately like the Keebler elves make cookies; since 2003, he’s issued four LPs and a joint EP with the…

Listeners unacquainted with such late-’60s cult classics as Something Else and The Village Green Preservation Society might hear in Ray Davies’ music imitations of the many British pop acts who’ve imitated him. At several points throughout Other People’s Lives, the first solo studio album in the former Kinks frontman’s four-decade…

A star-studded indie-folk revue designed for people who consider themselves above both stars and revues, the Undertow Orchestra brings together four well-regarded sad-sack singer-songwriters for an evening of collaborations and interpretations. Dave Bazan should be in a particularly gloomy mood: Last month he announced the dissolution of his long-running outfit…

P.O.D. have stuck around longer than many of their erstwhile rap-rock bros by actively embracing the properties of radio pop: They’ve never shied from soaring choruses, nor have they kept their music free of the shiny production values that keep them from sounding too out of place next to Mariah…

This Oakland-based R&B singer spends plenty of time on her second album describing the indelible virtues of everlasting love. Example: “First Love,” a lush slow jam with fluttering electric guitar and tinkly Motown piano in which she flashes back “six days into spring where our story begins,” recounts her slow…

Despite her self-consciously sleazy stage shtick, Chantal Claret, the busty rock chick who leads this New York electro-trash act, doesn’t quite muster the live-wire esprit of her scene sister Karen O, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman famous for pouring beer on herself. Luckily for her bandmates, Claret doesn’t seem to…

In December’s Vibe Mary J. Blige said that even though she’s comfortable revealing her abs in photographs, “I ain’t giving you titty, nipple, pubic hair or damn near clitoris.” While that’s certainly the most colorful quote uttered by a public figure this year, Blige’s comment actually runs counter to the…