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Pinky Swear Deliver Teen Angst From the Rio Grande Valley
Photo by Chona Kasinger. In southern Texas, right along the Mexican border, being “American” is an aspiration. In the Rio Grande Valley, specifically, assimilation is viewed as the road to the American...
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Big Ups: Chrissy Selects His Favorite Dance Music on Bandcamp
Christopher Shively—aka Chrissy, Chrissy Murderbot, Chris E. Pants, or one half of Chrissy & Hawley—is one of the great dance music scholars of our time. He’s fiercely knowledgeable about both the...
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Steel Tipped Dove’s Brooding Productions Are Reinventing New York Hip-Hop
To his co-workers at his day job, Steel Tipped Dove is just Joe from staffing and compliance, another employee in the corporate healthcare sector. On Twitter and in the rap world though, he’s the...
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Experimental Groundbreakers Controlled Bleeding Straddle the Primal and Cerebral
Controlled Bleeding bandleader and guitarist Paul Lemos isn’t the type of artist you can pigeonhole. Since founding Controlled Bleeding in Boston in the late ‘70s, Lemos has led the band through a...
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Album of the Day: Iron & Wine, “Beast Epic”
“Killers, let go.” Is it a request? A demand? A prayer? All three? It’s the first refrain on the lovely, dense Beast Epic, and for an album that is far more adult love songs and folk-shamble than...
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Discovering the World of Latin American “Heavy Psych”
Los Acidos When most native English speakers think of psychedelic rock—especially its metal/hard rock-influenced offshoot, heavy psych—their minds usually don’t wander south of the U.S. border, much...
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The Best New Hip-Hop on Bandcamp: August 2017
This month’s best rap albums showcase the depth and range of the hip-hop music waiting to be discovered in the Bandcamp vault. We’ve got throwback instrumental beat tapes lined up next to commercially...
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A Giant Dog’s Trademark Punk Raunchiness is Alive and Well on “Toy”
Photo by Pooneh Ghana. Earlier this month, Andrew Cashen received a text from his mom. “I was listening to Top 40, to the successful musicians, and I noticed something,” she wrote. “Their songs are all...
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This Week’s Essential Releases: Afropop, Hardcore, Jazz, and More
Welcome to Seven Essential Releases, our weekly roundup of the best music on Bandcamp. Each week, we’ll recommend six new albums, plus pick an older LP from the stacks that you may have missed. Baby!,...
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Album of the Day: EMA, “Exile in the Outer Ring”
It’s hard not to read Exile in the Outer Ring, the third unsettling record from experimental futurist Erika M. Anderson, who goes by EMA, within a political framework: it’s about an America that moves...
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On Their New Album, Iceland’s Mammút Writes Songs for Elvis
The phrase “I love you” translates to “ég elska þig” in Icelandic. While it’s an undoubtedly beautiful collection of syllables, it would hardly resonate beyond the island of 332,000 people. This...
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The Merch Table: August 2017
Every month, The Merch Table brings you the best and most bonkers merchandise you can find on Bandcamp. We commend bands and labels that get a little creative and think outside the tote bag. Whether...
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The Best New Soul on Bandcamp: August 2017
Each month, Bandcamp brings you the best soul music the site has to offer. Whether it’s a late night selection of tunes from BADBADNOTGOOD, or an old classic from Bob & Gene, these selections set...
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Kill Alters Find the Light in Working Through Trauma
Photo by Kate Thompson. No Self Helps, the second album by Brooklyn trio Kill Alters, may go by fast, but it makes an impact. Grinding together Bonnie Baxter’s authoritative bark, Nicos Kennedy’s...
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Maimouna Youssef’s Regal R&B Bridges the Gap Between Partying and Purpose
Photos by Farrah Skeiky There are two types of people on social media: those who think we can solve the world’s problems one tweet at a time, and those who want you to chill because it’s not that...
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Home of Buena Vista Social Club, World Circuit Scours the Globe For New Sounds
Orchestra Baobab, photo by Jonas Karlsson. When British tour promoters Anne Hunt and Mary Farquharson hired Nick Gold to run their World Circuit label a year after its 1986 launch, “world music”—the...
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Album of the Day: Tall Friend, “Safely Nobody’s”
You don’t hear the word “apoptosis” very often, but it pops up twice on Safely Nobody’s by Philadelphia (via D.C.) band Tall Friend. In biology, apoptosis means “programmed cell death”—i.e., organisms...
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Terminal Consumption: The Best Punk on Bandcamp, August 2017
In this installment of Terminal Consumption, our monthly reviews column focused on the margins of punk and hardcore, Sam Lefebvre considers Ratskin Records’ ambitious Ghost Ship fire-relief benefit...
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Album of the Day: Rainer Maria, “S/T”
In the early days, Rainer Maria was a band of shouters. The crashing drums, the thunderous guitar, the serpentine bass—the trio created a mountain of sound that, it seemed, could only be scaled by...
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Frankie Rose on the Personal Darkness That Led to Her New Record
Photos by Erez Avissar. After a decade-long career in music, as both a solo artist and a founding member of Crystal Stilts and Vivian Girls, Frankie Rose thought she was done making records. “Someone...
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