Following a bout with chronic fatigue syndrome, singer-songwriter Ariel Rubin is back with an energetic ode to overcoming. Check out Ariel & The Undertow’s “Kindness from Strangers,” a tune that rollicks with reverb-soaked guitars and a well-placed synth solo.
Maybe it was the joy of catching At the Drive-In, where we saw actual people in band T-shirts at a music festival, but of this year’s action in Grant Park, Sunday most felt like the festival’s original incarnation (still spliced with a raging dance party, of course).
At first, Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel… seems like a skeletal, bare-bones album — when in fact the music teems with sound.
The latest from Parenthetical Girls member Jherek Bischoff is a piece of immaculately arranged orchestral pop, one whose level of baroque whimsy varies by track and by guest after noteworthy guest.
Following the coolly received Human After All, French dance duo Daft Punk reinvented itself with the extravagant Alive Tour, immersing audiences in light, color, and geometric patterns.
For his tours in support of his solo debut Go, Sigur Rós front-man Jónsi teamed up with design company Fifty Nine Productions to create a visceral experience for concertgoers — a dark, decaying landscape slowly overwhelmed by color and light.
In just one more trip around the sun, another swarm of immensely talented but under-recognized musicians has harnessed its collective talents and discharged its creations into the void. This list is but one fraction of those dedicated individuals who caught our ears with some serious jams.
Draped in glittery silver cloaks and masked in dense fog, London-based collective Chrome Hoof puts on inimitable, over-the-top performances to enhance the indefinable quality of its music.
On the strength of its sprawling 2009 EP, Anam Cara, Georgia-based post-rock band A.Armada broke out from its under-the-radar status and toured its material worldwide for the first time.
