Music Features

Despite growing up in a neighborhood where he was bullied, teased and surrounded by oppressive negativity, Brendon Urie has evolved into a talented and successful musician.His passion for music was sparked thanks to the guidance he received from his childhood music teacher and mentor, Richard Matta, who identified and nurtured …

If you build it, they will, apparently, rock. Even as guitar-based rock faded in the mainstream, an educational infrastructure teaching kids how to play it has flourished over the course of this century. Options range from the for-profit School of Rock chain (which existed prior to the Jack Black-helmed movie) …

“It’s cool being in here,” the Struts‘ wild-haired frontman, Luke Spiller, says as he reclines his seat in the spacious back of a 2019 Rolls-Royce Phantom. The roof’s leather interior is speckled with 1,420 fiber-optic lights that resemble a constellation, there’s a bottle-sized fridge between the seats for chilling beverages …

In the video for Dilly Dally‘s “I Feel Free,” singer-guitarist Katie Monks prowls around a gothic cemetery before digging up four graves. Three of them contain her bandmates – guitarist Liz Ball, bassist Jimmy Tony and drummer Benjamin Reinhartz. Inside the fourth, she finds the white Flying V guitar she …

The lead single off Texas songwriter Ryan Culwell’s new album The Last Americandeftly sums up where we are as a society in 2018: a nation of detached, tech-addicted Tweeters desperate to find some kind of flesh-and-blood connection. For Culwell, that connection can even be alien contact; he opens the lyrics …

Anyone buying Kamasi Washington‘s latest album, Heaven and Earth, expecting four LPs’ worth of shimmering spiritual jazz was in for a surprise: There was actually a fifth. Sealed inside a perforated pocket in the center of the package is The Choice, an unannounced record (or, on smaller racks, a CD) …

From the earliest days of theMonkees, Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith had a special bond. Their harmony blend was a crucial part of the group’s signature sound, and on the group’s television show they shared impeccable comic timing and loved nothing more than to go off script and improv with …

Adam Weiner was considering calling it quits with his band Low Cut Connie when he received some words of encouragement from one of his more famous fans. It was May 2016, and the singer-pianist, through a connection with Barack Obama’s staff photographer, Pete Souza, had, much to his surprise, been …

Nina Simone died 15 years ago this month, but judging on influence alone, it’s begun to seem like she never left. Consider Jay-Z’s “The Story of O.J.”: The Grammy-nominated 4:44 track incorporates a sample of Simone’s “Four Women,” and the accompanying video even depicts a cartoon version of the late …

Earlier this winter, Robert Finley was backstage at Seattle’s Showbox nightclubdiscussing his remarkable personal history when the subject of his age came up. The soul singer said he would be turning 64 soon – on February 13th, in fact. “Robert, that’s tomorrow,” said his friend and bandleader Dan Auerbach, breaking …