Music

While the word “melee” would have been truth-in-advertising for the riotous post-hardcore battle royale of Dogleg’s debut album, it’s actually an homage to Super Smash Bros.—a video game as essential to their live show as frontman Alex Stoitsiadis’ onstage cartwheels. The Detroit, Michigan quartet offers free swag to anyone who can beat bassist Chase Macisnki on the Nintendo 64 emulator at their merch table and they haven’t lost a T-shirt yet. Despite their overt gaming references on the album to Pokemon and Star Fox, Dogleg aren’t interested in fantasy or world-building, just the sheer, rejuvenating physical pleasure of controlling a lifelike version of yourself capable of jumping higher, punching faster, and sustaining more damage than any human could. Though still self-produced and reco...

The myth of Jay Electronica has long outweighed the music—in part because there was so little of it. He’s been: touched by Erykah Badu juju; cozy with a Rothschild; a Nas ghostwriter. He got a thousand beats from J Dilla, was anointed by JAY-Z, and was the last man left standing after Kendrick Lamar put the rap world on notice during “Control.” He is a homeless drifter turned enigmatic spiritual guru who accepted a co-sign from notorious Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, met super-Christian Chance the Rapper halfway on Coloring Book’s “How Great,” and worshipped at Hindu and Buddhist temples in Nepal during personal pilgrimages. But he’s only officially put out one mixtape, two singles, and a handful of other songs since 2007, occasionally appearing out of thin air to guest on songs ...

When Lyra Pramuk was a child, her parents insisted she go to two different churches every Sunday. It made for a long day and so, as she explained on a recent podcast, she joined a choir at one of them as a way to kill time. Singing soon grew into a way of life and, as she got older, led her to classical training. At university, however, she felt conflicted by the expectation to pursue a traditional operatic or choral career path; inspired by the pop artists she listened to outside of class (Björk, M.I.A., Missy Elliott), she was interested in using her voice as an instrument in more experimental ways. Looking back at her time in children’s choirs, she realized that the archetype of the prepubescent child with a voice as pure as “a bell” represents a “fetishized sound.” On Fountain, the com...

With Katie Crutchfield’s fifth solo album comes the spring, its essence bottled so powerfully you could name a perfume after it: Saint Cloud, by Waxahatchee. Its sensory trigger has the power to replace the memory of whatever you call this atrophic season happening around us. Instead, Saint Cloud is all lilacs and creek beds, Memphis skylines and Manhattan subways, love and sobriety, the sound of a cherished songwriter thawing out under the sun. This transformative effect was absent on Crutchfield’s previous solo work. Don’t take that as a knock on her intimate, lo-fi 2012 debut American Weekend or 2013’s remarkable follow-up Cerulean Salt, whose songs of love and harm still land like a hundred little knicks to the flesh. Even as Crutchfield revved up the sound and the stakes on 2017’s sea...