Genres

Psychedelic music emerged in the mid-60s as a mutant offspring of the British Invasion and American garage rock, but has since morphed into so many different forms that it is more accurate to describe it as a feeling than a sound. Be it the the brain-melting feedback of Jimi Hendrix or Ty Segall, the dreamy reveries of Spiritualized and Tame Impala, or the heady, head-nodding beats of Flying Lotus and J Dilla, psychedelica is hard to pin down—but you’ll know you’re hearing it when you feel your mind altering. Heres our curated guide to the best head music to help you chase the rush, including our genre-spanning psych playlist (at right) and links to past Dowsers mixes for even deeper trips.

PSYCH-TRONICAWhy settle for rocking minds and rocking bodies when you can do both at once? From the Chemical Brothers to Neon Indian to Boards of Canada, many of the most cutting-edge electronic-music producers spend equal amounts of time focussing on booming beats as well as keyboard lines, sine moans, and digital gurgles designed to tickle the mind. And if you need to rest after a night out, theres plenty of trippy ambient chillout tracks for that as well.Recommended Listening:Essential Acid House TraxThe Art of Psychedelic Disco-RockThe Best Electronic Shoegaze

INDIE PSYCHPsychedelia never dies, it just keeps getting weirder. Animal Collective threw down the gauntlet with 2004’s Sung Tongs, their childlike, free-spirited update of psych rock, and a generation of indie artists have taken up the challenge. From Deerhunters fearsome ambient punk to Zombys scrambled dubstep to Ariel Pinks wounded daydreams, the youngest generation continues to push music inward.Recommended Listening:Animal Collective’s Outer LimitsDreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky RecordsNew Tropics: The Modern Los Angeles Underground

PSYCH RAPPsychedelic music has drifted into every form of music, and since any worthwhile hip-hop producer keeps their ears open, its only natural that it’s became part of the mix. Revered producers J Dilla and Madlib have made hip-hop tracks that oozed with so much mood and shimmer that they didnt even need MCs to rewire the listeners brain, while the genre’s heady offshoot, trip-hop, has been obliterating genre lines and listeners’ minds for more than two decades.Recommended Listening:Great (Post-Donuts) Instrumental Hip-Hop TracksBehind the Beats: Madlib and DillaBest Trip-Hop Tracks

PSYCH FUNKPsychedelic music has traditionally been used as a way to explore the inner workings of your mind. But if you take off the headphones, its also a great way to explore your body on the dance floor. Soul, funk and R&B have a long tradition of making music that rocks the hips and the third eye at the same time, from Eddie Hazels righteous riffing on Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop to Dâm-Funks alien synth-funk bangers.Recommended Listening:A Deeper Shade of Psych SoulThe Afrofuturist Impulse in MusicInto the Nite: Synth-Funk Fantasias

PSYCH JAZZAt its mid-’60s moment of origin, psychedelia immediately found a natural host in jazz. After all, both are concerned with evoking a feeling and a mood, and following inspiration wherever it leads—from the spiritually searching compositions of Alice Coltrane to Mulatu Astatke’ slippery Latin-flavored explorations to Flying Lotus dedication to feeding brains with jazz-damaged trance whispers.Recommended Listening:The Black Experimental Music MixtapeChampions of Ethiopian GrooveThe Best of Brainfeeder

PSYCH ROCKWhen rock first got psychedelic in the 60s, the most obvious proponents were self-professed freaks like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. But nearly everywhere you looked, you could find someone trying to access their inner mind via some radical noise, from cult acts like Love and The Fugs to icons like The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Since then, every generation since has found their own way to look inside, from the Dream Syndicate in the ’80s, to Slowdive in the ’90s, to My Morning Jacket in the 21st century.Recommended Listening:Bad Trips: The Dark Side of the ‘60sSpace Rock: A Cosmic JourneyHow Psychedelia Reclaimed Modern Rock

PSYCH FOLKIn the beginning, psychedelic music was associated with guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix and waves of feedback. But that big bang was soon followed by generations of artists—from 60s Greenwich Village folkie Karen Dalton to Bert Jansch and his 70s British folk group Pentangle to modern dreamweavers like Devendra Banhart— who used acoustic guitars, pared-down arrangements, and dexterously plucked melodies to pull the listener into their headspace without the need for amplification.Recommended Listening:Way Past Pleasant: A Guide to Psychedelic FolkReligion, Rock, and LSD: A Brief History of Jesus Freaks

PSYCH PUNKThe common myth about punk is that it formed in opposition to bloated 70s rock, and rejected Pink Floyd and anything associated with psychedelia. But the truth is that plenty of punks, such as restless hardcore purveyors Black Flag and volatile noiseniks the Butthole Surfers, not to mention punk-adjacent acts like the Jesus & Mary Chain and Dinosaur Jr., looked back to the ‘60s when deciding how to expand their sound and beguile their fans.Recommended Listening:When Punk Got WeirdPsychedelia in the ‘80sThe 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.When broaching the idea of psychedelic hip-hop, the first thing you need to do is abandon the belief that there is a rap music scene similar to the rock movement of the late 1960s. A few artists have successfully paired the kind of melodically wistful, lyrically naïve, acid-fried spiritual yearnings that typify garden-variety psych-rock with modern-day beats and rhymes—most significantly, Madlib’s Quasimoto alias, Edan with his underrated 2005 masterwork Beauty and the Beat, and the Alchemist and Oh No’s Gangrene project (not to mention Al’s 2012 release, Russian Roulette).But Gangrene is a good example of why the parallel often falls apart. The duo is mostly concerned with rhyming about the funky effects of psychoactive drugs, not abandoning themselves to a higher state of consciousness. Generally, rap artists are too jaded and pragmatic to truly indulge in Jimi Hendrix-like tie-dyed frippery. As soulfully as A$AP Rocky and Kid Cudi croon about being stoned, it’s unlikely they’ll abandon their rare sneaker collections and Instagram models for an extended stay at a remote Buddhist retreat. (Correction: Kid Cudi might.)Perhaps the closest analog is De La Soul’s Da.I.S.Y. Age era, which sounds as musically fanciful as The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In the early 1990s, a number of rappers influenced by the liberating effects of heavy marijuana use—like Leaders of the New School and Organized Konfusion—recorded tracks about cracking open their third eye and seeing the world for what it really is. Lyrical jabberwockies such as Divine Styler’s “Grey Matter” and Latyrx’s “Latyrx” explored modern-day society as a mist ready to be dispersed—and perhaps overcome—with the right amount of esoteric knowledge and florid vocabulary. Justin Warfield’s “B Boys on Acid,” and his shout-out to Timothy Leary, seems dully literal by comparison.Much of what passes for psychedelic hip-hop can also be classified as weed rap (see Redman and Cypress Hill), dystopian science fiction (a la Deltron 3030), and/or Afrofuturism. Ishmael Butler’s Shabazz Palaces collective epitomizes the latter; in turn, their catalog has grown increasingly abstract and bizarre, eschewing distinct narratives for gauzy, metaphysical sounds. They’re the evolution of psychedelia, even if their musings may seem incomprehensible to a Deadhead.

“I saw her standin on her front lawn just twirlin her baton / Me and her went for a ride, sir, and ten innocent people died.” — Bruce Springsteen, “Nebraska”Throughout the history of popular music, singers and songwriters have been drawn to the macabre, taking the song form as an opportunity to reflect on the vanquished and their assailants. Some describe it with sobering detail, as Snoop Dogg did when envisioning his own murder in “Murder Was The Case” (“Pumping on my chest and I’m screaming/ I stop breathing, damn, I see demons”). Others reflect on death with despair, such as Tom Waits (“Why wasn’t God watching?/ Why wasn’t God listening?/ Why wasn’t God there/ For Georgia Lee?”). Some approach it coldly, as a mere narrative like any other, while some give it a satirical dimension. One of the all-time best meditations on murder and its consequences is Tupac’s “Hit ‘Em Up,” which turns his failed assassination into an epic tome on urban warfare (“Grab your glocks when you see Tupac Call the cops when you see Tupac, oh/ Who shot me, but you punks didn’t finish/ Now you ‘bout to feel the wrath of a menace”). These collected tracks, whose topics range from mass murders to harrowing crimes of passion, contain some of the more chilling stories committed to record. -- Adam Rothbarth

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!The Bomb Squad are one of hip-hop’s greatest production teams, and on Public Enemy’s 1987 debut, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, they established sampling as an art form. As the record turns 30 this month, The Bomb Squad’s intricate approach to beat construction remains as relevant as ever, demonstrating how important reference and quotation were to the development of Public Enemy’s politics and to hip-hop in general.Starting out as an opening act for fellow New York hip-hop outfit Beastie Boys, the early incarnation of Public Enemy heard on Yo! Bum Rush The Show more closely resembles a party-starting posse in the mold of Run-DMC than the fight-the-power force they would become. Though the specters of white supremacy and drug culture loom large in songs like “Rightstarter (Message To A Black Man)” and “Megablast,” lyrically speaking, Chuck D was not yet so overtly topical, focusing instead on interpersonal conflict. However, the intertextuality in The Bomb Squad’s sampling style revealed a more subtle approach to expressing Public Enemy’s worldview.Rather than simply sampling a song’s hook, each track was a dense tapestry of source material, charting the group’s constellation of influences and situating hip-hop within a larger spectrum of styles, from funk to thrash metal—“Miuzi Weighs A Ton” even juxtaposes Tangerine Dream with a disco beat. This cultural melding extends to Chuck D’s rhymes, which quote everyone from Syl Johnson to Aretha Franklin to Kurtis Blow.The Bomb Squad further bolstered their productions with live instrumentation. Though Chuck D would eventually regret writing the song, “Sophisticated Bitch” features a noteworthy highlight: a guitar solo courtesy of then-unknown Vernon Reid, whose band Living Colour had yet to break out into the alt-rock world.The righteous indignation for which Public Enemy is now known may mostly be absent there, but it wasn’t far behind. The militant “Rebel Without A Pause” was released as a B-side to “You’re Gonna Get Yours” later in 1987, and it would alter the group’s course forever. But even if Yo! Bum Rush the Show reminds us that Public Enemy didn’t arrive fully formed, its 30th anniversary presents an opportunity to appreciate the group for their sonic innovations, and in this playlist you’ll hear how The Bomb Squad laid the roots of a revolution with the sounds of the past.

Punk may have started as a reaction against convention, but what started out as iconoclasm eventually turned into orthodoxy as the genre’s conventions were gradually codified. If it wasn’t short, fast, and loud, with three chords and a barking vocalist, it wasn’t punk. America’s hardcore underground wasn’t without its share of party-line camp followers, but it also boasted some true rebels, who realized that when your revolution becomes generic, it’s time to start over. Black Flag grew their hair long and turned to long jams and Beat poetry, while Bad Religion adopted soaring synthesizers and turned to Hawkwind-esque space/psych/prog rock. Flipper tapped into the Stooges free-jazz impulses, and the Minutemen married punk with funk, fusion, and even the occasional Steely Dan or CCR cover. In the end, these were the true punks -- unafraid of being bold, and refusing to kowtow to expectations. -- Jim Allen

Punks various origin stories have been documented ad infinitum, and through them, the movements myriad influences have been enshrined in a familiar proto-punk canon. It includes everything from the snotty 60s garage-rock bands compiled on Lenny Kayes Nuggets compilation to the metallic Motor City soul of the MC5 to the sleazy glam of the New York Dolls to the proletariat pub rock of Dr. Feelgood. But while theres no denying the impact these groups had on punks inaugural class-of-76, to 2018 ears, a lot of them can sound, well, a little tame. Sure, a Nuggets standard like The Standells "Dirty Water" oozes bratty attitude, but its really no more threatening than the average golden oldie. And while the brash swagger of the New York Dolls still resounds, they essentially sound like a more irreverent Rolling Stones.But in this playlist, we highlight the pre-punk songs that, to this day, sound every bit as violent and visceral as what followed. Certainly, theres some expected names: Iggy and the Stooges 1972 thrasher "I Got a Right" actually blows past punk completely to invent hardcore a good six years early. And the nastiest of Nuggets, like The Music Machines "Talk Talk," still hit like a leather-gloved fist to the face. But there also are a number of classic-rock icons here who, in their most unhinged and primordial states, rival anything punk coughed up——listen to John Lennon shred his throat into a bloody pulp on "Well Well Well," or Deep Purple fuse 50s hot-rod rock and 70s metal on "Speed King." Punk may have preached "no future," but these songs still blaze like theres no past.

Bayside’s Vacancy is an album steeped in the tradition of a very specific iteration of New York-bred punk rock. With a name nicked from a train station in the nether reaches of Queens, the group shares far more in common with other bands that have emerged from the city’s outer boroughs, family-oriented neighborhoods, and even the suburban sprawl of Long Island than they do the hipster transplants infesting Williamsburg and Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The number of top-tier musicians who call these, the uncool parts of the greater New York metropolis, home is really rather bonkers. After all, where would New York punk and hardcore be without the likes of the Ramones, Sick of It All, Murphy’s Law, and Brand New?

When members of Midlake, Franz Ferdinand, Grandaddy, Travis, and Band of Horses started exchanging ideas via email in 2013, they probably didn’t care that they were taking part in a long, if sometimes neglected, tradition in the music world. Nor should they—the idea of putting together a supergroup for its own sake is pretty dumb, unless you’re Sebastian Bach. This motive tends to be secondary to the usual reasons that musicians get together, like playing with others whose company they enjoy or taking a break from the pressures of maintaining a major act.That this particular congregation of musicians savored the chance to play together and socialize is reflected in the title they chose for the project: BNQT, pronounced “banquet.” The nods to the Traveling Wilburys in both the album title and the jangly folk-pop sound of BNQT’s debut release, Volume 1, suggest that they’re well aware of the historic code of the supergroup. We can only assume that the question of who got to be Roy Orbison was determined by rock-paper-scissors.They’re hardly the only example of a group in recent years who have abided the same code, one that gave us Blind Faith and CSNY at the best of times and Damn Yankees at the not-so-best. Certain musicians, such as Jack White, Damon Albarn, and Dave Grohl, have been repeat supergroup-participators, evidence of their many musical interests and extrovert tendencies, and the century has also seen a boom of free-floating collectives whose members have many extracurricular activities—Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers, UNKLE—but who nevertheless swagger like a supergroup whenever they deign to convene.Contemporary definitions of a supergroup can also stretch to contain side projects like EL VY, fronted by The National’s Matt Berninger, or Nice As Fuck, featuring Jenny Lewis, though traditionalists may reserve the term for more conventional matchups between musicians with equally illustrious resumes, like Divine Fits (Spoon + Wolf Parade + New Bomb Turks) and Minor Victories (Slowdive + Mogwai + Editors). Even if these equations don’t always result in the irrefutable chocolate-and-peanut-butter deliciousness we hope for, supergroups can still be super, as these choice cuts prove.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Click here to subscribe to the Spotify playlist.It’s difficult to name another hip-hop musician who has stayed relevant as long as Q-Tip. He launched his career in 1988 with a verse on the Jungle Brothers’ “Black is Black.” But it’s his underrated talents as a producer, not as a rapper, that holds the key to his continued relevance. Alongside DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad, he produced most of the beats for the group’s first three albums, including classics like “Bonita Applebum” and “Electric Relaxation.” He devised several tracks for Mobb Deep’s The Infamous, worked with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, and briefly served as part of Kanye West’s GOOD Music team, resulting in numerous contributions to Kanye and Jay Z’s Watch the Throne. This year, he has continued to land production credits on major albums like Solange’s A Seat at the Table. However, the recent surprise release of A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It From Here…Thank You for Your Service is a reminder that Q-Tip is best known as one of the greatest ensembles in the genre’s history.

Whenever you come across a list of the most influential rock bands of the ‘90s, you can easily predict the core names you’ll see on there: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and so on. Rarely will you see the name Better Than Ezra. Yet they’re arguably more emblematic of the era than any of the groups mentioned above. Because all those other bands never really went away—to this day, you still hear them regularly on the radio, you can still spot their names in headlines on major music sites, and you still see new generations of kids wearing their faux-vintage t-shirts. In that sense, they belong to 2002 and 2009 and 2018 as much as they do 1993. Better Than Ezra are likewise still a going concern—they released a new single in June—but to many people, they are a band inextricably tied to the year 1995, when their single “Good” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.“Good” is the entire ‘90s alt-rock narrative condensed into three minutes and five seconds. It’s the ultimate totem of an era when the major-label trawl for the next Nirvana was cast so far and wide, it swept up any DIY group with a distortion pedal and quirky name—even one that cut its teeth playing frat parties in the indie-rock desert of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But more significantly, it’s the song that effectively marks the end point of the ‘90s alt-rock revolution—the moment where the last remaining edges of an underground-spawned sound had been sanded off and polished into pop.With its strolling bassline triggering an earworm chorus caked in fuzz, “Good” dutifully followed the quiet/LOUD playbook established by the Pixies on their 1988 debut album, Surfer Rosa. That record’s violent mood swings were the natural sonic manifestation of a band trying to reconcile its formative loves of Peter, Paul and Mary and Hüsker Dü (the two influences that, according to legend, were listed in the classified ad that recruited bassist Kim Deal). But Surfer Rosa also represented a crucial evolutionary step beyond indie rock’s ‘80s hardcore roots, with its carnage unleashed in more controlled, strategic bursts, and Deal’s basslines serving as the cool counterpoint to Black Francis and Joey Santiago’s flesh-searing guitar onslaught. Before long, that poise-to-noise maneuver was being duplicated in all corners of the alterna-verse—most famously by Nirvana, whose frontman, Kurt Cobain, openly admitted to aping the Pixies.But if Nevermind set off the bomb that forever destroyed the barriers separating the underground and mainstream, what followed was an ongoing effort to clear the path and clean up the debris. In the hands of bands like Weezer and Bush, the spastic dynamic shifts mastered by the Pixies started to resemble carefully mapped peaks and valleys that you could see coming from a mile away. And though Better Than Ezra’s “Good”—and the album from which it hailed, Deluxe—was originally released independently in 1993, its mainstream-breaching major-label reissue in 1995 couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. By that point, the post-Pixies sound had become so familiar on alt-rock radio that Better Than Ezra could easily settle into their chart-topping position as if gliding into the ass groove on a vintage secondhand leather sofa. And while none of the band’s subsequent releases achieved the same level of zeitgeist-defining ubiquity, their less-heralded 21st-century catalog has attracted at least one famous fan, perhaps providing a clearer view of the band’s legacy: More than just the fleeting ‘90s alt-rock sensation of popular perception, Better Than Ezra are actually the missing link between Black Francis and Taylor Swift.