Indie

Scandinavian pop sensibilities have sporadically found a home on the American charts since the days of ABBA. Like Sweden’s Max Martin, the Norwegian duo Stargate have joined the transatlantic crossover in the 21st century. Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Storleer Eriksen formed Stargate in the late ‘90s, producing a string of hits for British groups like S Club 7 and Atomic Kitten that charted almost everywhere in the English-speaking world except America.Stargate finally broke into the U.S. by helping another behind-the-scenes player step into the spotlight—the young R&B singer Ne-Yo, who had also written hits for other artists. Their first collaboration, 2006’s “So Sick,” brought together Stargate’s slick European dance-pop sonics with Ne-Yo’s soulful midtempo songwriting to great effect. They came together many times over the next few years, with Ne-Yo penning Stargate-produced hits like Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” and Rihanna’s “Take A Bow,” broadening that signature sound with lush instrumentation and witty lyrics.Stargate soon began to use their foothold in R&B to nudge American radio toward four-on-the-floor dance beats with tracks like Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop The Music” and Ne-Yo’s “Closer” years before uptempo EDM grooves began to saturate U.S. airwaves. In Rihanna, they’ve perhaps found their greatest muse, producing six of her 14 chart-topping singles and putting their own unique spin on Caribbean sounds in “What’s My Name?” and “Rude Boy.”In recent years, Hermansen and Eriksen have shown their versatility, hopping from rock (Coldplay) to hip-hop (Wiz Khalifa) to pure pop (Katy Perry). They even scored a viral hit in 2013, providing the killer dance track that made Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis’ “The Fox” a YouTube phenomenon. But it hasn’t been until this year that Stargate put their considerable music-industry clout behind a record of their own, releasing the single “Waterfall,” featuring P!nk and Sia.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Like his longtime associate DJ Drama, producer Donald Earl Cannon hails from Philadelphia but made his mark on hip-hop after relocating to Atlanta, where his brassy, sample-driven productions stood out on hit albums by Jeezy, 2 Chainz and Ludacris. But he’s also shown love for his hometown, working with Philly artists like Freeway and Lil Uzi Vert, whose breakout hit “Money Long” was co-produced by Cannon with Maaly Raw. As the in-house producer of Drama’s Gangsta Grillz series of mixtapes and albums, Cannon’s bombastic tracks have been blessed by hall of famers like Lil Wayne, Jadakiss, and even Outkast, who collaborated with him on “The Art of Storytellin’ Part 4.”

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!Profound Lore was founded in 2004 by Chris Bruni as a casual venture, but within a few years it grew to be a serious metal label. Based in Kitchener, Ontario—about an hour’s drive west of Toronto—Profound Lore has produced some of the most vital voices in contemporary black, experimental, and heavy metal.Providing a deep history of Profound Lore Records is a challenging pursuit, as the only thing listed on their website’s “About” page is an H. P. Lovecraft quote from “The Outsider”: “I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.” Maybe that really does sum it all up, and maybe Profound Lore only needs to be known by what they’ve done.Many of their releases challenge common perceptions of metal: Prurient’s Frozen Niagara Falls could only be called metal in its attitude, which is cold, penetrating, and unforgettably bleak. In the track “Greenpoint,” industrial rips and existential explosions of white noise attack across an unforgiving pulse, giving way to bone-chilling lyrics about the namesake Brooklyn neighborhood where an uncommon number of people have committed suicide.By contrast, Ash Borer’s 2016 record The Irrepassable Gate is a more straightforward black metal album, flush with wailing guitars, punishing blast beats, and of course, howling vocals. It’s a dark and masterful album, showcasing the incredible growth they’ve made over the course of only three full LPs, the last two of which have been released through Profound Lore.There truly isn’t enough space here to pay tribute to the label that brought us Krallice’s self-titled masterpiece (as well as Dimensional Bleedthrough and Diotima), a few albums from drone/noise metal legends Nadja, all three LPs from doom band Pallbearer, and many more. It’s clear that what Profound Lore do on a day-to-day basis remains in the shadows, but for metal, perhaps that’s necessary.

As Harry Styles embarks on a solo career with an eagerly anticipated self-titled debut out May 12, we’ll see a new side of One Direction’s most famous member. As is usually the case when a boy-band member goes solo, his new music is more personal and idiosyncratic than the pop anthems the group cranked out over five albums in five years. But where Zayn left One Direction altogether and took a sharp left turn toward R&B, Harry’s solo work is more of an organic continuation of the One Direction sound, with influences from classic rock, power pop, and folk music.One Direction thrive on big choruses that bring everyone’s voice together in unison, while giving each member a turn at singing verses, but it’s undeniable that Styles is the most prominent voice in the mix. As far back as the band’s peppy debut hit “What Makes You Beautiful,” his deep, relaxed voice has always stood out among the other members’ more boyish vocals. As they ventured into bombastic arena rock on tracks like “Clouds” and “Diana,” his voice took on a gentle soaring quality.Over the course of One Direction’s run, the members of the band gradually took on a more active role in songwriting, with Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson taking the lead. But Harry Styles notched over a dozen songwriting credits in the group’s catalog, the best of which are included in the second half of this playlist. Styles occasionally put a personal stamp on their material—most famously with his thinly veiled lyrics aimed at Taylor Swift on “Perfect”—but he was also involved in some of the band’s most buoyant melodies, including the Tears For Fears homage “Stockholm Syndrome.”Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

When Winfred “Blue” Lovett gravely intones, “This has got to be the saddest day of my life,” in the intro to The Manhattan’s 1976 hit “Kiss and Say Goodbye,” you believe him. But compared to some of their contemporaries, the group might as well have been crooning “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” The rampant introspection of the “me decade” helped make it a boom time for songs that filled the schedules of suicide hotline volunteers to overflowing. When somebody wasn’t dying in a ‘70s hit, like the protagonist in Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun,” the horse fancier and her steed in Michael Martin Murphey’s “Wildfire,” or a freakin’ dog in the Henry Gross hit “Shannon,” they were at least at the brink of oblivion. In retrospect, it’s amazing that Harry Nilsson made it to the end of “Without You” alive. The real masters of ‘70s melancholy managed to suck you in by making their songs sound deceptively cheery—check the opening flute riff of Albert Hammond’s angst fest “It Never Rains in Southern California” for proof—but by the time you get to the undeniably catchy chorus you’re hailing the nurse for your meds.

They said it would never last—back in the early ’80s, when synth-pop came in vogue, short-sighted detractors deemed it a fad and predicted it would have a short shelf life. Nearly four decades later, history has told a very different story: Not only were the original wave of synth-poppers succeeded by new generations of electronic artists, there are still plenty of old-schoolers still hanging on and plugging in, proving that you’re never too old for synth-pop.Gary Numan was one of the first performers to bring synths to the fore in the post-punk era, and even as he edges toward sexagenarian status, he hasn’t compromised his musical vision one iota. When Depeche Mode started turning heads, they were callow youths with some upstart ideas. But as the elder statesmen of electronic pop today, they’ve become one of the most influential bands of their generation.As the ‘80s marched on, the likes of Erasure (including former Depeche Mode man Vince Clarke) and Pet Shop Boys popped up, adding a more danceable feel to the synth-pop canon. Back then, nobody guessed that these groups would take their sound into the 2010s, but here we are.However, you don’t have to be a superstar to stick around in the synth-pop realm. British duo Blancmange never really made it past cult-hero status back in the day, but that didn’t stop them from releasing a string of new albums starting in 2011. After he split from Ultravox at the end of the ‘70s, John Foxx took an innovative, and ultimately underground, path into electronic sounds, but his absence from the spotlight hasn’t hurt his artistic longevity one bit.These are the synth-pop survivors—the artists who firmly planted their feet into new musical ground long ago and never let their electronic dreams die out.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Miami has a long history of hip-hop dating back to the days of 2 Live Crew, and for the past decade, the scene’s two most famous exports have been Rick Ross and Pitbull. They worked together early in their careers on DJ Khaled posse cuts and have since diverged down parallel paths. With Ross’s ninth album Rather You Than Me and Pitbull’s 10th album Climate Change, both out in March 2017, the two rappers continue to represent Miami on a major level in very different ways.Rick Ross is a self-styled kingpin in the tradition of rappers like The Notorious B.I.G. and JAY Z, rapping from the perspective of a crime boss—wealthy but embattled. Slow, cruising beats —like the one provided by Miami duo The Runners on “Hustlin’”—brought him fame, and he helped bring the abrasive trap sounds of Lex Luger to the mainstream with 2010’s “B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast).” He’s never had a top 10 solo hit, but five of his albums have topped the Billboard 200, and he’s revered for his ear for production and his consistently enjoyable albums.Pitbull is “Mr. Worldwide,” a Cuban American rapper who can start a party with any kind of beat. He rode the way of mentor Lil Jon’s crunk movement with his early hits, but he quickly expanded his sound by rapping over dancehall, reggaeton, pop, and EDM tracks. Only two of his albums have charted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, but his singles are a perennial fixture on the Hot 100, including No. 1s “Give Me Everything” and “Timber.”But for all their differences, Rick Ross and Pitbull have traveled similar career arcs. After warming the bench for long-running Southern rap labels Suave House and Slip-n-Slide in the early 2000s, Rick Ross took charge of his career by signing with Def Jam. He eventually launched his own successful label, Maybach Music Group, and has branched off into owning restaurants. Pitbull survived the collapse of his first label, TVT, before thriving on Sony with his own Mr. 305 imprint. But as you’ll hear in this playlist of contrasting cuts, both are openly influenced by their city’s homegrown Miami bass sound, and both have had hits with some of the same collaborators, including T-Pain and Ne-Yo.

Once again, Teen Vogue—the young, woke sister of the Condé Nast family—reveals its on-the-pulse badassery with a recent article detailing the shady politics of Coachella bigwig Phillip Anschutz, who has historically donated funds to anti-LGBTQ charities and organizations. As the magazine points out, billionaires supporting right-wing institutions are nothing new, but if you want to try and elicit change, “The most effective way (as the #BoycottCoachella tag demonstrates) is to hit em where it hurts: their wallets.”But boycotting festivals doesn’t mean you have to be without banging tunes. In the article, Teen Vogue champions queercore bands as musicians “who are using their art for more productive means.” And while purists may balk at the term “queercore” in this context, the message is clear: LGBTQ rights matter, and there are a lot of amazing musicians out there willing to scream it from the rooftops.The inclusion of London band Skinny Girl Diet is a measure of just how right they’ve gotten this playlist—part Russ Meyer vixens, part scrappy girl gang, the band have produced some of the most sublimely, unapologetically feminist punk of the last decade (their most recent album is called Heavy Flow). SGD’s “Silver Spoons” is a rollicking dirgey mess, a wall of sound with an insanely hooky vocal line, while Brooklyn’s Aye Nako champion a more nostalgic, grungy sound. London trio Shopping (pictured) amp up the energy with “In Other Words,” with Rachel Aggs’ inimitable jagged guitar work driving the track. And no queercore playlist would be complete without math-pop dreamboats PWR BTTM’s “Answer My Text.” This isn’t just a list of queer artists; it’s a statement of intent, a journey through genres, and a politically driven (wo)manifesto.If you like Teen Vogue’s playlist, you’ll also love artists like New Yorkers The Shondes, Pittsburgh natives Rue, and Seattleites Tacocat. And luckily for you, I’ve added a handful of relevant artists to the end of the playlist. Consider it further reading.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Free jazz is a bit of a nebulous thing. All Music Guide lists Thurston Moore, Charlie Haden, and Eric Dolphy, among others, as its key artists, and even Ornette Coleman, whose album Free Jazz arguably launched the genre, later publicly dismissed it as a genre. Still, whatever you want to call it, the type of playing that Coleman pioneered -- the endless tangents, aborted themes and searing improvisational stabs of noise -- became a style that would influence generations of jazz and rock artists. This playlist, from the Village Voices archives, captures some of the highlights of that style. This is definitely a narrower (and more current) take on the genre -- there is no Thurston Moore, but Sharp also leaves out Don Cherry and Cecil Taylor, two very important musicians I generally have associated with the genre. Still, this remains a compelling playlist.

This 2013 playlist incited more than a few guffaws, and its not hard to see why. Nas "I Can" is interpreted as a warning "against the temptations of sex, drugs and ignorance." Jay Zs "Where Have You Been" is cast as a "defense of family values." Warren Gs "Regulate" is seen as a defense of "property rights." Compiled by Stan Veuger for conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, his selections emphasize how rap, like all music, touches upon universal themes that can be recast as right wing or liberal. And lets not forget that yes, mainstream raps celebration of unfettered capitalism is a decidedly conservative impulse. Its kind of an ingenious list in a way...but then again, didnt Eminem mock this kind of thinking in "White America"? -- Mosi Reeves