Indie

One cannot listen to Slayer without intent. When you listen to Slayer, you are not just listening to Slayer, but committing to a philosophy—the mere act of listening to Slayer situates you as a bearer of dualities: reflective, yet aggressive; grizzled, yet tender. Of all the American thrash metal bands that came out of the ‘80s, Slayer has been one of the most enduring, and for good reason. They are the a dependable machine. Frankly, they slay. Built on the partnership of guitarists Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King, as well as bassist and singer Tom Araya, most of Slayer’s discography boasts a remarkably united sound, consisting of a perfect blend of grimy guitars, kerosene-fueled solos, and bone-crushing percussion. Between their macabre themes and hellish garb, their demonic affect is total. Araya’s howls are so iconic by now that, for many, his voice *is,* categorically, metal itself. And being a fan of Slayer has social currency: when you encounter someone in public wearing a Slayer shirt or sporting a Slayer tattoo, you can be reasonably sure that that person is sick as hell. Here are a few essential tracks that go right to the deep end of the inferno.

New Jersey singer and musician Jack Antonoff fronted the band Steel Train for a decade with only a small cult following before pivoting into an unlikely career as a producer and songwriter behind Hot 100 hits by platinum pop stars like Taylor Swift and Lorde. It all began when he joined The Format’s Nate Ruess in a new project, fun. The band’s second album, Some Nights, launched “We Are Young,” an anthemic track that became one of the biggest pop hits of 2012. Ruess followed up the album with a solo project while Antonoff fronted a new band, Bleachers. But Antonoff went on to gain most of his success behind the scenes.Antonoff’s early outside credits include co-writing with Canadian indie pop heroes Tegan and Sara, including a track on their 2013 breakthrough album Heartthrob, and a bonus track for Carly Rae Jepsen’s Kiss. He also landed a big hit for Sara Bareilles, helping her write the Grammy-nominated, triple-platinum single “Brave.”By then, Antonoff and girlfriend Lena Dunham were rubbing elbows with a number of Top 40 stars, including Taylor Swift and Lorde, who both began seeking out his ear for nostalgic ‘80s pop sounds and confessional lyrics. Antonoff co-wrote several tracks on Swift’s 1989 and also her recent hit duet with ZAYN, “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.” He’s frequently collaborated with Lorde, both on her recent hit “Green Light” and on the second Bleachers album, Gone Now, due out June 2nd. He also collaborated with Grimes on “Entropy,” from the soundtrack for Dunham’s HBO series Girls.Though he sings in Steel Train and Bleachers, Antonoff’s Terrible Thrills series defers to stars like Tinashe and Charli XCX for their own spin. His affinity for female voices and perspectives has served him well as a songwriter, and ultimately, he might be happiest when handing the mic to a woman, even on his own records.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

The Kompakt label deserves some kind of cultural service award for Box. Released in the fall of 2016, this highly welcomed package collects the bulk of Wolfgang Voigt’s output under his GAS alias: the Zauberberg, Königsforst, and Pop albums, plus the Oktember 12-inch. Roughly 20 years after their release, these sublime recordings sound as if they were produced only yesterday. At times throbbing, and at other times profoundly glacial, they hover over the abyss between spellbinding beauty and subconsciously relaxing wallpaper, an aesthetic originally articulated by Brian Eno in the late ’70s.There’s very little ambient music created in the 21st century that doesn’t owe the GAS titles a deep debt of gratitude, and after a 17-year absence, he’s set to redefine the medium once again with his new album, NARKOPOP. Yet as influential as he is, it’s hard to frame Voigt’s output as definitive ambient techno. In fact, it’s hard to cite any album as definitive due to the genre’s ambiguous identity. Like its fuzzy textures and formless expanses, from its very birth, ambient techno exists in a state of nebulousness.Rewind to the first half of the ’90s—when the genre emerged as something of a cerebral chill-out tonic to rave’s relentless pounding, and artists as diverse as Aphex Twin, Biosphere, The Orb, Higher Intelligence Agency, Orbital, and µ-Ziq were all creating vastly different iterations of ambient techno. While the Aphex Twin classic “Xtal” is minimal and ethereal in ways that were extremely modern (and still are), HIA’s “Spectral” already felt nostalgic for dusty Jean-Michel Jarre albums when released in 1993. And then there are dub techno heavies like Basic Channel and Monolake—do they count as ambient techno? On the one hand, their explicit debt to dub reggae’s bass culture seems to place them in a parallel universe with it, yet what could possibly be more ambient than the time-expanding crackle, squelch, and hiss soaked into Basic Channel’s “Quadrant Dub I”?Rather than attempt to lock ambient techno into a rigid definition, our playlist embraces this nebulousness. Prepare yourself for a deep and expansive journey, or since this is ambient music we’re talking about, simply press play and forget about it. That’s what Brian Eno would do.

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.For certain fans, the high point of Slowdive’s return came a few days before the release of their eponymous comeback album in May 2017, when the band unveiled Avalon Emerson’s blissful ambient-house remix of “Sugar for the Pill,” a song that harkens back to the mid-’90s glory days when electronic shoegaze briefly flowered.There were precedents to this brief crossover: My Bloody Valentine, the band to whom all shoegazers aspire, used sampled breakbeats on “Instrumental No. 2” and asked UK producer Andrew Weatherall to remix the already dance-influenced “Soon” for the Glider Remixes EP; A.R. Kane, another key shoegaze progenitor, took influences from house music and dub; and Cocteau Twins’ ethereal rush felt like Brian Eno’s ambient music made flesh. Meanwhile, Primal Scream’s epochal 1991 album, Screamadelica, had already proved that guitars and electronic music could mix. This spirit of experimentation played out in other early shoegaze releases, with Chapterhouse making use of sampled beats on “Falling Down,” and Curve audibly influenced by techno and industrial music.Two records released in 1993 would cement the alliance between electronic music and shoegaze. Souvlaki, Slowdive’s second album, was a stunning fusion of ambient atmospheres and guitars, influenced by Aphex Twin, dub, and Brian Eno (who worked on the album), and was epitomized by the celestial summer-day-glide of “Souvlaki Space Station.” Then there was Seefeel’s debut album, Quique, a dazzling concoction of ambient textures played out on guitar and drums, blurring the line between man and machine.When not mimicking electronics, many shoegaze bands commissioned contemporary electronic music producers to remix their work, their delicate vocals and celestial guitar lines proving ripe for electronic manipulation, such as Spooky’s remix of Lush’s “Undertow” and Aphex Twin’s astonishing take on Curve’s “Falling Free.” The pinnacle of this crossover occurred when Chapterhouse invited Global Communication to remix their second album, Blood Music, in its entirety, creating the ambient classic Pentamerous Metamorphosis. Chapterhouse would return the favor by providing guitars for “8:07” on Global Communication’s 76:14.But by the mid-’90’s, shoegaze was a media bust and the fallout hit its leading lights hard (Souvlaki, in particular, was trashed). Slowdive were dropped by Creation after the release of their third studio album, Pygmalion, in 1995, while Seefeel went on hiatus the following year. Shoegaze was dead, and so too was its electronic counterpart.The release of Blue Skied An Clear in 2002 was highly unexpected. The album, from fashionable electronic label Morr Music, was a tribute to Slowdive, and consisted of covers of their work and new songs influenced by their sound. German producer Ulrich Schnauss, who appeared on the album, released his own tribute to shoegaze the following year, A Strangely Isolated Place, while M83’s second album, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, would also drink deep from the shoegaze sound, laying the foundations for his global success and the eventual return of Slowdive, et al., as did The Field’s 2009 shoegazey album, Yesterday and Today. When Slowdive hit up Avalon Emerson for a remix, the circle was completed.

The arrival of a new Kendrick Lamar album on April 14 has us thinking about the Compton MCs place in L.A.s storied hip-hop history. To that end, The Dowsers Sam Chennault, Mosi Reeves, and David Turner convened to determine this list of the citys greatest-ever rappers—and compile a playlist of their hottest moments on the mic.5. Vince StaplesTwo decades after Snoop Dogg emerged from Long Beach, another sharp-tongued and witty rapper arrived to lead a new generation. Through a loose Odd Future affiliation, Vince Staples surfaced in 2014 with the harsh screech and wailings that powered his single “Blue Suede.” While hes charming and humorous off the mic, on record Vince holds nothing back, touching upon issues of gang violence, racial injustice, and the burden society places on blackness. That weight might be why, on 2014’s “Fire,” he casually admits, “I’m probably finna go to hell anyway.” — David Turner 4. Earl SweatshirtEarl Sweatshirt’s career has been defined by absence. His 2010 debut mixtape, Earl, matched themes of adolescent obsession, neurosis, and bravado with a preternatural sensitivity to language, resulting in a statement of dysfunction startling for its casual violence, Rubiks Cube rhyme schemes, and childish misogyny. Shortly thereafter, Earl’ parents forced him into exile, banishing him to boarding school in Somoa, and making Early a cause-du-jour for his crew, the zeitgeist-peddling pranksters Odd Future. For a while, the world’s best rapper was a 17-year-old sharing a bunk-bed in a tiny island state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When Earl re-appeared, releasing 2013’s bleary Doris, he was heralded rap’s prodigal son, but while he lost the problematic rape fantasies, he sounded impossibly fragile. The title of his follow-up, I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, underlined this reluctance, and many felt Earl would become hip-hop’s Henry Darger, a talented and idiosyncratic artist content to spin polysyllabic rhymes of post-adolescent ennui in anonymous L.A. basement studios. Hopefully, that won’t be how he’s remembered—he’s only 23, and his story is far from over. — Sam Chennault3. Ice CubeIce Cube was arguably the first great Los Angeles MC to win over New York’s notoriously finicky rap aesthetes. As the Jheri-curled knucklehead capable of both observing and (musically) partaking in the gangsta madness of his native Compton, and then connecting those images to a wider socio-political context, Ice Cube brought a lyrical deftness that still resonates to this day. Case in point: The popular rap blog 2dopeboyz.com recently conducted a poll of the best diss song of all time. The winner? Ice Cube’s “No Vaseline.” — Mosi Reeves2. Snoop DoggIn 1993, Snoop Dogg released his debut album, Doggystyle, which furthered the nihilistic mission statement he introduced the previous year on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. Though he was only 22 years old at the time—and was seemingly concerned only with how much weed he could smoke and how many parties he could throw—Snoop had a prematurely aged, raspy flow that perfectly complemented Dre’s ingenious reworking of 70s and 80s funk and soul. But in the 2000s, Snoops partnership with Pharrell—which yielded the rappers first No. 1 single, "Drop It Like Its Hot"—showed how his cool demeanor could also shine over minimalist Neptunes production. And when Snoop teamed up with Charlie Wilson on “Peaches N Cream” for his 2015 album, Bush, it was a reminder of how his love of funk has guided his entire career. — David Turner 1. Kendrick LamarKendrick Lamar represents the new perspective of L.A. hardcore rap: loyal to the streets, but not defined by them. As an MC, he’s a virtuoso who is capable of speeding up and slowing down a verse’s rhythm, changing the cadence mid-speech, and shifting tones. Lyrically, he writes about the whole of the black experience as it is lived physically and spiritually. His music is conceptually ambitious, almost to a fault—it sounds like a man whose brain is perpetually stuck in high gear. But it’s a burden that he seems happy to accept. — Mosi ReevesHonorable mentions: YGDJ QuikBusdriverAceyaloneKurupt

One of the beauties of living in an era of hyper-technology is that it’s never been easier to dumpster dive through the musical annals of history for hidden treasure. But while anyone can go mining through YouTube for gold, it takes a special breed to wade through the mysterious waters of reissues. Hunting down long-lost artists and restoring their precious masters to life is a tricky business, but label Light In The Attic has led the reissue revolution with panache since setting up shop in Seattle in 2002.Perhaps the most interesting quality of Light In The Attic’s reissues is the spiritual kinship that so many of their artists share. LITA’s records have a folkish, proletariat quality to them, not only because so many of their releases fall under the Americana banner, but also in the way they expose the struggles of everyday artists who never truly caught the spotlight—or in some cases, purposely avoided it. Whether it’s in the fiery political incantations of The Last Poets, the indigenous songwriters populating the Native North America compilation, or the honky-tonk surrealism of Lee Hazlewood, Light In The Attic searches for humanity in the under-exposed and reveals the alternate histories of our musical traditions that have been happening all along, right under our noses.Though tackling a catalog as wide and diverse as theirs is an unruly challenge, this playlist highlights some of the wonderful music that Light In The Attic has brought to our attention over the years, and also illustrates the spirit that connects these forgotten visions. Take a listen, and remember that sometimes the greatest voices are those least heard.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Woody Allen’s films achieve a very particular duality. Effortlessly shifting from the wound-up, neurotic jokes he makes to the deep moral conundrums his characters face, he laces his films with a balance that often resembles the actual drama and comedy of real life, for better or worse. These moments of levity and seriousness are always anchored to the films’ larger moods, which are themselves bound to his deliberate and inspired use of music. Manhattan kicks off with Gershwin’s ecstatic Rhapsody in Blue, the jazzy crescendos and woozy melodies of which set the tempo and timbre for the rest of the film. For Love and Death the director chose Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s music from Alexander Nevsky and Lieutenant Kijé, both of which lent the film a particular sense of folkiness and pomp, perfectly mediating the screenplay’s reliance on slapstick comedy and black humor. This playlist collects a number of the director’s most inspired musical selections.

Staying a step ahead of the competition is always tricky business, but electronic music presents a particularly unique challenge. As a genre dependent on the advancements of technology, it markets itself as the sound of the future, yet as we continue to develop advanced machinery at an increasingly frantic pace, this music has a tendency to date itself more rapidly than other forms. What’s more quaint than listening to music that purports to be cutting edge long after our cultural standards have surpassed its once-lofty goals?Warp Records has never had an issue with releasing timeless music. Formed in Sheffield, England, in 1989, Warp has built one of the most imposing and consistently challenging catalogs, not just in electronic, but in all types of music. Although Warp does pride itself on exposing strange, exciting new sounds, the artists it fosters are equally concerned with creating work that stands on its own two legs, regardless of what instruments were used to produce it. It’s music built as much for the dance floor as for your living room, not to mention Warp’s various detours into schizo-rap, indie-prog, dance-tent EDM, and whatever the hell Gonjasufi is supposed to be. Most of all, Warp has gracefully avoided the trap of desperately chasing after bandwagons to hop on, choosing instead to take chances on radical voices from the underground and give them plenty of room to push their work to wild new extremes.Though electronic music is at the mercy of technology to some extent, the human imagination has no limits. Take a tour through Warp Records’ expansive legacy, and remember that the future is always now.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Sonic Youth covered a lot of ground in their career. As high-art CalArts castaways turned Downtown NYC No Wave noise pushers, they largely abandoned traditional song structure on their first releases for bursts of detuned guitar shrapnel. As the ‘80s turned into the ‘90s, and mainstream music began to get heavier and stranger, they became the curators of rock’s brief but wondrous plunge into experimentalism, and though this brief foray into the mainstream changed rock, it also changed them, and, for a brief second, they almost became the new normal. This is wild playlist, however, doesn’t even approach “normal,” and demonstrates that the experimental instinct never receded, but was channeled to the various side projects, covers and one offs that represent some of the most self-consciously weird music of the past few decades. They provide a dark, gnarly cover of Madonna’s “In the Groove” under the moniker Ciconne Youth, while YOKOKIMTHURSTON pairs Yoko Ono with the alternatives formerly lovestruck duo for atonal vocal shimmering. And who knew that Nancy Sinatra stab at a comeback included covering a Thurston Moore song? This isn’t so much a playlist you listen to -- much of it, in fact, is barely listenable -- but something marvel at, which makes it a necessity for Sonic Youth obsessives. -- Sam Chennault

Atlanta’s Black Lips belong to a long and winding lineage of garage rockers and twang-infused punks from the South, and continue that tradition with the new release of their eighth album, the Sean Ono Lennon-produced, Satan’s Graffiti Or God’s Art? In addition to hugely influential labels like Goner, the region has coughed up a slew of the genre’s most notable pioneers. With “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” Lone Star State psychonauts The 13th Floor Elevators created what may very well be the single most important song in the mid-’60s merger of garage and psychedelia, while the lo-fi bash and screech of Memphis heavyweights Jay Reatard and Oblivions are central to the evolution of modern garage punk (with each spawning a slew of projects, spotlighted in our playlist).It should come as no surprise that a good chunk of Southern garage rock soaks up the region’s more renowned flavors: blues, soul, gospel, and rockabilly. The Moving Sidewalks, Billy Gibbons’ pre-ZZ Top outfit, blend orange sunshine-fueled fuzz with the kind of greasy R&B swing heard in East Texas juke joints; Alex Chilton’s “My Rival,” from his 1979 cult classic, Like Flies On Sherbert, is a brain-blasted concoction of ’50s boogie and eccentric New Wave that has more in common with Swell Maps than Big Star. Seratones are another telling example—the young band from Shreveport, Louisiana, have in AJ Haynes a powerful singer equally inspired by gospel and distortion-caked punk.But there are plenty of garage rockers in the South who aren’t the least bit rootsy. Nots, one of the hardest and hottest bands to emerge from Memphis’ always fertile scene, are cold, brittle, and jagged, just like old-school post-punks on Rough Trade (Kleenex, Delta 5, and Stiff Little Fingers). In contrast, Nashville’s JEFF The Brotherhood devote a lot of their creative energy to cutting garage with hook-littered power pop, glam, and shambolic indie rock. But enough chatter, people—it’s time to press play and lose yourself in a whole mess of Southern-fried snarl and reverb.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.