LSQ

On the heels of the announcement last week of a much anticipated new album by indie folk band The Head and the Heart , I’m excited to be able to share the following conversation with the band’s Matty Gervais. This is one of your first chances to hear more about their exceptional new collection of tunes, Aperture , the band’s sixth LP, which will be out on May 9th. There are already a few beautiful...

Welcome to season 8 of the LSQ podcast! I’m thrilled to kick off this season with an interview with Julien Baker & Torres , two artists whose music on their own I’ve admired for years: Julien , as a solo performer and member of boygenius, and Torres , which is the musical moniker of the singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott. Last year, they revealed that they had been working together on a country...

I learned a new word during this interview you’re about to hear with ⁠Big Thief⁠ ’s ⁠Adrianne Lenker⁠ and the deeply under appreciated singer-songwriter ⁠Tucker Zimmerman⁠ : Numinous . It means “having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity.” Numinous. That’s how Tucker described the experience of recording the album ⁠ Dance of Love ,⁠ with Big...

“I’ve always been pretty attached to my dreams,” says singer-songwriter Jessica Pratt . “[Dreams have] consistently been this means of receiving symbolic information that feels important. They do feel somewhat connected — the mental space that I’m in when I’m writing and the way that I feel in certain kinds of dreams. Sometimes you have a dream where it feels very loaded and weighted in this way t...

What an incredible joy it was to spend some time talking face to face with one of my all-time favorite artists — Julian Casablancas of The Voidz and The Strokes⁠ — for episode 113 of the LSQ podcast. We met up for this interview backstage at LA’s Orpheum Theater just after The Voidz played a mind-blowing set, including music from their awesome new album, Like All Before You . Although we’re old fr...

I kind of felt like I already knew Madi Diaz , even though we’d never met before, when we connected over Zoom this summer for the conversation in episode 112 of the LSQ podcast. That’s in part because we have many music friends in common, and I’ve heard a lot of great things about her over the years. But it’s even more the case because her songs are so beautifully direct and intimate; they give yo...

I’ll never forget the first time I heard the music of the iconic noise-rock band The Jesus Lizard — it was more than thirty years ago, thanks to my older brother Michael playing me their song “Seasick,” from the band’s second studio album, Goat , released in 1991 and produced by the legendary Steve Albini .  That song blew my mind. It made me feel like I was actually inside of the tune itself, and...

Remi Wolf is my favorite kind of modern artist: a young music-maker who truly doesn't give a flying eff what genre names folks might use to try to neatly categorize her sound. Remi knows that, as she once said, "genres are pretty obsolete at this point." She continued (in this interview with Spin ): "I think artists are their own genre, where every artist is creating such a worl...

On the heels of Foster the People 's first new album in seven years, their excellent, uplifting and highly danceable new album Paradise State of Mind, hear from the project's creative mastermind about key moments in his musical journey: how he learned to play piano by ear as a kid, and was later inspired to play guitar by hearing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on a kiosk...

On the eve of the release of her beautiful third studio album, Chaos Angel, singer-songwriter and actor Maya Hawke talks about how she arrived at her finest collection yet - a group of songs inspired by the idea of fighting one's own guardian angel. I loved getting to ask Maya about the creative path that led to this album, the music she was into as a kid, how she discovered her own musicality...

I had the best time getting to know the wonderful Gabriela Quintero of Grammy-winning psychedelic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela for this episode of the LSQ podcast. We recently met over Zoom for a conversation exploring important moments in her personal creative evolution — things like seeing an all-girl Japanese metal band when she was 10; or discovering Metallica thanks to the mixtape her sister...

Garage rock prince Ty Segall joins the LSQ podcast on the heels of his awesome fifteenth (!!!) studio album, Three Bells , to talk about the roots of his sound: how he first fell in love with rock and roll thanks to oldies radio ( Beatles , Ronettes , Kinks ) and a pile of vinyl records gifted by a Laguna Beach neighbor ( Alice Cooper , Black Sabbath , Bowie ), doing musical theater in high school...

Since there was a major influx of new listeners thanks to last week's episode 105 with Vampire Weekend 's Ezra Koenig, I wanted to bring back this super fun 2021 interview with VW bassist (Chris) Baio , which we recorded in the lead-up to his solo album Dead Hand Control . This is an abbreviated version of the episode, but you can find the full interview HERE . We talked about Sex and the...

Some bands, you love them almost instantly, and that was the deal for me with Vampire Weekend , who I was fortunate to be tipped off to early on, through some mutual friends in NYC. My love for them has only grown with each new album, as VW continue to explore new sonic terrain, including on their brilliant latest LP, Only God Was Above Us , which is out now. In this interview, VW frontman Ezra Ko...

There is no other artist quite like Beth Ditto , the brilliant singer, songwriter, actor, clothing and cosmetics designer, and frontwoman for the legendary indie band Gossip. Her voice is singular and her energy is magical. In episode 104, Ditto talks about the making of Gossip 's exciting new album, Real Power , as well as her early experiences with music -- worshiping Cyndi Lauper and singin...

Last fall, singer-songwriter and film score composer Dhani Harrison released a dynamic new solo album called Innerstanding, which gave me the perfect opportunity to finally interview him in depth. "To innerstand is to comprehend from a place of love and detachment, where you’re not forcing yourself or being forced," he explains. "If you come at things from a place of love, then you’...

Joe Talbot, frontman for the ferocious U.K. band Idles , explores his artistic roots -- how his sculptor dad taught him the value of a creative purpose, how his love for hip-hop evolved as he became more politically aware, the inspiration he drew from Van Morrison's Astral Weeks , how the early oughts breakthrough by the Strokes influenced him, what it was like for Idles to find their sound in...

On the eve of her incredible sophomore solo album, What Now (out February 9th), hear Brittany Howard share the story of her creative journey as a singer, songwriter and performer, explaining how she first discovered her voice and where she still hopes to go with it, how bonding with her friends over music like Black Sabbath and Kings of Leon led into starting her own band, the Alabama Shakes, with...

Welcome to a super special episode -- not just because it’s the 100th episode, though I've gotta say I’m pretty proud of that, and so grateful to all of the artists who’ve given their time and been open to this conversation, but also because this episode features one of my favorite interviews from the podcast so far. I have been a deep admirer of Future Islands ' music, and Samuel T. Herri...

Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney join Jenny for episode 99, to talk about their new album, Little Rope , growing up in the burgeoning Northwest indie scene of the late Eighties and arriving at Olympia, Washington's Evergreen College just in time for the birth of riot grrrl in the early Nineties. They discuss their early days together, how they found their songwriting method...

Proof of Life , the excellent fourth studio album by Nashville-based singer-songwriter Joy Oladokun , has been one of my favorite LPs of 2023, and it's been awesome to see Joy's star rise in recent months. It was a true joy - if you'll pardon the pun - to meet Joy over Zoom and get to know more about their creative journey, growing up in Casa Grande, Arizona, as a child of Nigerian imm...

After years of admiring Jason Isbell's gifts as a songwriter and storyteller, I finally got to ask the alt-country artist about his earliest sparks of creativity, and it was fascinating to hear his memories of sitting on the front porch, singing with members of his extended family during weekly Sunday evening gatherings, and of listening to his Pentecostal preacher grandfather playing guitar,...

Alvvays have made some of my favorite indie music of the past decade, and although I’ve interviewed them briefly in the past, I loved going long with Molly Rankin from the band for episode 96. We talked about Alvvays’s awesome latest album, Blue Rev , the origins of “Archie, Marry Me,” which had it's 10th anniversary this year, about how Molly started writing songs as a teenager, inspired by l...

On the eve of Blonde Redhead ’s first new album in nine years, their excellent Sit Down For Dinner , the band’s Kazu Makino joins the LSQ podcast for episode 95. She talks about how the experience of making her own solo album a few years ago inspired a new confidence going into this Blonde Redhead album; the influence she took from growing up in a household where classical music was playing at a s...

Episode 94 features an interview with singer, songwriter and producer Andrew Wyatt , whose voice and tunes you probably know from a few different contexts: In addition to being the frontman and lead songwriter for alt-pop band Miike Snow, Wyatt keeps incredibly busy collaborating as a writer and producer with artists like Dua Lipa, Charlie XCX, Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and many ot...