RiYL

In the bifurcated world of comics, Paul Pope has never pledge allegiance to the superheroes of indies. The New York-based cartoonist’s move between storylines and mediums is every bit as fluid as his immediately recognizable linework. On June 19th, Manhattan’s Philippe Labaune Gallery will do its best to encapsulate that career, with a retrospective on Pope’s decades-long body of work, ranging fro...

Time has a way of getting away from you. You tour with a couple of legendary indie bands (Stars, Broken Social Scene), start a family, and next thing you know, it’s been 15 years since your last solo record. I Went To Find You finds Amy Millian collaborating with new musical soul mate, Jay McCarrol. The work brought the singer back to some of her earliest musical memories of singing with her dad a...

Well into his fourth decade as a professional musician, David J Haskins refers to The Mother Tree as, "my most personal work yet.” With such an expansive catalog, including the works discographies of Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, it's quite a claim. It is, however, a difficult one to refute, given its subject matter. A tribute to his late mother, the five-track album is centered on Haskins' poet...

In 2017, Save Ferris released the Checkered Past EP , the band’s first collection of new music in nearly two decades. Plenty had changed over the years, resulting in frontwoman, Monique Powell, retaining sole rights to the Orange Country ska band’s name. The revived Save Ferris has continued to release new music and tour under Powell’s leadership. The musician joined us to discuss 30 years in the...

The worst thing about discovering Swamp Dogg is kicking yourself for not having done so sooner. The good news is that you’re about to have your mind blown by an 82-year-old soul musician currently experiencing his third – or maybe fourth – career renaissance. This latest round kicked off with 2018’s Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune. Since then, the singer has released another three albums and served...

Gumshoe is a record about connections in a world where being alone is increasingly becoming the default. It’s the latest from Oklahoma-based singer songwriter, Samantha Crain. For 15 years, the Choctaw musician has shared stages with some of indie music’s biggest names. More recently, she’s found herself scoring films, including 2023’s Fancy Dance, starring Lily Gladstone. But first we obviously h...

With Ginseng Roots, Craig Thompson returns to his childhood -- subject matter that already proved a rich vein for his beloved 2003 book, Blankets. While his latest once again explores the family dynamics of a religious upbringing, the work casts a much wider net. His family's economic dependence on ginseng is a starting point for exploring the root, which has been a staple of Chinese and Korean me...

About 40 minutes into the conversation, Nickelodeon calls. They need her in the studio post haste. It’s a fitting spot to end things for an artist as in demand as Grey Delisle. While she’s known as voice artist with hundreds of credits – including The Simpsons and Scooby-Doo – we’re here for something else altogether. Delisle also has a vintage country singing voice that would have earned her a pe...

When Willie Nelson suggests you record an album of his songs, you do it. Amy Irving and the country legend met on the set of 1980’s Honeysuckle Rose and remained close ever since. Irving features on the album’s soundtrack, despite a latter turn as Jessica Rabbit’s singing voice, a music career was never on her radar. Her solo debut, Born In a Trunk , , arrived 43 years after her musical debut, lay...

Abyss is a dark, heavy album for a dark, heavy time. A journalist in a former life, Anika never shies away from the bleakness. The Berlin-based singer made a point of recording her third solo record with minimal overdubs, in a bid to capture the immediacy these the songs require. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At age 11, his fate was sealed when Benmont Tench met Tom Petty at a Gainesville music store. Fueled by the recent British invasion, the pair made music together for the first time at The Sundowners. A decade later, Petty recruited the keyboardist for Mudcrutch, the Southern rock band that soon evolved into the Heartbreakers. For the past six decades, Tench has never strayed far from that path, pl...

Vladimir Nabokov's 1951 memoir, Speak, Memory, opens with a quote describing life as the content between two dark eternities -- the before and the after. Though teaming with potential existential dread, the quote is a hopeful one for Luke Lalonde. The sentiment inspired "Mean Time," the first single from Born Ruffians' forthcoming LP, Beauty's Pride. It's a celebration of the moments that happen b...

Polar is as much an exercise in world building as it is a classical album. Icelandic pianist Gabríel Ólafs describes a lifelong desire to score films. In the meantime, he’s making his own. The new record combines worlds defined by his compositions, narrated by work from science-fiction author, Rebecca Roanhorse. It’s fascinating latest chapter from one of the most exciting new voices in classical....

Since its debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Paying For It has garnered rave reviews from critics, drawing comparisons to fellow comic adaptation, Ghost World. Based on Chester Brown’s beloved 2011 work of the same name, the film centers around Brown and a fictionalized version of Sook-Yin Lee, the director who also happens to be his real life ex. Brown joins us to discuss t...

One thing you should know about Lloyd Kaufman is that he isn’t dead. The introduction to Mathew Klickstein’s new interview collection is very adamant about this. The Troma founder was certainly well enough to engage in an hour-long conversation about the early days of indie filmmaking, Michael Bay and making transgressive art amid a second Trump administration. Besides, at very least, the man need...

At 17, Duke Amayo moved from Nigeria to U.S. for a football scholarship at Howard University. Despite his study, a career in medical illustration wasn’t in the cards. After making his way to Brooklyn, he landed a role as the frontman of beloved Afrobeat band, Antibalas. Amayo set out on his own, after nearly a quarter-century with the band. The musician released Lion Awakes in January, an eclectic...

Recorded over the course of two years, Anything At All is, fittingly, about slowing down. Denison Witmer finds beauty in domesticity. It’s a meditation on mindfulness, fatherhood and even banal. Witmer’s 11th album is also a collaboration, birthed from a songwriting session with long-time friend, Sufjan Stevens, who also came on as producer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informat...

Seventy years since kicking off his music career in his hometown of Nashville, Charles “Wigg” Walker is still madly in love with music. This Love is Gonna Last is the soul singer’s first album in more than a decade, and a testament to surviving all that life throws at you. Dedicated to his late-wife, who passed in 2024, the album is a joyful celebration of life from an artist who has performed wit...

After 35 years, Tsunami returned with a bang. The Virginia-based band capped off 2024 by reuniting to deliver a massive, career-spanning boxset, Loud As. During their time away from the band, however, Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson were never too far apart. The roommates, turned bandmates, turned cofounders of indie label, Simple Machines never started too far from activistic – and musical...

“I am edging away from apathy,” Chuck Ragan bellows, “I am drifting away from the dark. The rain has got my mind in motion.” The stanzas that open Love & Lore, the latest from the Hot Water Music frontman, feel strangely appropriate as we speak. Ragan is a few days out from dealing with a flooded basement, courtesy of torrential rains. It’s a consequence, perhaps, of living in a land of rivers...

Music is, at once, a vector for connection and escape. Chuck Prophet found both, as at a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District. Cumbia, a popular dance genre born in Columbia, pulsates through Wake the Dead. Forty years into his professional and on the other side of a battle with stage four lymphoma, the album finds the Bay Area musician with a new musical lease on life. Hosted on Acast. See aca...

Following the release of Tank and the Bangas' Grammy nominated The Heart, The Mind, The Soul, singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball returns to the show. The three-part collection presents a new side of Ball for those only familiar with the Bangas' joyful New Orleans funk. Prior to her time as a music star, Ball sharpened her lyrics as a rising star in the world of poetry. The album follows the 2021 release...

Fe finds Rafael Cohen returning to his roots on multiple fronts. The latest from the !!! multi-instrumentalist's Las Palabras finds the musician returning to his native Spanish, while pulling the thread of his family's Jewish faith. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does “maturity” mean for a rock band? The answer is, perhaps, a bit easier to answer when you’ve been together since age 18. For Naked Giants, it means grown up things – getting jobs, starting families. It’s not necessarily fodder for a band’s young punk days, depth of subject is in an important part of growing up as a band – and having a fanbase that grows along with you. Hosted on Acast. Se...

Last month, Mileage scored Sun Records’ first-ever Grammy nomination. It’s hard to believe for a 72-year-old label that was once home to Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash. The album, Ruthie Foster’s latest, finds the musician reflecting on the ups and downs of a long career. It’s a journey that found Foster serving in the Navy, moving to New York and getting signed by a major label in the...