Soundcheck

Alice Merton burst out of the starting gate with her 2016 single "No Roots", a song that celebrated her nomadic upbringing in four different countries. Since then, the British-based German-Irish-Canadian singer-songwriter has released two albums of songs with somewhat introspective, perhaps brooding lyrics, set to uplifting and sunny melodies. When we last checked in with her in 2019, she’d just r...

Singer Kiran Ahluwalia was born in India, grew up in Canada, and is largely based here in New York. Her music reflects her transcontinental upbringing, as she mixes the sounds of traditional South Asian song forms with Western rock and jazz. A two-time JUNO (Canadian Grammy) winner, Ahluwalia’s work has featured collaborations with leading musicians from the Celtic and Fado worlds, as well as Mali...

Shabaka Hutchings, now Shabaka, has been a crucial and connected London-based musician for years, leading arena dance-jazz band Sons of Kemet, cosmic psych-dub-funk trio The Comet Is Coming, and the collaborative band Shabaka & the Ancestors. He began incorporating layered flutes on the last Sons of Kemet record Black to the Future , and kept on picking up more and other woodwinds, first on his 20...

José James has often been called a “jazz singer for the hip hop generation,” having come to jazz through tracing hip hop samples and over the course of twelve records, he’s also incorporated R&B, soul, rock, funk, and Latin music into his songs. While he’s mostly sung his own music over the years, he has occasionally covered songs by some of his favorite artists: Bill Withers, Gil Scott-Heron, Ery...

American indie rock-chamber collective, San Fermin, has been making lush, wide-angled Baroque-pop songs for more than a decade. The band was founded by Brooklyn-based keyboardist Ellis Ludwig Leone, who has multiple creative outlets as a songwriter, classical composer, and founding partner (with bandmate Allen Tate) of a record label focused on collaborations. The latest batch of 'immediate pop' s...

France-based Cameroonian musician and composer Blick Bassy’s quiet and beautiful songs fall somewhere on the spectrum of R & B, pop, and folk, while the sounds of West and Central Africa have continued to resonate. His Bandcamp calls it "Africanity at the crossroads of soul, folk, and electro". Past albums by Bassy have also referenced Delta blues, and his latest effort, Mádibá , dedicated to the...

Vocalist and songwriter Lizz Wright is usually referred to as a jazz or gospel singer, and she certainly does sing both of those styles. But she’s also comfortable with blues and R&B and the Great American Songbook. Her latest album is called Shadow , and it features striking versions of songs by Cole Porter, Sandy Denny, and others. The record also includes a number of Lizz Wright’s own songs, wh...

Reyna Tropical is led by guitarist, singer, songwriter and co-producer Fabi Reyna, who is the founder of She Shreds Media, dedicated to women and non-binary guitarists. Investigating landscapes of the tropical diaspora - from Cartagena, Colombia to Fajardo, Puerto Rico and Cuaji (la costa chica de Guerrero), the latest release, Malegr​í​a, is a collection of 20 tracks infused with the beat of all...

Brooklyn-born rapper, producer & founding member of Flatbush Zombies, Erick the Architect released his debut solo LP,  I’ve Never Been Here Before , in February. While it’s full of trenchant social commentary, it’s also focused on dealing with loss and finding freedom in vulnerability. The tracks draw from funk, gospel, soul, reggae and jazz, with throughlines to musical greats like John Coltrane...

Deerlady is the name of the band led by singer and bassist Mali Obomsawin and guitarist and singer Magdalena Abrego. Mali was part of the folk rock trio called Lula Wiles; then she released her album of Indigenous jazz called Sweet Tooth in 2022, drawing heavily on her Abenaki heritage. Magdalena, a Chicago-born guitarist whose parents migrated from Mexico and Puerto Rico, has played with the mini...

London vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Cosmo Sheldrake creates songs and sound worlds out of people, places, creatures, plants, fungi, and collected sounds. With his combination of traditional instrumentation and electronic production, field recordings, and both human and more-than-human voices (birdsong and insect choruses), Sheldrake pursues adventures in song, capturing the childli...

Honduran-American artist Lorely Rodriguez, known professionally as Empress Of, is a singer, songwriter, musician and record producer based in Los Angeles, California. Her albums are full of bright, indie pop that mixes dance music, electronica, trap, and on her most recent album, Latin music. Empress Of’s new album, her fourth, is called For Your Consideration , and it’s a mischievous exploration...

Formed in North London, Bombay Bicycle Club is the sound of four best friends finding joy and savoring the connection in making music together and experimenting. They think of themselves as a genre-less band ( The Independent ), “not bound down by genre in a way that a lot of our contemporaries were”. With the 2023 release of My Big Day , and an EP called Fantasies , both of which feature a host o...

The Japanese singer/composer/producer Hatis Noit, is originally from the northernmost island of Hokkaido. Her name, hatis noit ハチスノイト, means the stem of the lotus flower and is intended to serve as a connection between the living world (represented by the lotus flower) and the spirit world (the lotus root). Further, Hatis Noit feels that singing is not unlike Tai chi, and is a way to connect...

Spanish singer and songwriter Maria José Llergo grew up in the region of Andalucia, the home of flamenco music, where she learned violin, and listened to her grandfather sing. From these roots, she grows her own flamenco - and it has "wings" - the sounds of contemporary pop, R&B, and electronica to augment and transform the style. Where there could be flamenco guitar and the "torn throat" crying v...

The “distinctive style” of British composer and musician Roger Eno’s slowly unfolding sonic landscapes has “attracted a cult following” ( Eno’s bio ). As well as first collaborating with his brother Brian and Daniel Lanois in 1983 on  Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, he has made over a dozen solo albums and other collaborative pieces. He’s composed for theatre, TV, and film; formed the ambient...

The Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo was given the name Lhamo at birth by a Buddhist monk. The name means Goddess Of Melody, and Yungchen has spent her adult life living up to that title. After fleeing Tibet by walking over the Himalayas, in 1989, she established herself as a leading voice for Tibetan culture in the west, releasing a series of albums on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Record label and has...

Daymé Arocena, an Afro-Cuban singer from Havana now based in Puerto Rico, has been performing semi-professionally since she was 8 years old. She was trained as a composer, arranger, choir director, and band leader ( Wikipedia ) at conservatory, in addition to being “a practitioner of the Santeria religion, and a master of its profound musical tradition,” ( Afropop Worldwide ). Arocena was also par...

The singer and songwriter Sheherazaad blends the rich tradition of poetry and music from South Asia with Western instruments and production techniques. Her new album, Qasr , was produced by Grammy-winning Pakistani-American singer Arooj Aftab, and it offers a subtly colored, moody collection of songs that, in the tradition of the old collection 1001 Nights , tell stories. Stories that conjure "rea...

Haitian-American composer, flutist, vocalist, and educator Nathalie Joachim is half of the duo Flutronix, whose music blends classical flute playing with electronic sounds. She also played for a spell in the Grammy-winning contemporary classical music ensemble Eighth Blackbird. But in 2019 Nathalie began exploring her family’s roots in Haiti with a striking album called Famn d’Ayiti , using flute,...

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and educator Mary Timony has been a hugely influential figure on the indie and alternative rock scenes for over 30 years. Starting with the band Autoclave in 1990, she went on to front the group Helium for much of the 1990s, was a member of the supergroup Wild Flag, and is a guitarist and singer of the band Ex Hex. Her latest album, Untame The Tiger, is a solo record...

The American Patchwork Quartet is a group that reflects the American melting pot – the patchwork quilt of people who’ve come and made the U.S.A. their home. APQ features two-time Grammy winner Clay Ross, of the band Ranky Tanky, drummer Clarence Penn, and two musicians who immigrated from Asia: the singer Falu (from India) and bassist Yasushi Nakamura (from Japan). Their debut, untitled album is j...

Ethan Lipton writes plays, and songs, and  sometimes, plays with songs. His musical No Place To Go won an Obie for its trenchant take on the decline of the American workspace, and in another musical, The Outer Space , a couple finds that they can flee planet earth but not its problems. Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra, according to their own biography , offer "modern lounge with a chewy singer-songwri...

Pianist and composer Vijay Iyer first got together with bassist and composer Linda May-Han Oh and drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey in 2021, when they released their brilliant album Uneasy .  But with all three musicians having such busy careers, it seemed like it might be a kind of musical summit – the sort of thing that only happens once. Now, those same three gifted players have released a second...

NYC-based rock unit Bodega makes artful post-punk songs with brawny, catchy riffs and shouty gang vocals. Their lyrics contain politically-minded and perhaps cheeky commentaries on advertising, technology, pop culture, high art - and how we consume it all; oh- and on gentrification as well. They play bracing new tunes from the forthcoming album, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life , in-studio. - Caryn Havl...