[HOUSE] Ravi Kroesen’s online biography claims he was “raised by wild sheep in the foothills of the Himalayas.” And, oddly enough, there’s a bit of truth in the statement: The 33-year-old house DJ did spend some of his formative years in said foothills. The son of “hippie parents” who adopted the Sikh religion when he [...]

Piano notes introduce Wylen’s smooth voice, which is as bright and confident as any teen pop star would dream of sounding—but with a pack-of-smokes rather than pack-of-pink-bubblegum attitude. Her clear, delicate vocals become breathless as she’s caught in the beat’s electronic orbit–a collage of sound that becomes faster and more frantic as it spins and [...]

“I’ll be your happy ending,” singer Amanda Spring sings, fresh and clean and wet like raindrops–her voice caught, crushed and muffled upon the refrain. The instruments are similarly bipolar–glowing bright and pretty before falling into foggy distortion.
I drove through Arizona one August. I expected crushing heat, but instead found the flat highways slicing through [...]

There was plenty of love in the room Sunday night at the packed Wonder Ballroom for Britain’s little, 5′1″ MC, Lady Sovereign . The young crowd chanted “S-O-V” in anticipation, while the backing drummer, guitarist and DJ came out on stage. Sov finally marched on wearing sunglasses and her characteristic cornrows-and-side-ponytail amidst cheers.
Through the [...]

Before the music started, two people crawled around on stage, arranging bananas under the center microphone stand. They quickly pushed sticks of incense into the bananas and lit them, the sweet, woody smoke wafting out into the crowd, which trilled and shouted. The backing band, New York-based Dub Is A Weapon, came out next and [...]

On “Long Pork,” like many other Hustler White songs, the voices of the ladies singing act like instruments, lilting and shouting melodically. There might be brilliant lyrics here but either that isn’t really the point, or they’re encoded messages about reptilian world leaders, or (most likely) I’m just too dense to understand them. Either way [...]

[HOUSE] By day, Mercedes Modesta Herrada is a surgical pathology assistant. Working methodically in the lab, she cuts up body parts harvested from patients during surgery. By night, known simply as Mercedes, she works methodically behind two turntables to make dance-ready masses move. She enjoys the lab, she explains, because she is still helping people [...]