While she rolls through the questions like a champ, Chicago singer-songwriter Xoe Wise expresses frustration that she’s still being asked questions such as “What is it like being a woman in rock?” The 27-year-old says she’d like to see a day when the music industry and society has moved past all that.…

Stars are back, folks. Well, at least the Canadian indie pop band is back to doing what it does best: writing deeply emotive, vividly detailed analyses of the issue of love (or lack of it). Theirs are the words most of us would write or sing if we had…

Madeline Kenney, courtesy. When I catch up with Madeline Kenney, life is a little different for her than it was a year before, when we first chatted. In August 2016, the Bay Area singer-songwriter was focused on what she told me would be her last live show before pivoting to focus…

The guys behind Joywave appear to be content with the content of Content, their sophomore album. A little confusing to be sure, but those disparities—between definition and context—fill the follow-up to 2015’s How Do You Feel Now? Content Joywave July 31 After the viral success of songs such as…

Leopold and His Fiction, courtesy. Daniel Leopold’s residence history reads like a best-of for musically inspirational cities. Raised in Detroit, the frontman of Leopold and His Fiction spent a dozen or so years in San Francisco before he made the the move to Austin six years ago. Leopold and…

Admittedly a bit late to the Sheer Mag party, I didn’t start hearing rumblings about the Philadelphia-based band until after its 2016 SXSW show. Friends returning from Austin gushed about the high-energy punk outfit who, at the time, had only put out a couple EPs. Need to Feel Your Love…

Four years after recording her very first single (“Known Better”), Australia’s Meg Mac is gearing up for Friday’s U.S. release of her debut album, the soulful and emotive Low Blows. Twenty-seven-year-old singer-songwriter Megan McInerney says the experience of recording 10 new tracks was certainly different than what she’s done in the past.…

Every week, there’s a plethora of new music at our fingertips. Artists on platforms such as Spotify and Bandcamp are plentiful and the radio offers a steady deluge of new singles, but who has time to sort through all that? RIFF does! We pooled our resources to find some of…

Public Service Broadcasting, “Every Valley.” Public Service Broadcasting’s third album, Every Valley, is a beautiful, though intense examination of the rise and fall of the Welsh mining industry. Obscure and oddly specific at first, the narrative explored on the band’s new release is one that could easily be extrapolated to…

Chris Baio, courtesy. Quirky is certainly one way to describe Chris Baio’s Man of the World, his second released under the name Baio. You’ve likely heard him previously playing bass and providing background vocals for Vampire Weekend, of which he’s a founding member. Man of the World Baio June 30 Baio…