Spotlights, “Love & Decay.” Brooklyn trio Spotlights has steadily developed their “atmospheric bludgeoning” from the 2009 single they spontaneously recorded. Married couple Sarah and Mario Quintero mix thick riffage with lofty synths and shoegazey ambience, while Chris Enriquez’s dynamic drumming empowers and directs the immersive walls of sound. This third…

With two solo albums and collaborations with the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Heather Woods Broderick has become far more than a folk singer-songwriter. Her ethereal singing and luscious arrangements seamlessly blend ambient music, chamber pop and acoustic balladry. And her latest album, Invitation, takes a more personal turn.…

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of music on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I love how platforms like YouTube, Bandcamp and Soundcloud have opened the floodgates of independent artists. But navigating the flood is easier said than done. That’s where RIFF steps in. We do the heavy…

Coming off its 2016 opus, Paradise Gallows, Inter Arma was still getting lumped in with the doom metal troop. It was understandably frustrating, considering the Virginia quintet’s unique blend of old-school death metal, psychedelic sludge and avant-garde black metal. Beside the gargantuan riffs of Steven Russell and Trey Dalton, Andrew…

Since his Grammy-winning 1986 debut, The Way It Is, Virginia pianist Bruce Hornsby has ridden the line between a musician’s musician and chart-topping songwriter. From his forays into bluegrass and gospel funk, to getting sampled by 2Pac and a stint in The Grateful Dead, Hornsby’s taste matches his technicality. On…

Bangladeshi electronica musician Sajeeb Saha has steadily moved past the Skrillex remix that gave his Jai Wolf alias his big break in 2014. Single “Indian Summer” and following EP, Kindred Spirits, foreshadowed an expansion past the EDM format, backing up massive drops with more songwriting chops. Saha’s push to establish…

Periphery, “Periphery IV: Hail Stan.” Since Washington, D.C.’s Periphery helped spearhead a Meshuggah-worshiping tech-metal offshoot, what’s kept the band relevant hasn’t been  the polyrhythms, but the songwriting. The band’s hyper-syncopated breakdowns have proven an unlikely partner for sticky vocal melodies and adventurous playing. Now on its very own label,…

The Road: Part I in 2017 saw James LaVelle take full control of the legendary trip-hop outfit Unkle. His combination of moody art rock and spacious beat music reached new levels of atmosphere and bombast, which the second installment aims to push farther. LaVelle approached The Road: Part II…

Since releasing its 2016 debut, Body War, Show Me The Body has become a standard-bearer for New York hardcore. Over 10 years in the East Coast DIY scene, the trio’s unmistakable combination of industrial hip-hop, sludge metal and anarcho-punk simultaneously captured the heart and the fringes of underground rock. Following a…

Toward the end of La Dispute’s 2008 debut, vocalist Jordan Dreyer proclaimed authentic love in spite of everything: “We are but lovers/ We are the last of our kind/ And if we let our hearts move outward/ We will never die.” La Dispute circa 2019 now begins its final…