Holy Wars, courtesy. This week’s column offers lots of metal with Holy Wars and KYNG, Soft Play’s metal-tinged punk, Tim Montana’s country-tinged post-grunge, and rounding it out some pop by Alex Winston, an upbeat song of indistinguishable genre from Funke and the Two Tone Baby, and some new-wave by…

Clockwise from top left: RØYLS, Chloe Flower, Girl Wilde, Killstation, Delac and Alex Wnston. Every week, there’s a plethora of new music at our fingertips. Artists on platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp are plentiful, and the radio offers a steady deluge of new singles, but who has time to…

Sumac, courtesy. Drug Church, “Avoidarama” — If Turnstile formed in Seattle during the mid-’90s, there’s a good chance Drug Church would have emerged. This Albany, New York group has all the stomp riffs hardcore kids like to flail around to. But there’s a distinct flavor of slacker rock in…

Phoenix photographed at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, on June 10, 2017. Photo: Alessio Neri RIFF doubled in readership in 2017, and as editor-in-chief, so did my workload. As one of five people running our humble little publication on a day-to-day basis, while planning as far out as…

Max Hershenow and Alex Winston are Post Precious. Courtesy: Catie Laffoon. Michigan singer-songwriter Alex Winston and MS MR’s Max Hershenow are so over big labels. Together as new duo Post Precious, Winston and Hershenow are going back to basics when it comes to writing, recording and releasing their own…

Alex Winston, courtesy. Alex Winston is a singer who I’m surprised hasn’t already made a bigger splash in the indie music world. Sure, she made some waves with “Sister Wife” and “Velvet Elvis,” but once those died down, I haven’t heard any chatter about how her next album is…