Santana performs at BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 26, 2019. Photos: Shawn Robbins. NAPA — Guitar legend Carlos Santana, closing out BottleRock Napa Valley 2019 on Sunday along with Mumford and Sons, saw it as his mission to fight fear with love. On several occasions,…

Dexter Tortoriello of Houses photographed before a show at the Fox Theater in Oakland on March 5, 2019. Photos: Joaquin Cabello. OAKLAND — After five years in Los Angeles, Dexter Tortoriello was ready to get out. The songwriter, musician and producer, best known for the ambient electronica project Houses, had realized…

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 the…