Ian Ureta

Despite the brilliantly melodramatic title, Piper Connolly‘s latest single “body bag”, which sounds like the title for either a horror soundtrack or early-2000s emo compilation album has nothing at all to do with the actual idea of death. The idea that “nobody can do what we all see as justice”, in this song about people […]

Some songs are about after you’ve made the wrong decision. Some songs are about while you’re making the wrong decision. “Can’t get you out of my mind” by Michellar falls clearly into the latter category. “Can’t get you out of my mind” isn’t a song about healthy emotional boundaries. It isn’t a song about moving

After years fronting the alt-rock outfit Pseutopia, New York City’s Laji George moves to center stage on ‘This Is My World’, his debut solo single, opting for sincerity over flash. Released on July 2, the track is both a declaration of purpose and a personal introduction from a singer ready to embrace vulnerability. With elements

It’s no easy task to capture disaster in a song. If you focus too heavily on the sorrow, the result can feel like a musical interpretation of a heritage Minute with distorted guitars; on the other hand, if you swing too far into arena-rock-hero mode, you can find yourself creating something that oddly feels victorious

Political rock spent fifty years of its 20th century in the delusion that bellowing more loudly was the same as saying more. Some band or another would emerge every decade, claim society was falling apart, discover a distortion pedal and then churn out something more suited to a school council election than any real kind

Some cover songs take a classic song for a politely restrained reinterpretation. They’ll adjust the chords slightly, or maybe swap an acoustic for a piano. They’ll slow things down by 10 BPM and assume that’s job done. Others seem to take the approach that is marked “Crazy ideas”. Magumbo’s “cover” of Mariah Carey’s “We Belong

In a move that is both incredibly sweet and a bit on the dark side, LY@TT have penned a tribute song to Pete Ham, one of music’s most unfortunate lost souls, and decided that the best way to honor him was to leave the painful parts in all their jagged glory. For listeners only familiar

Some songs show up with the subtleness of a brick through a window. They do exactly what they say they’re going to do, point out who the baddies are and then proceed to scream their message at you until you either agree with them or take yourselves and your attitudes somewhere else. Deportee’s “Black Women

At some point in every dream, it loses its shine. Most people aren’t interested in talking about that point. Most people are interested in the dream. The initial momentum. Late-night idea sessions. Inspirational quotes overlaid on stock photos of mountains. The dreams where you wake up to it all working out, then do a magazine

This is a weird time to be involved with music; it demands we all be content creators, influencers, amateur marketers, compulsive oversharers, and, when we have time, musicians. All the songs now come pre-packaged with personalities, branding, carefully manicured online identities detailing everything the artist had for breakfast and their subsequent thoughts and feelings and