Ian Ureta

Here’s the thing about “Forsaken”: it’s not content to just exist as another riff-heavy alt-rock track. It feels like it’s arguing with itself; a slow-motion collapse disguised as a song. Rooftop Screamers, the ongoing project of Portland veteran Mike Collins, has always been a space for collaboration, but here, with Stephen McSwain on vocals, Collins […]

Every so often, a song comes along that doesn’t try to overwhelm you. It just sits beside you, patiently, until you realize it’s been saying something important the whole time. “Wasteland Whispers,” the new track from Indianapolis alt-rock outfit Pentrilox, is one of those songs. It’s not a cry into the void so much as

Every artist has one song that feels less like a career move and more like an act of preservation; a way to keep someone, or something, alive in sound. For Ashley Wolfe, the Denver-based artist behind Blind Man’s Daughter, that song is “Harbor Boulevard.” A departure from her usual genre-defying mix of progressive rock, metal,

“I’m my biggest fan,” Trueclaw admits, and honestly, fair enough. If I wrote something this pretty, I’d probably be insufferable too. That line isn’t bravado; it’s survival. When you’re an independent artist from Uppsala, Sweden; writing, producing, mixing, and probably spiritually communing with your DAW at 3 a.m, self-belief isn’t a luxury. It’s a fuel

When I reviewed Michellar’s “Never Say Sorry,” I called it a diary entry set to music; a song that quietly refused to play by the rules of modern pop vulnerability. It was small, deliberate, and human in all the ways streaming culture tends to erase. But with “Truth Over Lies,” Michellar flips that intimacy outward.

Lisa Lim’s “Lucky One” is one of those songs that sneaks up on you. It doesn’t hit you over the head with drama, and it doesn’t drown in sentimentality. Instead, it just breathes; slow, steady, confident. The kind of song that sounds like it’s been sitting by a river for an hour, thinking about life

Imagine you’re listening to a song about famine and instead of despair, it gives you hope. And not, like, Coldplay hope. Actual, data-driven, Steven Pinker-style hope. That’s “Great Escape Famine,” the second track on Transgalactica’s upcoming album Onwards and Upwards, and the middle child of their “Great Escape” trilogy which, by the way, sounds less

There’s a certain type of rapper who doesn’t need to scream about how authentic they are because the authenticity is baked into every syllable. Black Silver, better known as The Navigator, falls squarely into that camp. His new single “It Was Written” doesn’t so much announce itself as it does loom into view, slow and

Every once in a while, a love song sneaks up on you, not because it’s saying anything particularly groundbreaking, but because it’s delivered with such brutal sincerity that you’re forced to sit down and reckon with it. Enter Cydan’s “falling 4 u,” a track that feels less like a song and more like the emotional