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International

“Anuther Sunny Hulliday” Is an Irresistibly Catchy Reminder That Sometimes the Best Summer Songs Aren’t the Ones That Are Necessarily Cool

“Anuther Sunny Hulliday” tries to subvert the summertime anthem-quite the opposite-but because it seems entirely unfazed by whatever algorithm-approved brand of “summer vibes” currently dominates streaming platforms. Instead, Mick J. Clark has delivered something that feels like it’s meandered in from a forgotten decade, tote bag in one hand, novelty sunglasses in the other, and […]

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Reetoxa’s “You Deserve Better Than Me” Is the Breakup Song That Knows When to Walk Away

There are roughly six billion songs ever written about getting someone back. The entire pop landscape is built around elaborately creative ways of singing “Actually, could we just sort of rewind everything?” so it’s a bizarre novelty to hear a song take the path less taken and acknowledge something infinitely harder to admit: you’re pretty

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The Most Extraordinary Thing About Bottle Is That It Sounds Nothing at All Like a Museum Piece

It’s a beautifully romantic notion that a songwriter might spend thirty years sitting on one of his finest ideas. Not in the cinematic, ‘lost masterpiece’ sense, but in the more plausible sense that some people hang on to a good bottle of wine on the shelf until a day arrives that seems ‘worthy’ of opening

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The Boldest Act in Music Today Isn’t Writing Four Songs According to “Next Time (I Won’t Be Falling)” EP

Streaming has birthed an odd kind of musical inflation. Albums are deluxe editions. Deluxe editions become “complete” editions. Singles include five mixes that are only discernibly different if you possess the hearing of a bat or the patience of a saint. Somewhere along the line, we became conditioned to believe that quantity was an acceptable

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Philmac’s “Live My Life” Is Hardly Going to Reinvent the Wheel of Motivational Music, but It Does Manage to Deliver a Much Deeper Experience

There’s a whole subgenre of inspirational music that runs on the concept of if you think hard enough, the universe will reward you with achievement, bliss and the inevitable epic sunset during the montage sequence. Actual persistence is rarely as cinematically inclined. However, it’s usually waiting; waiting for an email to drop in your inbox,

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Dorian Manages to Spin Awkwardness Into Pure, Ecstatic Euphoria on OOO

For an artist who has spent the better part of six years releasing genre-hopping indie projects, Dorian seems surprisingly uninterested in hewing to the contemporary dance-pop blueprint. From a bouncy bassline, pristine synth textures, layered backup vocals, a singalong-ready chorus that seems expressly designed to compel you to the nearest dancefloor-but what distinguishes OOO from

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I Believe Is Just Made to Be a Good Soundtrack for an Over-Easy Conversation with Someone You’ve Known for Years

Jeff Hodges’ I Believe enters the world with a press release full of signifiers. This is an Americana-country ballad with all of the typical modern saints in mind spanning Zach Bryan, Chris Stapleton and Leon Bridges, arriving complete with respectable streaming numbers, a burgeoning live performance series dubbed the N4KED MAN Sessions, and a biography

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“Since Emilia” Remembers That Grunge Isn’t About How You Feel Miserable; It’s About How You Feel Human

There’s only so many times you can mention that you really miss the ’90s before people begin to ask if you’ve considered buying a flannel shirt and playing Singles in a loop. Grunge nostalgia is an entire industry now. Half the bands who do it sound like they’re painstakingly replicating a museum exhibit titled ‘Kurt

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