12.11.2012

You know you’ve got a great music video on your hands when, two days after its premiere, you flip the nation the bird during a Super Bowl halftime performance and the main media discussion about you...

“Well, I’m glad it worked,” Matthew E. White laughs. He’s talking, of course, about introducing himself; his record label, Spacebomb Records, and his massive (at times up to 30-piece) band into the...

It was nearly a year ago that a wave of cinematic nostalgia swept over Oscar voters in the form of two films that reminded Old Hollywood what they had been missing. The critical and red carpet success...

Feature documentary Wagner and Me has few surprises—it informs and entertains its audience and does so quite respectably. But what elevates the film above a standard “talking heads” doc, however, is...

“It’s all just numbers.”-Olivia Dunham If nothing else seems familiar to longtime Fringe fans about this season, they can take comfort in at least one thing: Fringe always comes back strong from a...

Ever since Jim gave Pam that teapot way back in season two, Christmas episodes have been something special for The Office. There’s just something about the season that brings the ragtag Dunder Mifflin...

Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University, writes on prominent American figures, including Ronald Reagan and Andrew Jackson. Along...

I. Departure On a cool night in early June, a handful of Brooklynites stand on the corner of Driggs and North 10th in Williamsburg, about to set out...

With Carnival, his third novel, Montreal-based author Rawi Hage once again takes facts from his own life, blends them with the carnivalesque (quite literally in this case) and pushes things to the...

After two stellar EPs, Lord Huron released their debut album Lonesome Dreams this year. We should have known the release would land on our Best of 2012 list after their charming performance at our...

By this point, you’ve probably heard of The Lumineers, or at least unknowingly bopped around with their catchy track “Ho Hey” stuck in your head. Their debut album would go on to make our Best of 2012...

This year Damien Jurado released Maraqopa, a sonic treat that was recorded with a live-to-tape feel and received an outpouring of critical support. His stirring live performances, though, are nothing...

The North, Stars’ latest release, features chilly imagery and mentions cold winters, but it was bright and warm the last time we caught up with the band. We met up with Stars on the beach at DeLuna...

Icelandic group Of Monsters and Men always puts on a good show, and there’s no better place to put on-stage skills to the test than in Austin, Texas during SXSW. Live from the Stages on Sixth, listen...

Always a great live show, Paste had the pleasure of meeting up with The Avett Brothers at Hangout Festival in 2011. Check out this intimate rendition of “Slight Figure Of...

Indie pop outfit Hospitality recently wrapped up their fall tour, but if you missed out on this Best of 2012 band you needn’t worry. They performed for Paste during SXSW this year, and you can watch...

If you liked Heaven, check out this video of The Walkmen. Recorded from the Codfish Hollow Barn in Maquoketa, Iowa, the band lives up to their impeccable reputation with a live version of “On The...

In partnership with Sennheiser, we’re offering another exclusive video session from the Paste Ruins at the Newport Folk Festival. For this session, Swedish folk twosome First Aid Kit set up in Fort...

Grimes’ Visions might be the Canadian artist’s third LP, but the album was no doubt her breakout as an emerging artist. The LP showed her sound refined after Geidi Primes and Halfaxa with looped,...

With Hogan, “Pain” worth the waitWhen Kelly Hogan’s last solo record was released, Ground Zero was still smoldering in Manhattan. More than a decade has slipped by since then, but in the meantime...

It’s no secret to anyone who hummed along to Lord Huron’s first two EPs that their seductiveness is deeply rooted in ripe and verdant polyrhythms. But strip away the hypnotic percussion, and lush...

Damien Jurado wasn’t kidding when he told fans that his new release was going to be unlike anything they’d heard from him before. Fifteen years and 10 albums into his career, the Seattle singer...

If vocalist-mandolinist Chris Thile and his merry band of prog-grass virtuosos decided to record an album crammed with foot-stompin’ breakneck noodling, I’d be first in line to carry their cases to...

Let’s talk about what’s happened in dramatic, instrumental-heavy rock (some might call it post rock) in the 10 years since Godspeed You! Black Emperor...

Bettye LaVette’s voice, sanded raw and consumed by emotion, is a powerful witness: strong, down and above all, real. Those attributes infuse Thankful N’ Thoughtful with a truth in being, a delivery...

It’s about a six-hour flight from the East Coast of the United States to Reykjavík, Iceland, the hometown of up and coming sextet Of Monsters and Men. And the band’s debut album is like that moment...

Chock full of songs about crooked bankers, the pleasures of recreational drugs and the evils of organized religion, Todd Snider’s reputation as America’s favorite alt-folk shit disturber remains...

To live and breathe in the sketchiest part of the Quarter…to hustle and flow, to let go…to get saved and find a funky kind of salvation… It is the life and witness of one Malcolm Rebennack, a New...

Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent are notable singer/songwriters in their own right. Hearst released 2010’s Are You Ready To Die EP through Filter US Recordings, and landed one of its songs—the brash...

Chan Marshall/Cat Power has spent the last few years tentatively courting the mainstream, traveling to Memphis for her most accessible album (2006’s The Greatest) and following it up with a tepid LP...

It’s hard to avoid reading too much into a record cover when its name is proudly proclaiming an Attack on Memory. It also helps that the 2012 version of Cloud Nothings sounds a lot less like 2011....

Howler just wants to have fun.Forget about all the comparisons to The Strokes or the hype-factor that NME and various music blogs have perpetuated. They’re just down to have a good time—or at least...

The fact that Woods has released seven albums in the last seven years isn’t the most remarkable thing about the Brooklyn folk band’s recording output. What stands out beyond the steady delivery of...

These things always seem like such a good idea on paper, don’t they? A collaboration between two iconoclasts who—though hailing from different...

“A no concession policy remains in force,” thunders a familiar voice on “Reagan.” As the right wing in American politics continues to sputter into helpless self-delusion, as they try frantically to...

The band may feature two of the most charismatic indie-rock frontmen working today—namely, Britt Daniel of Spoon and Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs, along with New Bomb Turks drummer...

I’m staying up late And I’m making amends While the smile from heaven descends If love is a sin and beauty is a crime All things are beautiful In their time -“Scarlet Town”Can anyone remember the...

These songs are labyrinths. Ethereal, harmonic, beautiful—but labyrinths nonetheless. So, that is to say, Shields is a difficult, rewarding album—one to get lost in.Gorgeous and frayed, the wandering...

If you still haven’t listened to Harlem River Blues, Nashville heir-to-the-Americana throne Justin Townes Earle’s 2010 album, go do that first, before you get into Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You...

Hospitality’s self-titled debut is crammed to the brim with hooks: Amber Papini sings in a cutesy, faux-British lilt, almost as if she’s projecting these songs to herself in a hair brush while...

The Lumineers’ debut record is instantly gratifying—and not in the hasty, shallow way often found in pre-fab pop songs either.While some records take days or months to properly digest, there’s an...

John Darnielle and his Mountain Goats have frequently been at their best while capturing characters in dark situations, usually struggling to get through. Darnielle’s direct lyrics can pinpoint an...

Kendrick Lamar’s debut LP opens with a prayer—“Lord God, I come to you a sinner and I humbly repent for my sins,” begins “Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter”—and his personal quest for...

Last year, Andrew Bird contributed a cover of the Kermit the Frog classic “Bein’ Green” to a Muppets tribute album. Elsewhere, he partnered with sculptor and instrument maker Ian Schneller on a...

Midway through “Nothing That Has Happened So Far,” a bulldozer of sublime psychedelia on Tame Impala’s sophomore LP, a mysterious voice emerges from the swirl: “You’re thinking about everything,...

For a decade now, The Walkmen have cultivated a distinct sound. Paul Maroon, Walter Martin, Matt Barrick, Peter Bauer and Hamilton Leithauser consistently produce albums with a mix of jangly post-punk...

Five years: That’s how long it’s been since The Shins released their last record. It’s not necessarily an exorbitant amount of time, but a lot can change in five years.Five years ago, I was in the...

I wasn’t necessarily sad as much as I was bitterly cynical when Def Jux closed its proverbial doors. High-school boys of a certain creed and disposition knew they never had a shot hanging with the...

On a hot summer afternoon in 2009, I was driving back from Manchester, Tenn., with my sister and a few friends after four amazing days of music and fellowship at Bonnaroo. It was here—sun-beaten,...

Coming off their much-lauded Teen Dream, indie-pop duo Beach House return from two years of touring with their highly anticipated fourth full-length album, Bloom. It’s another solid output from the...

With a music landscape that’s leaning more and more toward electronics and heavy production, Japandroids turned heads by doing just the opposite with this year’s eight-track, zero-percent-fat...

As far as supersonic rises to fame go, Jeremy Lin could stand to learn a thing or two from the Alabama Shakes. In the span of a year, the band has gone hawking their self-titled EP on the Nashville...

“I am alone in this room with you,” sings bruised Brooklyn angel Sharon Van Etten on Tramp, her breakout third album. Her words float in a slow-motion mist above barely-there acoustics and underwater...

Perhaps the most defining moment in Fiona Apple’s career is the video for “Criminal” and the ensuing controversy over its “heroin chic” aesthetic. The clip, directed by Mark Romanek, showed Apple and...

J. Tillman was putting out solo albums long before he was in Fleet Foxes, and his latest, under the moniker Father John Misty, often recalls his old band. But it also recalls John Denver, Neil Young...

As a guest voice on Watch the Throne or a modest presence in the rabble-rousing rap group Odd Future, Frank Ocean tends to leave a calming effect on everything he touches. It’s interesting, then, that...