The artists.

Psychedelic Soul/Instrumental

The final album. Q-Tip and Phife. A checklist of America's failures. RIP Phife Dawg.

Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou

Tuareg Desert Blues

Tuareg resistance. Pioneer of Ishumar guitar style born from exile and rebellion.

Abdel Aziz El Mubarak

Sudanese/Sudanese Pop

Sudan's golden-voiced crooner. Abdel Aziz El Mubarak. Ace Records. Standards from Khartoum's heyday.

Abel Lima

Funana/Cabo Verde

Cabo Verdean musician. The cosmic sound of the islands finally revealed on Analog Africa.

Abner Jay

Outsider Folk

One-man band from Florida. Played a bone. Sang through a toilet paper tube. Mississippi Records.

Adrian Quesada, Neal Francis

Black Pumas' Adrian Quesada with Chicago soul man Neal Francis. Jaguar Sound on ATO Records. Instrumental soul under a wide Texas sky.

AfroCubism

Afro-Cuban/World

Malian griots and Cuban soneros in the same room. AfroCubism. Nonesuch. The cross-Atlantic conversation Mali and Cuba were always meant to have.

Against All Logic

Electronic/House

Nicolas Jaar's dancefloor alias. 2012 - 2017. Other People. Looped, crated soul stretched into house.

Ahmad Kaabour

Arabic/Songwriter

Lebanese composer-singer. Ounadikom. Habibi Funk. A resistance anthem drawn from Palestinian poet Tawfiq Ziad's poem, addressed to the Arab street.

Ahmed Fakroun

Arabic Disco / Synth

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Alberto Baldan Bembo

Library/Soundtrack

Italian library music. Film scores for movies about mothers and friends and summer.

Algiers

Post-Punk Soul

Atlanta post-punk band on Matador. A sound that refuses to sit down. Shook features Samuel T. Herring and Jae Matthews.

Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy

Frafra Gospel/Highlife

Frafra gospel from Bolgatanga. Philophon. Joy as a political act.

Alphaville

Synth-Pop

German synth-pop band. Forever Young has outlived every joke about its decade.

Amadou & Mariam

Perseverance

Blind couple from Mali who met at the Institute for the Young Blind. 'Sabali' means patience in Bambara.

Amanaz

Zamrock

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Ammar 808, Susha

Electronic/North African

Sofyann Ben Youssef. TR-808 percussion meets the Maghreb. Glitterbeat Records.

Andres Landero y Su Conjunto

Cumbia

King of cumbia. African, Indigenous, Spanish roots.

Asha Bhosle

Bollywood Playback

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Aziza Brahim

Saharan Blues

Saharawi singer on Glitterbeat Records. Songs of exile and return from the refugee camps of Western Sahara.

Bab L' Bluz

Gnawa/Desert Blues

Gnawa trance and desert blues, female-fronted. Nayda! Real World Records.

BADBADNOTGOOD, Charlotte Day Wilson

Jazz/Soul

Toronto's jazz trio meets the city's velvet R&B voice. IV. Innovative Leisure, Third Side Music.

Bargou 08

North African Electronic

Revival of Bargou trance music with electronic production

Basa Basa

Highlife/Afro-Funk

Homowo. Soundway Records. Ghanaian highlife and funk named for the Ga harvest festival.

Bill Callahan

Songs that move at the speed of weather. Smog. Drag City. The voice that knows what it knows.

Bill Withers

A working man's soul music. Questions asked quietly. Still in the Navy when he recorded his first album.

Black Merda!

Black Power

One of the first all-Black rock bands. Renamed after 1967 Detroit Rebellion. Direct statement on police violence and systemic racism.

Black Star

Mos Def and Talib Kweli on Rawkus. Black Star. The song that borrowed its title from a Toni Morrison line about eyes and thieves.

Blackrock

Funk/Soul

Obscure funk 45 on SOH Records. A drum break crate diggers chase.

Bob Marley & The Wailers

Reggae

Anti-colonial anthem. Catch a fire.

Bobby Charles

Swamp Pop/Songwriter

Wrote See You Later Alligator at seventeen. The Band covered his songs. The swamp's best-kept secret.

Bonga

Semba/African

Angola's Bonga, singing the song that named his exile. Angola 72/74 on Lusafrica. Semba as refusal.

Brad stank

Indie Jazz

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Bread And Butter

City Pop

Sibling soft-rock duo from 1970s Japan. Monday Morning. City pop at its smoothest.

Broken Social Scene

Indie Rock

Collective resistance through sound

Burna Boy

Afrobeats

African Giant. Afrobeats' global voice. The Lagos sound gone worldwide.

Caïro Liberation Front

Electronic/Chaabi

Cairo electro-chaabi. Eurabia Vol. 2. Arab street sounds run through machines.

Caleb Belkin

Lo-fi Hip-Hop/Electronic

Lo-fi beatmaker working from a self-released discography. Bedroom instrumentals that drift like weather over the creek.

Carlos Lamartine

Afro-Latin

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Chalino Sanchez

Norteno/Corrido

The king of the narcocorrido. Songs about men who knew how they would die. Musart-Balboa.

Charles Bradley

The Screaming Eagle of Soul. Late bloomer who spent decades as a James Brown impersonator before Daptone Records found him.

Chassol

Experimental/Jazz

Christophe Chassol's Big Sun, a record mapped from Martinique. Tricatel. Piano that charts a place the way a cartographer charts a coast.

Childish Gambino

Psychedelic Soul

Black psychedelia and spiritual transcendence.

Chiwoniso

Mbira/Soul

Zimbabwe's mbira queen. Nyami Nyami. Zvichapera, it will pass. A voice of resistance gone too soon.

Clap! Clap!

Electronic/World

Italian producer Cristiano Crisci. A Thousand Skies on Black Acre Records turns stars into rhythm.

Cortex

French Jazz-Funk

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Crooked Fingers

Library/Exotica/Electronic

Eric Bachmann. Merge Records. Songs worn down to their bones so only the necessary parts remain.

CV Vision

Library music meets lounge exotica. Tropical. South of North.

Dalton

Jazz-Funk / Library

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

DAM

Palestinian Hip-Hop

First Palestinian hip-hop group. Direct resistance against occupation.

Damien Jurado

Quiet songs that land like a letter you didn't know you needed. Secretly Canadian.

Darondo

Soul/Funk

San Francisco's mystery soul man. Drove a Rolls, vanished for decades, rediscovered by Ace Records. Didn't I is a late-night classic.

Das Racist,Heems

Diaspora Identity

Indian-American identity, Flushing Queens culture, academic references layered over humor. Label Greedhead Music.

Dave Van Ronk

Folk/Blues

The Mayor of MacDougal Street. Taught Dylan how to be Dylan. Brecht and Weill sung by a man who knows exactly what every word costs.

David Bowie

Plastic Soul

Nixon-era disillusionment through Black American musical forms.

David Tapfuma, Esa

Afro House/Zimbabwean

Zimbabwean mbira and vocals. Nyami Nyami Records. Harare's electronic pulse.

Dayme Arocena

Latin Jazz/Soul

Cuban singer on Brownswood Recordings. A voice that carries the island wherever it goes.

Debruit

Electronic Turkish

French producer on ici. Debruit and Istanbul fuses Anatolian folk with electronic production.

Deltron 3030, Del The Funky Homosapien, Dan The Automator, Kid Koala

Del, Dan The Automator, and Kid Koala rapping from the year 3030. Deltron 3030. A dystopian concept record that still hasn't aged.

Dengue Fever

Psychedelic Rock / Khmer

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Derrick Harriott

Rocksteady

Jamaican music legend. Singer, producer, label owner. Early dub pioneer. Received Jamaica's Order of Distinction.

Destroyer

Art Rock

Dan Bejar. Vancouver art-rock that never stays in one place long enough to be named.

DOMi & JD BECK

Jazz Fusion

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Don Hutson

Reggae/Rocksteady

Jamaican rocksteady from the vaults. Got To Leave This Place. Dub Store Records. A leaving-song pulled back into the light by Japan's crate diggers.

Donald Byrd

Jazz-Funk

Jazz legend. Existential political inquiry.

Donatella Viggiano

Neapolitan Song

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Dorcas Kaja & Les Soeurs

Gospel / Choral

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Dorothy Ashby

Soul-Jazz / Harp

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Drug Cabin

Indie Rock/Lo-fi

Hazy, sun-warped folk-rock from Nathan Thelen and Marcus Congleton. Yard Work. Mexican Summer.

Drugdealer, Kate Bollinger

Soft Rock/Indie Pop

Michael Collins' west-coast soft-rock project. Hiding in Plain Sight. Mexican Summer. A duet with Charlottesville singer-songwriter Kate Bollinger.

Ebo Taylor, Uhuru-Yenzu

Afrobeat/Highlife

Conflict. Strut Records. The highlife and afrobeat guitar master with his Uhuru-Yenzu band.

El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe

Dabke/Folk

Traditional Palestinian dabke ensemble on DARNA. Dance as resistance, as memory, as survival.

Elizabeth Cotten

Folk/Piedmont Blues

Wrote Freight Train at eleven. Played a right-handed guitar upside down and backwards. Smithsonian Folkways.

Erick Cosaque

Caribbean Resistance

Gwo Ka drum music rooted in enslaved African communication and resistance. 45 years independently recording.

Ernest Ranglin

Jazz/Ska

The father of Jamaican jazz guitar. Softly With Ranglin. Island Records. The man who wired mento and ska to bebop.

Exuma

Folk/Calypso

Bahamian folk music channeling spirits. The Obeah Man himself. Mercury Records.

Father John Misty

Indie Folk/Satire

Josh Tillman. Sub Pop. A wedding song about the impossibility of knowing anything for certain.

Fatoumata Diawara, Yemi Alade

Afropop

Malian star Fatoumata Diawara meets Nigeria's Yemi Alade. London Ko on Wagram/3ème Bureau. Two continents, one groove.

Faye Webster

Indie Folk/R&B

Atlanta's sad country-soul. Pedal steel and deadpan longing. Secretly Canadian.

Fela Kuti

Afrobeat Resistance

Yoruba proverb. Fela created Afrobeat as a political weapon. Arrested 200+ times. Mother killed by soldiers. Defining figure of musical resistance.

Felixson Ngasia & The Survivals

Highlife/Afro-Funk

Nigerian highlife from Strut's Nigeria 70: No Wahala. Black precious colour, a title that says exactly what it means.

FKJ, ((( O )))

Electronic/Soul

French multi-instrumentalist Vincent Fenton. Ylang Ylang EP. Mom+Pop. Warm keys and slow water, named for the flowering tree.

Francis Bebey

African Electronic

Cameroonian polymath. African Electronic Music 1975 - 1982. Ozileka. A satirical jingle that doubles as a small machine poem.

Frank Proffitt

Folk/Appalachian

Appalachian banjo and balladry. High Atmosphere: Ballads And Banjo Tunes From Virginia And North Carolina. Rounder Records. The valley's own music, sung by a man who lived it.

Frankie Reyes

Latin/Bolero

Boleros y mas. Latin standards on a Wurlitzer. Stones Throw Records.

Fred Williams, The Jewel Band

Instrumental / Psychedelic

Wichita's Smart's Palace soul. Tell Her b/w The Dance Got Old. Numero Group. A 45 rescued from the Kansas jukeboxes.

Gaming World

Video Game Covers

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Gene Sikora

Private Press

Private press soul. One song, pressed in a basement, almost lost. Numero Group.

Gil Scott-Heron

Jazz Poetry

Black radical media critique. Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

Gilles Peterson's Havana Cultura Band

Latin Jazz/Afro-Cuban

Brownswood Recordings project exploring the sound of Havana across multiple albums.

Glass Beams

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Grandaddy

Indie Rock/Electronic

Modesto's sad robots. Jason Lytle. Sumday. Lo-fi symphonies about the end of small things. V2.

Hallelujah Chicken Run Band

Chimurenga/Afro-Rock

Thomas Mapfumo's first band, years before chimurenga had a name. Analog Africa's 4-Track Recording Session. The seed of Zimbabwe's protest music.

Haruomi Hosono

Exotica/Electronic

Yellow Magic Orchestra founder. Japanese Americana from a parallel timeline. Light In The Attic.

Helado Negro, Flock of Dimes

Indie Pop/Electronic

Roberto Lange's warm electronic folk meets Jenn Wasner's silver voice. Lotta Love. 4AD.

Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

Lounge/Jazz

The A in A&M. Whipped Cream & Other Delights. The brass sound of the sixties bachelor pad.

Herbie Hancock

Jazz-Funk

Jazz legend. Head Hunters on Columbia/Legacy. Watermelon Man: a standard reimagined as funk.

Hotel Eden

Indie Pop

Indie pop from a room you can never quite find again. Self-released and self-contained.

Hugh Masekela

South African Jazz

Spoken-word trumpet lament for exploited Black miners under apartheid. Spent 30 years in exile. Trumpet was a gift from Louis Armstrong.

Hurray For The Riff Raff

Folk/Rock

Puerto Rican-American singer from the Bronx on ATO Records. The Navigator. Songs that push forward.

Jake Xerxes Fussell

Folk/Field Recording

Folklorist interpreting traditional American songs from archival sources.

James Booker

New Orleans R&B/Piano

The Piano Prince of New Orleans. Rounder Records. The Bayou Maharajah, an eye-patched piano genius fusing classical chops with gutbucket blues.

Janelle Monáe

R&B/Funk/Neo-Soul

The ArchAndroid, an Afrofuturist concept album on Bad Boy/Wondaland. Saul Williams spits over the uprising. Dance or die.

Jefferson Airplane

Ufo/Cosmic

San Francisco psychedelic pioneers. Anti-war counterculture.

Jerry Jeff Walker

Country/Outlaw

Live at Gruene Hall. MCA Records. The Mr. Bojangles troubadour, live at the oldest dance hall in Texas.

Jim Sullivan

Ufo/Mystery

LA psych-folk singer who vanished in the New Mexico desert in 1975. His car found abandoned with wallet, guitar, unsold albums.

Joe Hisaishi

Film Score/Orchestral

Studio Ghibli's first great score. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Soundtrack: Towards the Faraway Land. Joe Hisaishi. The wind over the toxic jungle, set to orchestra.

Joe Purdy

Folk/Americana

Arkansas-bred troubadour with a worn, plainspoken voice. Who Will Be Next? on Mudtown Crier Records. Songs for the long road out of the valley.

Juan Wauters

Latin Indie

Cross-cultural Latin American identity

Judith Reyes

Corrido/Protest

Mexico: Days of Struggle. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. The corridista who chronicled the 1968 student movement and the Tlatelolco massacre in song.

Jungle

Neo-Disco

Acceleration as contemporary life metaphor.

Junior Parker

Memphis Soul

Memphis soul and blues singer. Covered the Beatles before the Beatles were cool.

Kahil El'Zabar

Spiritual Jazz

Chicago's AACM percussionist and bandleader. Kahil El'Zabar's America the Beautiful. Spiritmuse Records. Jazz as ritual, as healing.

Kel Assouf

Tuareg Desert Blues/Electronic

Tuareg desert rock. Black Tenere. Fransa names the colonizer. Guitar as refusal.

Kermit

Muppets

Pure hope. The lovers, the dreamers, and me.

Keven Louis Lareau

Folk/Country

A homesick, plainspoken plea for the rural and the real. Take Me Back To The Country. Self-released through the digital distributors (3249649 Records DK).

Khruangbin

Thai-Funk / Instrumental

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Killer Mike

Political Hip-Hop

Critique of Reaganomics and the prison-industrial complex.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Mild High Club

Psychedelic Rock/Jazz

Two bands' shared microtonal daydream. Sketches of Brunswick East. Melbourne's psych meets LA's soft-focus jazz-pop on ATO Records.

L'éclair

Krautrock/Psychedelic

Geneva instrumental ensemble. Polymood. Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Records. Kosmische funk from the Alps.

LA LOM

Cumbia/Latin Instrumental

Los Angeles League of Musicians. La Lom. Wonderwheel Recordings. A hotel-lobby trio playing cumbia, bolero, and '60s soul.

Lalo Schifrin

Spy-Jazz / Soundtrack

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Leila Forouhar

Persian Pop

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Leon Bridges

Fort Worth soul revival. A voice that sounds like it was recorded in 1964 and somehow got here anyway.

Les Filles de Illighadad

Tuareg/Tende

Tuareg women's collective from a village outside Abalak. Eghass Malan. Sahel Sounds. Tende percussion and guitar led by Fatou Seidi Ghali.

Les McCann

Unity

Soul jazz pioneer. 'Compared to What' is one of the great anti-war anthems: 'The president's got his war.'

Les Yper-Sound

Library/Psychedelic Jazz

French library music. Explorations in Drums & Sax. Fat Beats. A title that means everything and nothing.

Letta Mbulu

Afro-Pop/Soul

South Africa's voice of the struggle and the dancefloor. In The Music The Village Never Ends. RCA Records Label. A praise-song for the hard-working woman.

Lily Chao

Chinese Folk

Folk songs from mid-century Taiwan. Reissued by Akuphone.

Link Wray

Rock/Instrumental

The man who invented the power chord. Shawnee ancestry. The FBI once banned Rumble for fear it would incite violence.

Little Simz, Obongjayar

UK Hip-Hop

Little Simz's Sometimes I Might Be Introvert on AGE 101. Nigerian-born Obongjayar rides shotgun. Bars with a rifle's patience.

Los Destellos

Cumbia/Psychedelic

Peruvian cumbia pioneers. Chicha before chicha. Iempsa. Guitars from another planet.

Los Kory Huayras

Andean Folk

Indigenous Andean resistance music.

Maajo

Balearic/Afro-Electronic

Finnish ensemble fusing West African rhythm with disco and balearic drift. Tropic of Tulli. Sahel Sounds.

Mac DeMarco

Indie Rock

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Mahmoud Ahmed

Ethio-Jazz/Soul

The golden years of Addis Ababa, from Éthiopiques Vol. 3 on Buda musique. A horn section that sways like a mirage.

Marty Robbins

Country/Western

Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. Columbia Records. The El Paso album, a doomed outlaw's last night, sung with a gunslinger's calm.

Matt Berry

Psychedelic/Library

British actor and musician. Psychedelic library music with the menace of a 1970s public information film.

Max Graef

Electronic/House

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Mbongwana Star

Congolese/Experimental

Congolese band from Kinshasa. Street music shot through with distortion and electricity on World Circuit.

Mdou Moctar

Tuareg Desert Blues

Tuareg guitar hero. Uranium exploitation, colonialism, Sahel struggle.

MF DOOM, MF Grimm

The villain's theme. Metal Face. Operation: Doomsday. The beat that defined an era of underground rap.

Michael Nau

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Mild High Club

Psychedelic Pop

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Mississippi John Hurt

Country Blues

Recorded in 1928. Farmed for thirty-five years. Rediscovered in 1963. The gentlest revolutionary.

Mo Kolours

Electronic/Soul

Half-Mauritian, half-English percussionist and producer on We Release Jazz. Original Flow.

modest by default

Vaporwave/Electronic

Vaporwave and corporate melancholy. Selling influence (and more). Late capitalism as ambient music.

Molly Sarlé

Electronic/Plunderphonics

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Mulatu Astatke

Ethio-Jazz

Father of Ethio-jazz. Music survived the Derg regime's cultural suppression. First African student at Berklee.

My Morning Jacket

Indie Rock/Southern Rock

Louisville's reverb-soaked rock. It Still Moves. ATO Records. Jim James's falsetto ringing through a Kentucky grain silo.

Nahawa Doumbia

Wassoulou

A Wassoulou voice from Mali's south. Les voix d'or du Mandingue on King Music Abidjan. Songs in Bambara that carry the field and the market.

Najat Al Saghira

Arabic Classical

Classic Egyptian vocalist. A voice from Cairo's golden age of cinema and song.

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood

Pop/Duet

Iconic closing. Loss, love, the end of something.

Nicolas Godin

Electronic/Soundtrack

Half of Air. Au service de la France. Because Music. A spy-series mood piece named for white Algiers.

Nicolas Jaar

Political Resistance

Chilean-American. Album Sirens addresses Pinochet dictatorship and US imperialism. Father Alfredo Jaar created 'A Logo For America'.

Nina Simone

Jazz/Soul/Protest

High priestess of soul. Sang Langston Hughes. Sang the movement. Sang what everyone else was too afraid to say.

Noname

Hip-Hop/Spoken Word

Chicago's poet-rapper, self-released. Room 25. A quiet, precise voice that refuses the machine on her own terms.

Nora Brown

Old-Time Banjo

Young banjo prodigy preserving Appalachian traditional music.

Nu Genea

Mediterranean Funk

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Nubiyan Twist, Nubiya Brandon

Afro-Jazz/Broken Beat

Leeds' ten-piece groove collective. Jungle Run. Strut. Horns, breakbeat and a featured voice asking for nothing but room.

Oblique Occasions

Vaporwave-adjacent collage. iMusician. Haunted Japanese mall music.

Off Course

City Pop/Folk Rock

Kazumasa Oda's band before the solo career. City pop melancholy from the Tokyo tower blocks.

Øro

Protest / Electronic

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

PAINT

Psychedelic Rock/Indie

Pedrum Siadatian of Allah-Las, solo and drifting. Spiritual Vegas. Mexican Summer.

Parliament

Afrofuturism

George Clinton's Afrofuturist masterpiece. Black people in outer space as radical reclamation of future narratives.

Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir

Gospel-Funk

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Peter Cat Recording Co.

Psychedelic Pop

New Delhi band that sounds like a wedding reception at the end of the world. Crooning through chaos.

Photay

Electronic

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Portishead

Trip-Hop

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Propherts Of Da City

Cape Town hip-hop crew from the 90s. Universal Souljaz on Ghetto Ruff.

Purple Mountains

Indie Folk/Songwriter

David Berman's final project on Drag City. Songs written by a man who knew exactly what he was leaving.

Quilapayún

Nueva Canción/Folk

Chilean folk ensemble of the Allende years. Basta (Remasterizado 2021). Discos Pueblo. La Muralla sets Nicolás Guillén's poem about the wall that lets love in and locks the enemy out.

Rafiq Bhatia

Experimental/Jazz

Avant-garde guitarist and composer on Rest Assured. Sam Cooke's anthem filtered through experimental guitar.

Residente

Latin Political Hip-Hop

Rejects US hegemony over Latin America. Features Ibeyi.

Richard Swift

Indie Rock

Lo-fi producer. Died 2018. Raw emotional honesty.

Rizan Said

Syrian Dabke/Electronic

Syrian keyboard dabke. Saz Û Dilan. Akuphone. Wedding music that survived the war.

Rob

Spoken Word/Proto-Hip-Hop

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Robohands

Jazz/Electronic

London-based instrumentalist. Jazz-adjacent hip-hop instrumentals on KingUnderground.

Roger Webb

Library Music

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Roots Manuva

UK Hip-Hop/Dub

Rodney Smith. Big Dada. British rap's conscience. We're all witnesses.

Ruba Shamshoum

Alternative/Arabic

Palestinian-Irish artist. Fuqaati (My Bubble) is a song about interior space in a world that will not leave you alone.

Russ Garcia & His Vocal Choir and Orchestra

Space-Age Pop / Vocal

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

Alt-Country/Barroom Rock

Louisville barroom poetry. Dancing on the Edge. Country music for people who never quite left.

Saint Levant

Palestinian Alternative

Born during Second Intifada. Gaza, exile, Palestinian identity.

Sam Amidon

Folk

Vermont-born singer and multi-instrumentalist on Nonesuch. Traditional songs reimagined.

Savages

Post-Punk

Feminist fury, silencing and speaking out

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80'

Afrobeat

Fela's son. Global Black consciousness. Features Carlos Santana.

ShannonX

Electronic

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

Soul/Funk

Black soul revival of Woody Guthrie. Land belongs to everyone.

Shintaro Sakamoto

City Pop/Soft Rock

Ex-Yura Yura Teikoku frontman. Tropical soft rock. Let's Dance Raw. Other Music.

Shuggie Otis

Soul/Funk/Psychedelic

Johnny Otis's son, a one-man band. Inspiration Information on Epic/Legacy. A cult classic that took decades to find its audience.

Simply Red

Soul/Pop

Mick Hucknall. A song about his mother leaving. Blue-eyed soul that means it.

Songhoy Blues

Saharan Blues

Malian desert blues band formed in exile after jihadist occupation drove them from northern Mali.

Songs: Ohia

Lo-Fi Folk

Jason Molina. John Henry as American labor mythology.

Sonzeira, Gabriel Moura

Samba/Brazilian

Gilles Peterson's Brasil Bam Bam Bam project on EMI. Gabriel Moura's voice carries the samba. A love letter to Brazilian song.

Sound Track Orchestra & Silvy

Film Song

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Spencer Cullum, Sean Thompson's Weird Ears

Alt-Country/Pedal Steel

Nashville pedal-steel ace's songbook project. Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection 2. Full Time Hobby. A British-born sideman stepping out front with a rotating cast of singers.

Sufjan Stevens

Chamber Pop

UFOs and Midwestern mysticism. The cosmic intruding on the mundane.

Super Guitar Bros

Video Game Covers

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

Surprise Chef

Jazz-Funk/Instrumental

Melbourne cinematic soul-jazz band. Education & Recreation. Big Crown Records. Moody grooves scored like a '70s library film.

Susso

Mande/Kora

Gambian griot family band built on the kora. Keira. Sahel Sounds.

T. Gold

Folk/Singer-Songwriter

Self-titled debut. Sleepy Cat Records. A quiet song about leaving one house for another.

Te'amir

Ethio-Jazz/Electronic

LA percussionist and producer Te'amir Sweeney. Abyssinia & Abyssinia Rise. Tru Thoughts. Ethiopian rhythms run through modern machines.

Tears for Fears

New Wave

Cold War anxiety dressed as pop perfection.

Teebs

Electronic/Beat Music

Brainfeeder beatmaker and painter. His album Anicca is named for the Buddhist concept of impermanence.

Tennyson

Electronic/Jazz

Genre-defying sibling duo

Terry Allen

Americana/Art Country

Texas songwriter and visual artist. Songs and sculptures cut from the same cloth.

The Abyssinians

Roots Reggae

Rastafarian anthem. Stand up for your rights.

The Barn Bats

Appalachian Folklore

Local NC legend of ghostly orbs near Brown Mountain. Folk standard covered by Kingston Trio, Roy Orbison.

The Beach Boys

Psychedelic Pop

Dennis Wilson. Fragile beauty and environmental undertones.

The Chakachas

Latin Funk/Soul

A Belgian studio group on AVCO, best known for Jungle Fever. Latin funk with a movie-theater grin.

The Coup

Communist Hip-Hop

Boots Riley. Marxist revolutionary. Eat the rich.

The Doc Watson Family

Appalachian Folk

The music that came down the mountain. Blind since infancy, a guitarist who changed what American folk music could be.

The Last Poets

The Last Poets on On The Subway. When the revolution comes, it will bring its own drum. Harlem's forebears of hip-hop.

The Lijadu Sisters

Afrobeat/Soul

Nigerian twin sisters Kehinde and Taiwo. Danger. Numero Group. Yoruba harmony over funk grooves, decades ahead of their time.

The Melody Mates

60s Pop

1960s harmony pop pulled from the Numero Group archives. A single, a b-side, then silence.

The Montgomery Improvement Association

Gospel/Freedom Songs/Field Recording

The organization of the Montgomery bus boycott, captured on Smithsonian Folkways. A freedom song with the grain of a field recording.

The Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band

Molam / Thai Funk

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

The Sweet Enoughs

Indie Pop

Music featured on Balm Valley Authority.

The Weather Station

Art Pop

Climate grief, capitalism as theft

Tim Heidecker

Folk-Rock/Americana

Fear of Death. Spacebomb Records. The comedian's earnest, deadpan country-rock about land, mortality, and what we own.

Timber Timbre

Folk Noir

Haunted folk. Religious imagery, gothic Americana.

Timmy Thomas