sonic youth

Across the 2000s and 2010s, there was a whole lot of angsty entertainment to watch on TV or in movies. Often, the lines between those different types of entertainment became blurred, much to superfans’ delight. Cameos from big-name musicians or even entire bands were a constant in the biggest TV shows and movies of the […]

Kathleen Hanna led the charge of the riot grrrl movement and helmed pioneering bands, including Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and the Julie Ruin. Aside from being a trailblazer in the music community, she has also been a formidable political activist for over 30 years, taking a strident public stance against sexism, homophobia, transphobia and white […]

When searching a bookstore for music memoirs, it’s likely that the shelves are packed with men such as Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash and Keith Richards. While it may seem that there are fewer books written by or about women musicians, they are growing in numbers. Women in the music industry refuse to be silenced, and, […]

We may be taught not to judge books by their covers, but are we always so kind to albums? In a sea of iconic cover art designed by prolific artists, the importance of release presentation can’t be understated. So, naturally, when we see musicians taking on the daunting task of designing the artwork themselves, we […]

When it initially blasted into the world from New York’s Lower East Side almost concurrently with punk in 1977, it was dubbed no wave. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to it as “skronk,” an onomatopoeia based around the general guitar sound. He uncharitably dubbed its ’80s practitioners “pigfucker” bands. This writer’s personal name for […]

At this point, Dr. Martens—Docs, DMs, whatever you want to call them—have been around for 74 years. And, for almost all of that time, in one way or another, they’ve been inextricably entwined with alternative music—and, of course, the subcultures which that music has spawned. Transcending their origins as factory-safe work boots, over the course […]

Post-punk had to happen. Punk rock opened all this space for people to make exactly the kind of art or culture that the disenfranchised had been imagining in their heads, and maybe had limited means or skills by which to make it. But what if you didn’t want to crank out recharged three-chord rock ’n’ […]

As some of our favorite pop-punk bands continue to show us, we have a lot to thank 1990s alternative music for. Not only did the mainstream explosion set the foundations for the genre collective as we know it, but it put quite a number of women on the forefront. While the gender distribution across the alternative genre […]

Alternative rock still dominated popular music in 1993. This obviously begged the question of just how “alternative” something was if it was now on a major label and on the radio. Not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we’d never have to hear Whitesnake again. Bottom end and distortion returned to rock record-making in a […]

The ’90s were chock-full of absolute icons, and no, we’re not referring to the Princess Diana Beanie Baby or JNCO jeans when we say that. From Nirvana to *NSYNC, pop and grunge ruled the airwaves. However, it seems like some women-fronted acts don’t get nearly enough credit for all of their contributions to the music […]

Remember the time Hootie And The Blowfish performed on NBC’s Friends and Monica even wound up getting a hickey from one of the band members at a meet and greet after the concert? Of course you do. You probably also remember that the band actually didn’t play on the show and, even worse, weren’t seen […]

As the longest-running animated television show in history, The Simpsons has been around for the rise and fall of grunge, the emergence of pop punk and countless other shifts in the music world. Throughout the past 31 years, The Simpsons has landed some of music’s most successful artists as guest stars. While the fan-proclaimed “golden […]

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 has been an incredibly difficult year for the live music industry. In particular, independent music venues, artists and companies are facing closures and unforeseen economic hardships. Now, Weezer and Fall Out Boy are among the artists giving back to the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO). Two signed Weezer and […]

If anyone had told us in 2005 that emo culture wasn’t going to dominate forever, we would’ve rolled our eyes. Of course, as time went on, it became clear that no cultural shifts are permanent. And as quickly as we’d found ourselves perusing iTunes and blogging about My Chemical Romance, it all went away.  Not […]

These 10 albums represent SST Records’ greatest achievements. Greg Ginn began Solid State Tuners at age 12 as a mail-order electronics business still thriving in his early adulthood. In 1978, when pioneering California indie label Bomp! Records dragged its heels releasing Nervous Breakdown, the debut EP from his punk band Black Flag, Ginn figured he […]

There was a time when the “supergroup” was super obvious. When the world saw legendary axman Ted Nugent making his guitar squeal with the guy from Night Ranger to his right and a guy from Styx to his left, we all knew there was something special afoot. (Classic-rock lovers will recognize this ’80s band to […]

What a year 1987 was! Ronald Reagan was all all up in the Iran-Contra affair, but his Teflon psyche made sure none of the backlash stuck to him. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brought uptight conservative rule to the U.K. for a third term. Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) came to notoriety as a domestic […]

Oftentimes, there simply isn’t a guitar chord ugly enough to convey what you want to say. And that’s why we have noise-rock glory. Sometimes torturing a guitar just sounds better than happily strumming it. This fact has been proven time and time again. And in 2020, these 10 noise-rock tracks were built to defy your […]

Welcome to the best punk albums of 1987. But first, some context. Feb. 20, 1987: An attack by a domestic terrorist called “the Unabomber” plants a bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store. The owner is injured. March 4: President Ronald Reagan owns up to what was swiftly called the Iran-Contra Affair in a […]