Madame Gandhi has made a name for herself as an artist, lyricist, percussionist, and an outspoken advocate for gender liberation. After the Women’s March in 2017, her song “The Future is Female” shot up in the Spotify Viral US Charts. She has released two short-form albums, Voices in 2016 and Visions in 2019. Her new song “Waiting For Me” which will appear on her upcoming short-form album, Vibrations, opens up with the powerful line, “I'm not every day tryna turn up to the sound of my own...

KHRUANGBINMordechai(Dead Oceans) Texas trio Khruangbin explores the power of storytelling on its third studio album. The band’s signature international, multilingual sound journeys through ’60s and ’70s American and Persian funk, East-Asian beach rock, and Caribbean trip-hop. Named after a friend who guided bassist/vocalist Laura Lee Ochoa’s rebirth from a period of disconnection, Mordechai lays bare her most introspective memories. The rosy fondness of nostalgia is enveloping on “Dearest Alfred,” and “Pelota” shows the group at its best, with guitarist Mark Speer setting the tone with sharp...

Amid the call for racial justice, we’ve seen lots of changes being made in various industries: Lady Antebellum changed their name to Lady A, Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell relinquished their roles voicing biracial black cartoon characters, and pancake mix giant Aunt Jemima will be retired due to its racist origins. The Chicks, formerly known as the Dixie Chicks, are the latest to make this kind of change. The country trio has been around since 1989 and has made a name for themselves in the music industry...

HINDSThe Prettiest Curse (Mom + Pop)     Coming in hot with their third album, Madrid quartet Hinds double down on their garage-pop sound with bigger production and a renewed energy that ranges from fiercely lovesick to charismatically in-your-face. Bilingual opener “Good Bad Times” floats in on a moony melody and a stomping beat before “Just Like Kids (Miau)” lights into unsolicited advice-givers and nuisances (“Can I tell you something/About you and your band?”) with their signature ramshackle group vocals turned to a gleeful 11. Much of The...

As the foremost ambassador of New Orleans bounce music, Big Freedia is the rule-breaking, ass-shaking, noise-making pop star we need right now A LOT HAS CHANGED for Big Freedia since we first featured her in BUST’s April/May 2010 issue. A gay man who prefers she/her pronouns, Freedia (pronounced as in Kahlo) was making waves at that time as one of the major forces reviving New Orleans’ club scene in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina through the medium of “bounce” music. An electrifying performer with a booming...

This past Friday, Beyoncé surprised her audiences with the release of a new song “Black Parade," which she wrote on her Instagram, “celebrates you, your voice and your joy.” The song's celebratory energy is particularly fitting, as it was released on Juneteenth: the holiday observing June 19, 1865, when the enslaved in Texas were informed of their freedom, two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. A Texan herself, Beyoncé’s song – which opens with the lines, “I’m goin’ back to the South” – is a proud reclamation...

Summer’s almost here and we could all use a sweet escape. And while your mileage might be limited, your imagination doesn’t have to be. Allow Hayley and The Crushers to transport you to their candy-laquered, neon world. On the heels of their third full-length album,Vintage Millennial, (January 2020, Electric Pop Records) the San Luis Obispo, CA-based surf punks are bringing a few more popsicle flavors to the picnic with their latest E.P. BUST is excited to premiere their video for upbeat summer anthem "Jacaranda," off their two-song EP of...

ALICE SMITHMystery (Repost Network)  Alice Smith has made a career of commanding genres—rock, soul, R&B, and beyond—while remaining authentically herself. She’s the rare performer who sounds best live, when the raw, emotive power of her voice is free to strike without studio tinkering. Luckily her new EP Mystery (a follow-up to her Grammy nominated 2006 debut, For Lovers, Dreamers & Me, and 2013’s She), captures the magic of her evocative sound. Smith enlivens ballads like “Mystery” and “The Meaning” with jolts of penetrating range, making electric contact with the soul of the listener....

If only Lana Del Rey could just promote her new music without having to drag other women musicians. Del Rey, who is known for her melancholic songs such as sleeper hit "Summertime Sadness," made her unfiltered thoughts about fame, feminism, and the music industry known in a Thursday Instagram post. "[I'm] fed up with female writers and alt singers saying that I glamorize abuse when in reality I'm just a glamorous person singing about the realities of what we are all now seeing are very...

For the first time in 20 years, I have time to reflect on some of the pictures I have made: for bands, for magazines, for myself. This quarantine is affecting everyone in both individual and collective ways. I feel lucky this is how it is affecting me. Certain images are bringing back my time as a photographer just starting out, and how the culture of New York then has become part of my DNA. As most of us were getting our first emails in the late '90s, the...