Petrichor is singer/songwriter/violinist (and one-half of folk duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw) Heather Trost’s second solo album. Trost makes good use of these seven tracks, exemplifying her strong sense of journey and dynamic composition. Although written in 2019, the album is prescient of the current collective experience. Breezy, psychedelic opener “Let It In” declares, “Make the space for yourself/For others/We may not have the chance again.” Meanwhile, “Tracks to Nowhere” is dulcet heartache—a single guitar and layers of harmonies build with swinging strings and...

When Mary Wilson, founding member of The Supremes, died suddenly on Monday, February 9, 2021, we lost a true legend. Her longtime friend and publicist Jay Schwartz released a statement deeming Wilson “a trendsetter who broke down social, racial, and gender barriers.” Motown Records founder Berry Gordy remembered her as “a trailblazer [and] a diva.” In addition to her multi-decade solo career, Wilson’s name is immortalized in the legacy of The Supremes and Motown Records. Wilson co-founded The Supremes as The Primettes in 1959 along with...

On the follow-up to Ana Roxanne’s 2019 debut, the L.A.-based ambient artist expertly stitches together droning instrumentation and sparse vocals, then layers in bits of spoken word (“Untitled”), atmospheric keyboard loops (“- - -”), and sound effects (“Venus”). The seven tracks flow into one another, creating a full soundscape best experienced as a whole. With inspiration drawn from themes of the body, gender, beauty, and more, the album feels just as much like a poetic collection of verses as it does a musical effort. Let...

A special 7-inch featuring the trippy 1967 hit “Some Velvet Morning,” backed with the previously unreleased Kinks cover “Tired Of Waiting For You”—out in November for Record Store Day—is just the beginning of Light In The Attic’s year-long celebration of the legendary Nancy Sinatra. The singer, actor, activist, icon of the swinging ’60s, and self-proclaimed feminist (who remains an outspoken advocate for female musicians) boasts a body of work that spans nearly half a century. In February, LITA’s Nancy Sinatra Archival Series continues with Nancy Sinatra: Start Walkin’...

Voice is a mysterious thing. Was iconic singer/producer Genya Ravan born with that impossibly rich, heart-wrenching tone, or did she somehow inherit it along the way, picking up flecks of gold and gravel through decades of towering highs and devastating lows? One spin of her new single “I Who Have Nothing,” tells it all—and after nearly fifty years in the tumultuous music biz, there's a lot to tell. The track is included on a 7” split record featuring The Shang Hi Los, out February 19 (and available for pre-order now) on Rum...

Just over two years ago, I wrote a piece for BUST about five female artists who should be on your radar. Being that there are more talented women in music than ever these days, I decided to do it again. The five women I’ve chosen this time around are a talented and very diverse group, to say the least. Their genres, ages, races, and sexual orientations are all over the map. Some are brand new and some have been around for quite awhile. What they have in common...

With her cathartic folk-rock project This Is the Kit, Kate Stables intuitively navigates 2020’s ups (recording and touring with the National) and downs (creative processes slowed by COVID-19). “It’s hard to remember that the cycle of good will return,” she writes, “but it will be back.” For Off Off On, Stables and her band harness those fleeting silver linings in a luminous sound bath of nylon-stringed guitars, piano, horns, and lyrical soul searching. “Was Magician” references powerful figures like Ursula K. Le Guin and Greta...

“We would like to observe a radical shift in the current paradigm of complacency in regards to oppressive power dynamics, genocide, racism, white supremacy, and colonization,” states Melbourne-based Indigenous two-piece Divide and Dissolve. Members Takiaya Reed and Sylvie Nehill embody this vision through heavy doom and dronescapes, often offsetting eerie neoclassical riffs with crushing drums, radiating saxophone, and guitar played as loud and as low as it will go. All eight tracks seethe with a potency capable of pulverizing the outmoded lineage of the very...

What Stevie Nicks is to rock fans, Siouxsie Sioux is to lovers of goth-rock.The lead singer-songwriter-sorceress Siouxsie Sioux has disclosed in interviews that she is not one for nostalgia, but I just can’t help feeling nostalgic for everything lately, especially the 30th anniversary of the song “Kiss Them For Me” by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Here is the hilariously dated music video that begins with the shot of someone popping open champagne in slo-mo.  Hearing it now, the song feels as vibrant as it did in 1991. Compared to...

Katy J Pearson leans softly into country heartbreak with Return. On this debut solo album, the former Ardyn member dusts off her acoustic guitar, folky feels, and newfound truth for the long haul. With fewer strings attached and a less-is-more approach, the singer/songwriter creates what she calls her most “honest” and “proper” songs yet. Like someone line dancing alone, Pearson makes bold musical moves with elegant simplicity and spunk. It’s moseying along, melancholy pop with perspective. By the time Pearson sings “I’ve changed for the...