Ray Cummings

Near the end of Digi Snacks, Wu-Tang mastermind RZA states, "Hip-hop is all about having fun." And the production maestro, chess fanatic, and underrated MC indeed has a fabulous time spitting spastic, marble-mouthed verses on his fourth solo album. But soul-funk group Stone Mecca harshes RZA's buzz with its dank...

As the irresistibly luminescent new CD Andorra demonstrates, Caribou's Dan Snaith has come a long, long way since being legally stripped of his old Manitoba moniker. These days the same guy who once playfully goofed on post-rock's fetid corpse (on albums such as Up in Flames and Start Breaking My...

Despite the eyebrow-raising moniker's aggressive overtones, the Bristol, England duo of Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power wants little more than to give your cerebellum a therapeutic, thoroughly intense sound massage. With Street Horrrsing, these Fuck Buttons engineer a sort of reverse, photonegative, canary-in-a-coal-mine scenario, threading strands of coruscating and...

"I can't tell if we're running from or coming to," singer/guitarist Jason Simon muses on the folky, eulogic "Ain't Got Nothing (To Go Wrong)," his voice dripping with idiosyncratic weariness. He could easily be opening up to a lover, making a statement about the accelerating decline of Western civilization, or...

Being the girlfriend of Tender Forever's Melanie Vera has to be as much of a curse as it is a blessing. On the plus side, your French expat squeeze writes nose-wrinklingly cute, keyboard-driven pop songs that thoroughly convey the depths and assorted complexities of her feelings for you. On the...