Erika Spring: Scars

From a forthcoming five-track EP of the same name, “Scars” acts as a reminder that Erika Spring (of Au Revoir Simone) knows how to cast an emotional spell and transfix with otherworldly beauty. Co-written and produced by Dap-Kings’ Homer Steinweiss, the lead single addresses Spring’s grief over an early miscarriage. Sadness emanates from the piano-driven track, but there’s power here, too.

How To Dress Well: Nonkilling 6 | Hunger

A pulsing collaboration between How To Dress Well‘s Tom Krell, visual artist Justin Daashuur Hopkins and Hopkins’ art collective NOH/WAVE, the just-released video for “Nonkilling 6 | Hunger” offers an intimate, amorphous depiction of the singer/songwriter/producer. The track will appear on the next How To Dress Well album, The Anteroom,out 19 October. It’s Krell’s fifth studio album under the moniker and he describes it to Pitchfork as “a passage into …

Japan’s Elevator From Earth to Low Orbit Space

“For over a century scientists and sci-fi writers alike have dreamed of creating a space elevator to ferry astronauts and payloads between the Earth and low orbit,” Jason Daley of Smithsonian Magazine writes. Now, Japanese scientists will make a step toward such a futuristic development. Two satellites—roughly four cubic inches—will test elevator motion in space, as they launch with a 33-foot steel cable binding them, …