Braids: Joni

Montreal-based three-piece Braids is making some of the most intricate electronic pop we’ve heard: take “Joni” where Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s voice snaps and stretches, yelps and exhales—setting the pace for the ricochets of synth and drum hits. Braids releases a slower-paced music video to match, where Standell-Preston figures things out with a fictional partner while telling herself: “We don’t know where we are going / I …

High Water: Changed The Locks (Lucinda Williams Cover)

Folk rocker Lucinda Williams’ bridge-free 1988 song “Changed the Locks” is so bad-ass and to the point that there’s not much room for other artists to cover it with justice (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers once tried). High Water (aka Will Epstein) ventures deep into his own improvisational background to paint an even more heartrending version, starting with his opening wail on the saxophone (“I …

Garbage: Empty

That feeling when a song and its music video is everything you hoped from a band you’ve long loved. In the new video for their single “Empty,” Garbage reunites with Sam Bayer who directed the band’s first three videos, including “Only Happy When It Rains” in 1995 (and whose notable career kicked off with directing Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). With just a few 360 …