ListenUp

A surreal offering from Perfume Genius, Amandla Stenberg's Mac DeMarco cover, a sparkly tune by Phoenix and more in our musical round-up

Perfume Genius: Die 4 U Last week, Perfume Genius (aka Mike Hadreas) released his fourth record No Shape and now, the video for “Die 4 U”—directed by the remarkably talented Floria Sigismondi. The song alone is a slinky, dark and minimal tune that Hadreas’s sultry voice teeters over. Subtle erotic asphyxiation, the lyrics don’t give much away. The music video is equally full of contrasts: …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

From an iconic chair's common inclusion in porn, innovations taking on climate change, Porsche's one-millionth 911 and more this week

1. New York Design Week’s Exponential Growth Now stretching across almost the entire month of May, New York Design “Week” has positioned NYC in the global design circuit with force. As Artsy notes, “By the 24th of this month, more than 500 design-related events will take place across New York City—and that’s just the official NYCxDesign calendar.” Design Week has long been centered around the …

The Death of the MP3

A file type that all but destroyed the music industry as it had existed for decades, the MP3 has reached the end of its life. Developed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in the late ’80s as a means to transmit sound information in small packages, MP3s then became a valid means to store information—until Fraunhofer started to give away a software that consumers …