** strobe warning for all music videos and concert footage When hyperpop crashed into the mainstream music conversation and charts a few summers back, I was excited. As the months passed, the initial buzz became a sense of dread. What does it mean for something that began as a radical subversion of the limitations of industry standard pop to potentially be subsumed as a trend within it? What would happen to the beloved underground scene? Rather than becoming iterative or disappearing, a new...

While many fans were surprised when Charli XCX announced, "the dance floor is dead, we're making rock music now," this transition seemed almost inevitable to those who have been paying attention to her two primary producers. Finn Keane and A.G. Cook have been working with Charli for roughly a decade, and their most recent collaboration Thy Slaughter reveals a lot about the album's potential direction.

You may have started to notice the name Quiet Light circulating in online indie music spaces (or maybe you're an OG fan from Bandcamp!). But if you haven't, allow me to introduce you. Quiet Light is the folktronica brainchild of Texas-born Riya Mahesh. Signed to True Panther Records, Quiet Light seems poised to follow in the footsteps of the label's other recent breakout success, Oklou. Both artists share a focus on ambient, atmospheric, and ethereal synth-pop heavily influenced by acoustic...