Singer/guitarist Barbara Lynn was a rare commodity during her heyday. Not only was she a female instrumentalist (one of the very first to hit the charts), but she also played left-handed -- quite well at that -- and even wrote some of her own material. Lynn's music often straddled the line between blues and Southern R&B, and since much of her early work -- including the number one R&B hit "You'll Lose a Good Thing" -- was recorded in New Orleans, it bore the sonic imprint of the Crescent City. Lynn was born Barbara Lynn Ozen in Beaumont, TX, on January 16, 1942; she played the piano as a child before switching to guitar, inspired by Elvis Presley. In junior high, Lynn formed her own band, Bobbie Lynn and the Idols; at this point, her musical role models veered between bluesmen (Guitar Slim, Jimmy Reed) and female pop singers (Brenda Lee, Connie Francis). After winning a few talent shows and playing some teen dances, the still-underage Lynn started working the local clubs and juke joints, risking getting kicked out of school if she had been discovered. Singer Joe Barry caught her live act and recommended her to his friend, producer/impresario Huey P. Meaux, aka the Crazy Cajun.

With her parents' consent, Meaux brought Lynn to New Orleans to record at the legendary Cosimo's studio. Lynn cut a few singles for the Jamie label with the understanding that if none hit, she was to attend college instead of pursuing music right off the bat. In 1962, her self-penned ballad "You'll Lose a Good Thing" became a national hit, reaching the pop Top Ten and climbing all the way to number one on the R&B charts. Her first album (of the same name) was also released that year, featuring ten of her originals among its 12 tracks. Lynn continued to record for Jamie up through 1965, producing follow-up R&B hits like "You're Gonna Need Me" and "Oh Baby (We Got a Good Thing Goin')," the latter of which was recorded by the Rolling Stones in 1965. In 1966, Lynn switched over to Meaux's Tribe label and cut "You Left the Water Running," which became something of an R&B standard and was covered by the likes of Otis Redding. In 1967, she signed with Atlantic and had another R&B hit with "This Is the Thanks I Get" early the following year; she also issued another album, Here Is Barbara Lynn, in 1968. Lynn scored one last hit for Atlantic in 1972's "(Until Then) I'll Suffer," but by this point, she had several children to worry about raising; dissatisfied with her promotion anyway, she wound up effectively retiring from the music business for most of the '70s and '80s, though she did play the occasional low-key tour.

Lynn returned to music in the mid-'80s, touring Japan for the first time in 1984; she later cut a live album there, called You Don't Have to Go, which was eventually issued in the States by Ichiban. Lynn had managed to retain a cult following among connoisseurs of American soul and blues in several different pockets of the world, and toured internationally during the early '90s. In 1994, Bullseye Blues issued her first full-fledged studio album in over two decades, So Good; Until Then I'll Suffer followed in 1996. Lynn later caught on with the respected blues label Antone's, and in 2000 she cut Hot Night Tonight, which featured a couple of raps by her son Bachelor Wise. ~ Steve Huey

Toronto, Ontario-based jazz ensemble BadBadNotGood make expansive music that straddles the line between '70s soul-jazz, alternative hip-hop, and experimental electronica. BadBadNotGood initially gained attention in the early 2010s playing jazz covers of hip-hop tracks by the likes of Odd Future and MF Doom. It was a sound they developed on their first two records, 2011's BBNG and 2012's BBNG2, covering songs by A Tribe Called Quest and Kanye West as well as My Bloody Valentine and Feist. Since then, they have balanced working on their own original songs as on 2016's IV, and collaborating on projects with hip-hop, dance, and neo-soul artists like Ghostface Killah, Kaytranada, Little Dragon, and Kendrick Lamar. 2021's Talk Memory found the group exploring fusion, new age, and orchestral influences. New Heart Designs, a collaboration with post-hardcore group Turnstile, appeared in 2023.

Founded in 2010 by Matthew Tavares (keyboards and synthesizer), Chester Hansen (bass guitar), and Alexander Sowinski (drums), BadBadNotGood came together while the members were students at the Humber College jazz program in Toronto. Communing over their shared love of jazz and hip-hop, they composed a piece based upon the music of Odd Future -- a performance of which they uploaded online. It attracted many views and was spotted by Tyler, the Creator from Odd Future. In 2011, BadBadNotGood released their debut album, BBNG. It included covers of music by Odd Future, a Tribe Called Quest, and Waka Flocka Flame and was recorded in just one three-hour session. Following the album release, the trio recorded a live session with Tyler, the Creator, opened for Roy Ayers at the Nujazz Festival in their hometown of Toronto, and performed at Gilles Peterson's worldwide awards.

Their second record, BBNG2, was released in 2012, this time recorded within a ten-hour slot and once again featuring original pieces as well as cover versions of music by My Bloody Valentine, Kanye West, and James Blake. In the same year, BBNG was the Coachella Festival's band in residence, playing six different sets, as well as the backing band for Frank Ocean. BadBadNotGood were then drafted to be part of the production and musical composition team for the soundtrack of the film The Man with the Iron Fists. They did production work for Earl Sweatshirt and Danny Brown, as well as a remix on JJ Doom's Key to the Kuffs.

The group's third record, III, was released in 2014 and included the singles "Hedron," "CS60," and "Can't Leave the Night." In February 2015, the group's collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan MC Ghostface Killah, titled Sour Soul, was released by Lex Records. In early 2016, the trio became a quartet when Leland Whitty joined on saxophone. BadBadNotGood's first album with Whitty, IV, appeared on Innovative Leisure the following July. The album featured guest appearances from Future Islands' Samuel T. Herring ("Time Moves Slow"), producer Kaytranada ("Lavender"), and rapper Mick Jenkins ("Hyssop of Love"). IV debuted on the Billboard 200 and topped the Jazz Album chart. The group's contribution to the Late Night Tales mix series appeared in 2017. The following year, they collaborated with Sweden's Little Dragon on the single "Tried."

BadBadNotGood and Jonah Yano collaborated on a cover of the Majestics' "Key to Love (Is Understanding)" in 2019. Tavares announced his departure from the band that October, though he continued working with the band as a contributing songwriter. BBNG and MF Doom recorded a song called "The Chocolate Conquistadors" for the game Grand Theft Auto Online, and the track was released in December of 2020 -- several weeks after Doom's death, but before it was announced to the public. Talk Memory, the band's first album for XL, arrived in 2021, with guests including Arthur Verocai, Brandee Younger, and Laraaji. After releasing several remixes and collaborations with Yano and Lil Silva, BBNG reworked three songs by Turnstile on the EP New Heart Designs. The group then released "Sleeper," a single with previous collaborator Charlotte Day Wilson. ~ James Pearce & Paul Simpson

Mozart Estate is a further installment in the decades-long musical journey of Lawrence, the mononymous iconoclast responsible for some of the finest, most inscrutable pop music of his time. Formerly operating under the name Go-Kart Mozart, this project focuses on bubblegum-sticky novelty pop whose earwormy melodies are balanced by the gritty, sardonic, sometimes moving topics of the songs. Whether singing about the failings of capitalism, Record Store Day, or soda pop, Lawrence's monochromatic croon is a perfect match for the boogie piano, junkshop synths, popping bass, or heavenly vocal harmonies that the songs are built around on 2023's Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! And the Possibilities of Modern Shopping. It's all a far cry from the post-punk aesthetic of Felt or the glam rock of Denim, but it's another perfect showcase for the wit and wisdom of one of pop's great eccentrics.

Lawrence spent the '70s and '80s fronting the atmospheric guitar pop band Felt, who drew much inspiration from Television, and then after a short break to recalibrate, returned to the pop music fray with the group Denim. Over the course of two albums (1992's Back in Denim and 1996's Denim on Ice) Lawrence and friends produced a bubblegummy strain of '70s glam rock whose sing-along hooks belied the oft-biting tenor of its lyrics. Near the end of that endeavor, the group shifted to making music inspired by novelty acts of the '70s like Lieutenant Pigeon and Chicory Tip as the title of the 1997 odds and sods collection Novelty Rock makes clear. After some all-too-typical wrangling with record labels led to the disbanding of Denim, Lawrence chose to further explore novelty pop with Go-Kart Mozart. Featuring a sound that was tinny and giddily cheap sounding as it mixed silly synth pop, crunchy glam, and sly socal commentary, the project's first album Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture was issued in 2000 on Lawrence's own label West Midlands Records (which existed under the Cherry Red umbrella.) After a five-year wait during which Lawrence oversaw the re-release of the entire Felt catalog and began work on various projects, Go-Kart Mozart's second album, Tearing Up the Album Chart, finally saw release. The album was again split between novelty and commentary and, as a bonus for fans of Denim, contained tracks from the group's long-shelved third album titled Denim Takes Over. After another long wait for more recordings, during which Lawrence was filmed for a documentary on his life and career that detailed his struggles and his genius (Lawrence of Belgravia, directed by Paul Kelly), Go-Kart Mozart reappeared in 2012 with a single (a cover of Roger Whittaker's hit "New World in the Morning") and an album (On the Hot Dog Streets,) which was co-produced by longtime Lawrence ally Brian O'Shaughnessy. The record was the most focused work they'd done to date and featured quite a few songs repurposed from the unreleased Denim album Denim Takes Over. Soon after it came out, Lawrence and his musical partner Terry Miles, whose collaboration dated back to Denim's 1996 record Denim on Ice, began work on a new record. It took longer than they expected, eventually seeing the light of day in early 2018. Titled Mozart's Mini Mart, the album added some music hall and electro pop to their usual junkshop glam-meets-novelty pop sound. It also featured heavy contributions from bassist Rusty Stone and production by Papernut Cambridge head honcho Ian Button. Following this release, Lawrence changed the name of the band to Mozart Estate and after another long wait, released the single "Record Store Day" in 2021 and "Relative Poverty" in 2022, then in 2023 unleashed Pop-Up! Ker-Ching! and the Possibilities of Modern Shopping, another hilariously cutting, completely original, mix of novelty, melody, and commentary. ~ Tim Sendra & Erik Hage

Gold Leaves is the solo project of Grant Olsen, half of the Seattle-based folk-psych revivalist duo Arthur & Yu. Olsen, influenced by the eclectic ‘60s songcraft of performers like Fred Neil, Skip Spence, and Scott Walker, began working on his solo debut in 2007, only to return to square one after his laptop and notes were stolen. The intervening years saw many life changes for Olsen: marriage, travel abroad, and the birth and death of loved ones, lending a new perspective to the project. With the help of Jason Quever (Papercuts) both behind and in front of the microphone, along with percussionist Ben McConnell (Beach House, Au Revoir Simone) and backing vocalists Thao Nguyen (Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, Thao & Mirah), Amy Blaschke (Night Canopy, Minus the Bear) and rootsy indie rock outfit the Moondoggies, Gold Leaves released full-length debut The Ornament for Hardly Art in summer 2011, an autumnal blend of Olsen's ragged vocals with soul-meets-'60s psychedelia arrangements. ~ Chrysta Cherrie

Mac DeMarco's music is inextricably linked to his warmly weird personality, with his distinctive songwriting style and warped production sound mirroring his off-kilter charm and apparent laid-back look on life. While the Canadian artist's image projects a low-key slacker prone to occasional antics and never taking anything too seriously, his breezy songs ironically often hide mature themes of aging, commitment, and morals under layers of chorus and reverb. Early releases on Captured Tracks and endless touring enlarged DeMarco's fan base, and the 2014 album Salad Days pushed his strange mix of slacker pop, jazz, '70s soft rock, and glam into the vanguard realm, performing well commercially and changing the shape of what was happening in indie rock at the time. Subsequent moves to New York and Los Angeles each yielded quality releases on which the multi-instrumentalist DeMarco became known for playing and recording all the parts himself. His 2017 album This Old Dog explored themes of getting older, this time with upgraded production, a trend that continued on 2019's Here Comes the Cowboy, which he released on his own imprint. In 2023, DeMarco issued both the entirely instrumental album Five Easy Hot Dogs and One Wayne G, a collection of 199 pieces of music that clocked in at a run time of close to nine hours.

Mac DeMarco was born Vernor Winfield MacBriare Smith IV in 1990, and grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. He first emerged from complete obscurity under the moniker Makeout Videotape. Immediately after finishing high school in the summer of 2008, DeMarco moved from his hometown to the warmer climes of Vancouver and self-released Heat Wave, a collection of songs he wrote and recorded while bored and listless in his new surroundings. The limited run of CDs soon sold out, and Makeout Videotape ambled into the live performance realm with the inclusion of additional players Alex Calder and Jen Clement. The band quickly gained regional recognition, signing to Unfamiliar Records and going on tour with labelmates Japandroids in the fall of 2009.

Makeout Videotape continued to perform locally and regionally as well as release new songs both digitally and physically throughout the next few years. DeMarco also began assembling a bevy of strangely psychedelic videos during this time, all baffling, and some even pertaining to the band. In an abrupt switch-up, he moved to Montreal in 2011, dropping the group in favor of a solo career. In early 2012 he signed to the Brooklyn indie label Captured Tracks, and shortly thereafter released his debut mini-album, Rock and Roll Night Club, under his own name. While not completely divorced from the jangly, glazed-over pop of Makeout Videotape, the new set of songs had a darker tone, and vague themes of androgyny and late-night loneliness shared space on the set list with goofy Ween-like moments. Mere months after the four-track-recorded Rock and Roll Night Club, the more cohesive and adult follow-up 2 appeared. Critics and music lovers alike took to DeMarco's sound, and he spent much of the following year on tour and in performance before releasing his next album, Salad Days, in the spring of 2014.

DeMarco's popularity grew immensely with constant international touring, leading to the commercial release of the demos for both 2 and Salad Days. Following a lengthy tour supporting his breakout LP, DeMarco returned to his seaside home in Queens to record the mini-LP Another One, which arrived in August 2015. Like several of his previous releases, Another One was quickly followed by an accompanying online-only release, this time in the form of the instrumental self-described "BBQ soundtrack" Some Other Ones. A cross-country move to Los Angeles marked a slight change in tone for DeMarco's quieter, more introspective third full-length, This Old Dog, which came out in 2017. Old Dog Demos, a 15-track set that featured demos on the A-side and instrumentals from This Old Dog on the B-side, appeared in 2018. Ending his tenure with longtime record label Captured Tracks, DeMarco announced that his next album would be on his own imprint, Mac's Record Label. His inaugural release and fourth proper album, Here Comes the Cowboy, appeared in May 2019 and was followed by lengthy tours of North America and Europe.

The 2023 outing Five Easy Hot Dogs was a different kind of album for DeMarco, consisting entirely of instrumental pieces recorded in transit. Written on a road trip and recorded day to day with a makeshift recording setup, the various songs on the album were named after the cities they were created in. Five Easy Hot Dogs was released in January 2023, and just a few months later, in April, DeMarco released the surprisingly lengthy One Wayne G, a collection of 199 largely instrumental songs recorded between 2018 and 2023. Despite its lengthy run time and an extremely casual approach to the majority of the sketch-like tracks, One Wayne G still broke into the upper tier of the Billboard 200 chart, reaching as high as number 56. In November of that year, DeMarco re-released his 2015 instrumental project Some Other Ones, taking the breezy, summer-ready collection out of digital obscurity and bringing it to both streaming services and a limited vinyl run for the first time. ~ Fred Thomas

From his early work with the pioneering Krautrock band Cluster to his later, more ambient solo recordings, Hans-Joachim Roedelius remained one of the most innovative and prolific figures in contemporary electronic music. Evolving from the avant-garde improvisational trio Kluster, the music of Cluster (Roedelius and Dieter Moebius) moved from harsh, alien soundscapes to the more melodic proto-synth pop of landmark albums such as 1974's Zuckerzeit. Along with Michael Rother, both members of Cluster produced hypnotic electronic rock music as the short-lived but influential project Harmonia. Roedelius made his solo debut in 1978 with the guitar-driven Durch die Wüste, then continued exploring numerous directions, from the ambient reflections of the Selbstportrait series to the jazzy abstractions of 1982's Wasser im Wind and piano-focused neo-classical works like 1984's Geschenk Des Augenblicks. Remaining prolific well into the 21st century, he has collaborated with artists such as Tim Story, Lloyd Cole, Stefan Schneider, and countless others, in addition to releasing several albums as part of Qluster, a continuation of Cluster. His vast body of work has been a major influence on several generations of experimental rock, electronic, and new age musicians.

Born in Berlin in 1934, Roedelius drifted through a series of odd jobs before turning to music, later collaborating with conceptual artist Conrad Schnitzler in a series of experimental bands including Plus/Minus, Noises, and the Human Being. In 1968, Roedelius and Schnitzler were among the co-founders of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a group of avant-garde artists from a variety of creative disciplines that quickly became one of the driving forces of the Berlin underground scene; with Dieter Moebius, they formed Kluster in 1969, performing extended improvisational live dates throughout West Germany.

Kluster released their debut LP, Klopfzeichen, in 1970; in the wake of their third album, 1971's Eruption, Schnitzler exited to pursue a solo career, and Roedelius and Moebius continued as Cluster. Working with famed producer Conny Plank, the duo began to move increasingly toward more structured soundscapes; with 1974's Zuckerzeit, they even pursued an electronic pop sound similar in spirit to Kraftwerk. Roedelius and Moebius also teamed with Neu!'s Michael Rother in Harmonia, releasing a pair of mid-'70s LPs that caught the attention of Brian Eno, who in response collaborated with the trio on a legendary session (released much later as Tracks & Traces), heralding a turn toward ambient textures (and influencing the sound of the 1976 Cluster album Sowiesoso). Roedelius and Moebius subsequently worked with Eno on 1977's Cluster and Eno and 1979's After the Heat as well.

In the interim, Roedelius made his solo debut with 1978's Durch die Wüste; after Cluster went on hiatus in the wake of 1981's Curiosum, he plunged fully into solo work, regularly releasing several new LPs each year. Although most of these projects pursued ambient paths -- the multi-chapter Selbstportrait series, 1981's Lustwandel, 1987's Momenti Felici, and 1992's Friendly Game all being good examples -- others, like 1982's Offene Türen and 1994's Sinfonia Contempora, No. 1, explored more dissonant electronic soundscapes. Additionally, Roedelius worked in a series of mediums including theater, dance, and film, collaborating with everyone from Holger Czukay to Peter Baumann; in 1990, he and Moebius also reunited for Apropos Cluster, and the duo continued working together throughout the decade to follow, though they formally severed musical ties in 2011, and Roedelius formed the musical ensemble Qluster with Onnen Bock.

Collaboration became Roedelius' primary M.O. from the '90s on, though he continued to issue volumes in his Selbstportrait series. The list of his musical partners is not only a who's-who of electronic musicians and pioneers, but also of modern composers. Some of his most notable recordings in the '90s also included the solo Tace! in 1993; One Hour with Cluster and Sinfonia Contempora, No. 1: Von Zeit zu Zeit in 1994; Pink, Blue and Amber in 1996; and Meeting the Magus in collaboration with electronics duo Aqueous in 1997 as well as Drive, by the one-shot band Global Trotters, who also included Alquimia, David Bickley, Felix Jay, Kenji Konishi, and Susumu Hirasawa.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Roedelius accelerated his already prolific output. While his first offering of the new decade was the solo ambient Roedeliusweg, he soon began a wide-ranging series of collaborative projects. Some of the most notable were the collage Veni Creator Spiritus with Eric Spitzer-Marlyn in 2000. The Japanese-only release Acon 2000/1 in collaboration with electronics legend Conrad Schnitzler offered a startling contrast of both men's styles. In 2003, joint projects accounted for two of his three releases, including Imagine Imagine, the first of his three albums with the Fratellis. The ambient solo offering Amerika Recycled was his only album released in 2004. One of his most compelling releases, an ambient classical crossover project with pianist Morgan Fisher, was issued in 2005.

Cluster reunited for a tour in 2007; a live document Berlin 07 was released in 2008, along with Errata, which found him in a partnership with classical/new age musician Tim Story and the dark electronic soundscape artist Dwight Ashley. The last year of the first decade of the century was marked by Sustanza di Cose Sperata, with the brilliant and wildly idiosyncratic new music pianist and composer Alessandra Celletti. That year also saw the release of Qua, the final studio album by Cluster.

Roedelius began a new working partnership in 2010, this one with producer and electronic pop musician Stefan Schneider (aka Mapstation) of To Rococo Rot and Kreidler. Their first album together was Stunden, released by Bureau B. Roedelius evolved Cluster into Qluster, in collaboration with Berlin musician Onnen Bock; Fragen and Rufen both appeared on Bureau B in 2011, with Antworten arriving the following year. A solo piano gig titled Plays Piano: Bloomsbury Theatre, London, July 28th, 1985 was released in 2012. Selected Studies, Vol. 1, a surprise collaboration with singer and songwriter Lloyd Cole, was released in early 2013, as was Roedelius' next full-length with Schneider, Tiden. The label reissued much of Roedelius' back catalog, and released Tape Archive 1973-1978, an extensive multimedia box set of unreleased material, in 2014.

Outside of the Bureau B label, Roedelius continued to collaborate with other artists: Lindabrunn Collage with Werner Moebius appeared on No Thing That Exists in 2014, Imagori with Christoph H. Müller surfaced on Grönland Records in 2015, and Ubi Bene with Leon Muraglia was released by Passus Records the same year. Einfluss, recorded with Arnold Kasar, was released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2017. Also appearing that year was Nordlicht, a more drone-based LP with Carl Michael von Hausswolff, and the calmer Triptych in Blue, with Christopher Chaplin and Andrew Heath. Imagori II, also with Müller, was issued in 2018. Roedelius continued his long-running Selbstportrait series with the 2020 full-length Wahre Liebe. ~ Jason Ankeny & Thom Jurek

Singing with a nicotine-ravaged growl that was deep, strong, and sensuously forbidding, Mark Lanegan rose to fame when his band the Screaming Trees won a taste of mainstream recognition in the '90s. Carving out a strong individual identity as a vocalist and songwriter, Lanegan's music was nearly always informed by the blues, and the singer was willing to take his darkly poetic sensibility to whatever style his muse pointed him. His solo work veered from the semi-acoustic atmospherics of 1990's The Winding Sheet, 1998's Scraps at Midnight, and the adventurous hard rock of 2004's Bubblegum and 2012's Blues Funeral, to the clean electronic surfaces of 2014's Phantom Radio and 2020's unsparingly confessional Straight Songs of Sorrow. Lanegan was also a frequent collaborator with a number of noted artists, among them Greg Dulli, Queens of the Stone Age, Isobel Campbell, Soulsavers, and Duke Garwood.

Born in Ellensburg, Washington on November 25, 1964, Lanegan, by his own estimation, grew up in a dysfunctional household and developed a powerful appetite for liquor and drugs in his teens that led to scrapes with the law. When he was 18, he struck up a friendship with Van Connor, who shared Lanegan's interest in music. Lanegan originally agreed to play drums in a band with Van and his brother, Gary Lee Connor, but when it was decided Lanegan was a better singer than a percussionist, Mark Pickerel came on board to play drums with the band that became known as the Screaming Trees. The band released their first album, Clairvoyance, in 1986, but it wasn't until 1992 that they scored a commercial breakthrough when their song "Nearly Lost You" -- which appeared on the soundtrack to the movie Singles as well as their own album Sweet Oblivion -- became a surprise hit thanks to extensive MTV play.

By the time "Nearly Lost You" hit the charts, Lanegan had already launched a solo career. He and Kurt Cobain shared a passion for the blues, particularly the music of Lead Belly, and the two formed a side group with Krist Novoselic and Mark Pickerel known as the Jury, with a plan to record an EP of Lead Belly tunes. While the Jury project soon fell apart, Lanegan used a recording of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" with Cobain and Novoselic as the launching pad for his darkly atmospheric solo debut, 1990's The Winding Sheet. The album earned enthusiastic reviews, but after the success of "Nearly Lost You," Lanegan and the Trees hit the road for a long tour; by most accounts, the group had a strained relationship in the best of circumstances, and as weeks turned into months on the road, the hard-drinking band clashed frequently. After the Sweet Oblivion tour ran its course, the group took a break and Lanegan cut another solo album, 1994's Whiskey for the Holy Ghost, a more dynamic set that once again impressed critics with Lanegan's powerful vocals and deep lyrical visions. In 1996, the Screaming Trees finally released their follow-up to Sweet Oblivion, but Dust failed to live up to the commercial success of their breakthrough album, despite the modest success of "All I Know" as a single and the band joining the bill for the 1996 Lollapalooza tour.

In 1998, Lanegan released his third solo album, Scraps at Midnight, followed by I'll Take Care of You, a collection of covers, in 1999. In 2000, after playing a show to celebrate the opening of the Experience Music Project in Seattle, the Screaming Trees announced they were breaking up. With his main band out of the picture, Lanegan began to dive deep into collaborations with other acts; he'd already contributed to tribute albums honoring Willie Nelson and Skip Spence and appeared on Mike Watt's solo debut, Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, and in 2000, he performed guest vocals on the breakout album from Queens of the Stone Age, Rated R. While Lanegan was never an official member of QOTSA, he became a valuable ally to leader Josh Homme, contributing vocals and collaborating on songs for 2002's Songs for the Deaf, 2005's Lullabies to Paralyze, and 2013's Like Clockwork. In 2003, Lanegan worked with former Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli on the sophomore album from Dulli's project the Twilight Singers, Blackberry Belle, and he would also appear with Dulli on two subsequent Twilight Singers albums, 2004's She Loves You and 2011's Dynamite Steps. Dulli and Lanegan would also record a collaborative album under the name the Gutter Twins, 2008's Saturnalia. In 2005, Lanegan recorded an EP of duets with Isobel Campbell, formerly of Belle and Sebastian, entitled Ramblin' Man; the pair would go on to record three full albums together, 2006's Ballad of the Broken Seas, 2008's Sunday at Devil Dirt, and 2010's Hawk. The U.K. electronic group Soulsavers brought Lanegan in to sing on their albums It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land (2007), Broken (2009), and The Light the Dead See (2012). Lanegan became a regular contributor to the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project, an ad hoc ensemble that interpreted songs by the late Gun Club frontman; Lanegan appeared on the albums We Are Only Riders (2009), The Journey Is Long (2012), and Axels & Sockets (2014).

While some of Lanegan's collaborations got more press than he did during this period, he hardly had his solo career on the back burner. 2001's Field Songs offered the sort of dark, roots-oriented songs that were his trademark, and 2004's more rock-oriented Bubblegum was the first album credited to the Mark Lanegan Band, though instead of a set band, the tracks featured a rotating variety of accompanists including Josh Homme and PJ Harvey. A second Mark Lanegan Band set, Blues Funeral, appeared in 2012, while Lanegan dropped two albums in 2013, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Duke Garwood titled Black Pudding, and a second album devoted to covers, Imitations. 2014 brought a third full-length from the Mark Lanegan Band, Phantom Radio, and in 2015, Lanegan partnered with a handful of producers and remix artists (including Moby, UNKLE, Soulsavers, and Mark Stewart) to create A Thousand Miles of Midnight: Phantom Radio Remixes. By this time, Lanegan's solo career had generated enough music to merit two different retrospective releases; in 2014, Light in the Attic issued the career-spanning compilation Has God Seen My Shadow? An Anthology 1989-2011, while in 2015, Sub Pop released One Way Street, a vinyl-only collection that featured new LP pressings of Lanegan's first five solo albums.

In 2017, Lanegan released Gargoyle, an album written with his frequent collaborators Alain Johannes and Rob Marshall; it also featured guest appearances from Josh Homme and Greg Dulli. 2017 also saw him publish his first book, a collection of lyrics and essays titled I Am the Wolf. Lanegan and Duke Garwood teamed up once again to record 2018's With Animals, a set dominated by spare and evocative electronic accompaniment. 2019's Somebody's Knocking was another project that teamed Lanegan with Johannes and Marshall, while Greg Dulli contributed guest vocals on the song "Letter Never Sent." In April 2020, Lanegan published a memoir, Sing Backwards and Weep, an unsparing portrait of his life in music and his struggles with addiction. As Lanegan revisited some of the lowest and most desperate moments of his past while completing the book, he channeled his emotions into a set of original songs. This personal material formed the basis of the album Straight Songs of Sorrow, released in May 2020. In 2021, Lanegan, who had left the United States to settle in Ireland, guested on a variety of projects from Manic Street Preachers (The Ultra Vivid Lament), Moby (Reprise), the Soulsavers with Dave Gahan (Imposter), and Cult of Luna (The Raging River). He also joined forces with Joe Cardamone of the Icarus Line to launch a new project, Dark Mark vs. Skeleton Joe, whose self-titled album, a brooding exercise in rock-influenced electronics, was issued in October 2021. He published a second memoir, Devil in a Coma, in December 2021 that focused on his severe health struggles after he was hospitalized with the COVID-19 virus. This would prove to be Lanegan's last work as an artist; he died at his home in Killarney, Ireland on February 22, 2022, at the age of 57. ~ Mark Deming

An indie singer/songwriter who delivers her vulnerable songs with a distinctive warble informed by vintage country, Angel Olsen's early, spare, acoustic songs grew increasingly lush and dramatic across her first several albums. The onetime Bonnie "Prince" Billy backup singer debuted with the reverb-heavy solo indie folk of 2010's Strange Cacti, expanding to an alt-country power trio for her third album, 2014's Burn Your Fire for No Witness, her Billboard 200 debut. Two years later, My Woman reached a career-high number 47 on the chart. While maintaining an intimate character and a haunting sound reinforced by stylized echo, Olsen recorded 2019's All Mirrors with a 14-piece orchestra. The follow-up, 2020's Whole New Mess, offered an overhauled solo version of All Mirrors that included a pair of original songs. Inspired by both love and loss tied up in coming out as queer, her sixth studio album, Big Time, followed in 2022.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Olsen began performing in the city's coffee shops during her teenage years, soon branching out and tapping into a network of like-minded artists. She moved to Chicago in 2006, eventually working with California musician Emmett Kelly as part of his collective the Cairo Gang. Singing harmonies on Bonnie "Prince" Billy's 2010 album The Wonder Show of the World as well as its 2011 follow-up, Wolfroy Goes to Town, Olsen also released her own set of original acoustic-guitar songs, Strange Cacti, in 2010. The cassette was later reissued as a 12", both on Bathetic Records. Half Way Home, a spare album with understated arrangements and a homespun approach somewhere between '50s country crooners and her indie contemporaries, followed on the same label in 2012.

In early 2013, Olsen added drummer Josh Jaeger and bassist Stewart Bronaugh to flesh out her stripped-back sound, which added a brooding, garage rock appeal to her intimate music. Soon after forming the trio, Olsen returned to the studio with producer John Congleton to track sessions for her third album, Burn Your Fire for No Witness, which was released in early 2014 on Jagjaguwar. The record was critically well-received and spent a week at number 71 on the Billboard 200.

By then resettled in Asheville, North Carolina, Olsen expanded her sound still further on 2016's My Woman, touring as a six-piece to support its release. My Woman fared even better on the U.S. album chart, reaching number 47. Jagjaguwar followed it in 2017 with Phases, a compilation of Olsen rarities such as early demos and unreleased material from the My Woman sessions. In June 2019, Olsen contributed a featured spot on a track for Mark Ronson's collaborative Late Night Feelings, whose other guests included the likes of Alicia Keys, Miley Cyrus, and Lykke Li. Featuring production by Congleton and lavish chamber orchestra arrangements by Jherek Bischoff and Ben Babbitt, her fifth studio album, All Mirrors, arrived on Jagjaguwar in October 2019. That record also landed on the Billboard 200, peaking at number 52.

Olsen returned the following year with the stripped-down Whole New Mess, her first true solo album since 2012's Half Way Home. Captured in Anacortes, Washington, at the Unknown, a church that was converted into a recording studio by producer Nicholas Wilbur and Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum, it saw Olsen rework nine songs from the heavyhearted All Mirrors (alongside two originals) using only her voice and guitar accompaniment. The box set Song of the Lark and Other Far Memories followed in May 2021. It packaged All Mirrors and Whole New Mess with a set of related bonus material titled Far Memory and a 40-page souvenir photo book. Later the same month, the John Congleton-produced original song "Like I Used To" found her duetting with Sharon Van Etten. She returned just a few months later with the covers EP Aisles. It reimagined '80s tracks made famous by acts like Laura Branigan, Billy Idol, and Men Without Hats.

Olsen released a cover of Karen Dalton's "Something on Your Mind" in early 2022, following it with a cover of Bob Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings" for the soundtrack to the series Shining Girls that May. Her next studio album, Big Time, appeared on Jagjaguwar in June 2022. Infused with the prospect of new love as well her familiar heartache and loss, it was written during a period when she was coming out as queer. Co-produced by Olsen and Jonathan Wilson, the record included earlier country touchpoints as well as some of the lush orchestrations of All Mirrors. In 2023, Olsen released Forever Means, an EP consisting of four songs recorded during the sessions for Big Time. ~ Fred Thomas & Marcy Donelson

Mary Lattimore is a Los Angeles-based harpist who has played on recordings by dozens of indie rock and experimental musicians, in addition to soundtrack work and her own solo releases. She typically augments her graceful harp improvisations with electronic effects, emphasizing the instrument's ethereal qualities while conjuring up fascinating new sonic vistas. She became an in-demand session musician before releasing solo material in 2012. She later collaborated on albums and soundtracks with artists like Jeff Zeigler and Maxwell August Croy, and released music on well-regarded labels like Thrill Jockey and Ghostly International. By 2018, her solo material had begun to incorporate guitar, keyboard, Theremin, and other instruments, with albums like 2020's Silver Ladders augmenting her ambient harp with a wide range of accompanying sounds. Collaboration remained at the heart of Lattimore's work, showing up in the form of joint creations with Growing and Superchunk's Mac McCaughan, as well as contributions from members of Slowdive, the Cure, and others on her 2023 album Goodbye, Hotel Arkada.

Originally from Asheville, North Carolina, Lattimore became known as part of the Philadelphia underground music scene during the mid-2000s. Along with members of psych-folk bands Espers, Fern Knight, and Fürsaxa, Lattimore contributed to the Valerie Project, whose performances and self-titled 2007 album on Drag City provided an alternate soundtrack to the 1970 Czech surrealist film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Following the album's release, Lattimore played harp on albums by Jarvis Cocker, Thurston Moore, Kurt Vile, and numerous others. Her first solo release was a self-titled cassette on the Life Like imprint in 2012. The album was given a wider release the following year, when Desire Path Recordings issued it on vinyl as The Withdrawing Room.

At the end of 2013, Lattimore and frequent collaborator Jeff Zeigler premiered their score to Philippe Garrel's 1968 experimental silent film Le Révélateur. The duo recorded a full-length titled Slant of Light, which was released by Thrill Jockey in 2014. That same year, Lattimore was awarded a grant from Philadelphia's Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. She and Zeigler began touring together in 2015, and they contributed a track to Ghostly International's Ghostly Swim 2 compilation. Lattimore released a solo cassette titled Luciferin Light on Kit Records that year, and the LP At the Dam appeared on Ghostly in March 2016. Four months later, Thrill Jockey issued Lattimore and Zeigler's score for Le Révélateur, and the duo performed at screenings of the film throughout the United States and Europe. Also that summer, Constellation Tatsu issued Terelan Canyon, her collaboration with En's Maxwell August Croy.

In 2017, Lattimore issued And the Birds Flew Overhead, a collaboration with keyboardist Elysse Thebner Miller, as well as Collected Pieces, an album of compositions previously only available on her music streaming pages. Following her relocation to Los Angeles, Lattimore recorded Hundreds of Days, her most expansive, detailed solo work to date. Ghostly International released the album in May 2018. In November, she and fellow Philadelphia native Meg Baird issued the collaborative offering Ghost Forests on Three Lobed and toured Western Europe and the U.K. Along with extensive touring that included dates with Deerhoof and Iceage, Lattimore also found time to collaborate with Merge Records and Superchunk mainstay Mac McCaughan on instrumental sessions that paired her harp with McCaughan's synthesizers. These improvised sessions resulted in the duo's New Rain Duets album, released on Three Lobed in March 2019. In October of 2020, Lattimore worked again with Ghostly International for the release of her studio album Silver Ladders; it was recorded by Slowdive's Neil Halstead at his home studio after he and Lattimore had met at a festival they both played at. Halstead and Lattimore's collaborations on the album included fleshing out previously existing demos and improvising together on new material. Collected Pieces II appeared in 2021, as well as Collected Pieces: 2015-2020, a condensed version of the two releases. Lattimore additionally collaborated with Growing on a release titled Gainer. In 2022, Lattimore released her cover version of Bill Fay's "Love is the Tune" as part of a series of Fay covers that included renditions from Kevin Morby, Julia Jacklin, and Steve Gunn. 2022 also saw the release of West Kensington, a hazy and psychedelic collaborative album from Lattimore and Philadelphia guitarist Paul Sukeena.

Lattimore's next proper solo set was Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, released in October 2023 by Ghostly International. The six-song album found Lattimore expanding her instrumentation and compositional reach yet again, as well as inviting collaborations from Meg Baird, Roy Montgomery, the Cure's Lol Tolhurst, Slowdive's Rachel Goswell, and others. ~ Paul Simpson

Largely passed by in the alternative music sweepstakes of the mid-'90s, Acetone pursued indie rock with influences from two of their Southern California forebears, the Beach Boys and Gram Parsons, with plenty of the Velvet Underground thrown in as well. The band's early material -- such as their self-titled debut EP and the album Cindy, both released in 1993 -- was built around simple song structures and plenty of noisy guitar tracks. By 1996's If You Only Knew, they'd turned down their amps and taken on a warmer, more languid sound, and 2000's York Blvd., which would prove to be their final LP, saw their noisy and contemplative sides peacefully coexisting, sometimes within the same song. The death of bassist Richie Lee in 2001 led to the band's breakup, but the 2023 box set I'm Still Waiting collected their recorded catalog in loving homage to their legacy.

Officially formed in 1992 by guitarist Mark Lightcap, bassist Richie Lee, and drummer Steve Hadley, the group had actually started out as early as 1987, when the trio began playing around Los Angeles. After working for several years with a succession of vocalists, the group decided to keep it a threesome. After just a few months of recording demos, the band signed to the up-and-coming Vernon Yard subsidiary of Virgin Records (also the home of Low and the Verve) and in 1993 released their debut album Cindy, a collision of aggressive neo-psychedelia and pastoral harmonies reminiscent of the Velvet's third LP. Though Acetone toured in a fairly high-profile role as support for the Verve, the album sputtered under a glut of similar-sounding releases. By 1995, the group had turned in a new direction, translating their affinity for roots rock and country into I Guess I Would, a seven-track mini-LP of inspired cover tracks, including the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Juanita" and the Kris Kristofferson chestnut "Border Lord." Though alternative rock was beginning to hit the trails of their roots-rocking ancestors, the album again failed to connect with listeners.

The trio then recorded their second full-length, If You Only Knew, which charted a course between the aggression of the first album and the twang of I Guess I Would. Dropped from Vernon Yard in 1997, however, Acetone moved to the independent Vapor Records for their third, self-titled album. York Blvd. followed three years later. The album was critically acclaimed as a creative high point of the band's career, but it was followed by tragedy when Lee died on July 23, 2001, less than a year after its release. Acetone disbanded shortly after Lee's passing. Lightcap would go on to play with the group Matmos. In 2017, the respected reissue label Light in the Attic issued 1992-2001, a career-spanning anthology that included several previously unreleased performances. In 2023, New West Records offered a more expansive tribute with I'm Still Waiting, an 11-LP vinyl box set that collected their entire recorded catalog, along with a bonus disc of unreleased material and a 60-page book that included essays from Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Drew Daniel of Matmos. ~ John Bush

Singer and songwriter Jonah Yano introduced a smooth, jazz-inflected soul-pop further tinged with hip-hop and electronic elements on his 2020 debut album, Souvenir. The lengthier follow-up, 2023's Portrait of a Dog, leaned harder into his love of jazz with help from producer BadBadNotGood.

Born in Hiroshima, Yano emigrated to Vancouver with his mother in 1998, when very young, after the separation of his parents. At the age of six, his grandmother introduced him to the piano; later, he picked up the guitar and started writing his own songs. In 2016, he began recording demos on his phone; moving to Toronto, he started putting songs online and immersed himself in the thriving local music scene, gradually honing his skills. His first recorded appearance was in 2018, when he was featured on indie pop-rap duo Moneyphone's track "On Lock." Shortly thereafter, he released his own debut solo single, "Rolex, the Ocean," on which his signature sound arrived fully formed: smooth, jazzy soul-pop set to hip-hop-style beats, topped with Yano's high-pitched, impassioned vocals. In 2019, he signed to Innovative Leisure, which released his debut EP, Nervous. On it he collaborated with labelmates BadBadNotGood and expanded his sound with more electronic elements. The following year saw the release of Yano's debut full-length, Souvenir. A deeply personal work, its centerpiece was "Shoes," a song originally written and recorded by Yano's father, Tatsuya Muraoka, in the '90s, and completed by Yano following their 2019 reconciliation.

Yano rejoined Badbadnotgood in the studio to co-produce his next long-player, early 2023's Portrait of a Dog. Part a family archival project and partly a breakup album, it shifted his complex musical balance more conspicuously toward jazz and deliberate instrumental passages. Representing his still wide-ranging stylistic approach, guests included rapper Slauson Malone and Montreal indie musician Sea Oleena. ~ John D. Buchanan & Marcy Donelson