Music

Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn makes his 14th appearance on Mountain Stage, recorded live at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, W.Va.

Along with contemporaries like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, Oxford's Ride was seen as one of the definitive bands in 1990s shoegaze. The band had success in the '90s with a fervent fanbase and music that crept up the UK charts.

  Grammy award-winning producer, artist, and activist David Strickland connects hip-hop and Indigenous culture with the 2017 album Spirit of Hip Hop. Born and raised in the projects of Scarborough, Ontario, he evolved from b-boy into DJ, MC, engineer, and producer. Embracing his Mi’kmaq and Northern Cree ancestry, David discovered strong ties between modern hip-hop and native music traditions. He made it his passion to shed light on the similarities and bring artists together.

This essay is one in a series celebrating deserving artists or albums not included on NPR Music's list of 150 Greatest Albums By Women.

It's an unusually bad wild fire season in the West, and for weeks people across the region have been breathing air thick with smoke.

"There's smoke from Canada, smoke from Idaho, smoke from California and Montana. There's smoke everywhere," says Greg Svelund, a spokesman for Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality.

If you're looking for Chad Matheny — the Floridian singer-songwriter who performs as Emperor X — when he rolls through your town, a good place to start would be your local public transit hub.

You might remember the band Alvvays for its hooky song "Archie, Marry Me," the breakout single off its 2014 self-titled debut album. The strength of that song turned the unknown band from Toronto into instant indie darlings.

Alvvays didn't try to change its sound too much with its new, second album. As lead singer Molly Rankin and guitarist Alec O'Hanley told me in our chat, they kept the same spirit of jangly jams with dark lyrical undertones, filtered through a summer's haze.