Few artists have embodied the sound and ethos of their entire genre the way Miles Davis did with jazz. When Davis’ career began, even the shift from the uppity early 20th-century sounds of bebop to the laid-back tones of cool jazz was considered a highly controversial move, yet by the end of his life, he was leading his band into 30-plus-minute psychedelic freefalls, pushing the genre ever onwards into the future while taking inspiration from whatever styles suited his fancy. Even his most relaxed-sounding work bears all the creative energy of a true maverick, and his powerful visions of what jazz could be endure in their vividness even today.As an emerging voice on Manhattan’s mid-’40s bebop scene, Davis originally distinguished himself with his smooth, minimal style of trumpet playing—ironic, given how bold his ventures into jazz would become. His first major stylistic shift came with his development of cool jazz, embodied most famously on the 1957 album Birth Of The Cool, a compilation of sessions dating back to 1949-50. But even this sound wouldn’t contain Davis for long—by the end of the ‘50s, he had become a firm collaborator with big-band arranger Gil Evans, recording a number of orchestral jazz masterpieces such as Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, as well as the defining document of modal jazz (and possibly jazz in general), Kind of Blue.From here, Davis would only push the limits of his craft even further, and the loose, hard-to-define post-bop sounds of albums like Miles Smiles and Nefertiti would eventually bloom into the electric, rock-fueled incantations of In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, two albums that ushered Davis into the ‘70s completely unbeholden to any notions of traditionalism or boundaries. As Davis’ arrangements and performances became increasingly frenzied (see the amorphous funk of On The Corner or the free-flowing fusion of Agharta), his health started to decline as well, which resulted in a hiatus that lasted until the ‘80s, upon which Davis returned for a final string of records powered by synths and drum machines (including the rap-crossover Doo-Bop) before passing in 1991.The mark that Davis has left on music is staggering. His reflections of jazz are both tender and enigmatic in equal measure, and tackling his entire career is no small feat. But to explore the music of Miles Davis is to understand the shifting state of culture in America, to see the ways in which our borders have materialized and dissolved as time has marched on, and to understand how the unleashed insanity of a later album like 1977’s Dark Magus can secretly be brewing under the stately calm of early work like Milestones all along. Davis’ career may be daunting, but the beauty of it is that there is no wrong place to start—no matter where one decides to pick up the thread, there are countless revelations to be found.

The 20th century saw a verdant tapestry of sounds emerging from Brazil, presenting a rich variety of approaches to the essential rhythmic underpinnings in South American music that constantly evolved with the political landscape of the times. But of the many different styles and perspectives that Brazil has gifted us over the years, none are so enchanting, so tranquil, and so forlorn as the smooth sound of bossa nova music.Exemplified by its jazzy sense of repose and shuffling nylon-guitar picking, bossa nova was coined by João Gilberto in the mid-1950s when he wrote the amusingly slight “Bim-Bom,” a representation of the women he would see passing by the São Francisco river with loads of laundry balanced on their heads, the baskets swaying with their hips in a delightful rhythm. The genre would spawn a cross-cultural musical conversation, with local heroes like Antônio Carlos Jobim and Bola Sete mingling with American converts like Vince Guaraldi and Stan Getz, leading to an increased interest in the genre throughout the ‘60s that eventually culminated in Brazil’s psychedelia-fuelled Tropicália movement.Though those unfamiliar with bossa nova may relegate it to the forsaken category of lounge music, its sound is subtle and powerful, as demanding of its musicians as it is accommodating for the listener, evoking the tender beauty of nature in the same breath that it laments the simple pains and heartbreak of everyday life. It may have fallen by the wayside as Brazilian music continued to blossom into other exciting shapes and colors over the years, but the magic of bossa nova is that its calming spirit can resonate with anybody curious enough to gaze a little more closely into its winsome foliage.

One of the beauties of living in an era of hyper-technology is that it’s never been easier to dumpster dive through the musical annals of history for hidden treasure. But while anyone can go mining through YouTube for gold, it takes a special breed to wade through the mysterious waters of reissues. Hunting down long-lost artists and restoring their precious masters to life is a tricky business, but label Light In The Attic has led the reissue revolution with panache since setting up shop in Seattle in 2002.Perhaps the most interesting quality of Light In The Attic’s reissues is the spiritual kinship that so many of their artists share. LITA’s records have a folkish, proletariat quality to them, not only because so many of their releases fall under the Americana banner, but also in the way they expose the struggles of everyday artists who never truly caught the spotlight—or in some cases, purposely avoided it. Whether it’s in the fiery political incantations of The Last Poets, the indigenous songwriters populating the Native North America compilation, or the honky-tonk surrealism of Lee Hazlewood, Light In The Attic searches for humanity in the under-exposed and reveals the alternate histories of our musical traditions that have been happening all along, right under our noses.Though tackling a catalog as wide and diverse as theirs is an unruly challenge, this playlist highlights some of the wonderful music that Light In The Attic has brought to our attention over the years, and also illustrates the spirit that connects these forgotten visions. Take a listen, and remember that sometimes the greatest voices are those least heard.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

A modern-day punk label if there ever was one, Sacred Bones has been doing serious work since forming in Brooklyn in 2007, not only to unearth strange new sounds bubbling from the underground, but to reframe the very concept of what punk music is in the 21st century. They may adhere to a very rigid aesthetic framework (almost all their releases come with the full tracklist and recording details listed right there on the cover, along with their trademark ouroboros), but in terms of sound they couldn’t be a harder collective to pin down. Ghostly folk balladeers like Marissa Nadler and Amen Dunes take a seat next to ear-bleeding noise concoctions from Pharmakon and Pop. 1280, while rootsy indie rockers like The Men and Case Studies saddle up with mind-altering musical works from cult film directors like David Lynch and John Carpenter. It’s a strange scene—a sort of neo-goth coalescence of various genres and styles that come together in the name of worshiping the dark god of underground music.Even with such a far-reaching catalog of artists calling the label home, it’s not difficult to get into the zone with Sacred Bones’ distinct brand of homegrown black magic. Hit play to take our tour of the label’s greatest musical offerings, and see just how many different ways punk music can sound today.

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.The world of metal can often be an intimidating one for those who have never found the courage to wade into its deafening, shriek-laden waters. But of all the genre’s various offshoots and sub-genres, stoner metal may be the most welcoming to the untrained ear. Though its nomenclature may imply a no-sober-listeners-allowed policy, the real heart of the genre comes more directly from a familiar source than any other branch of metal: good ol’-fashioned classic rock. The borders of what specifically encapsulates stoner metal are as up for interpretation as any other genre (the worlds of doom, sludge, drone, and psych-rock are often collected under the banner as well), but what really defines its sound is its commitment to atmosphere, tone, and thick, steamrolling riffs that work less through violent, rapid-fire assault than they do through gradual, suffocating immersion.Whether it’s in the satanic blues of stoner originators like Black Sabbath and Candlemass, the molasses-like trudge of torch-bearers like Sleep and Kyuss (pictured), or the voided-out psychedelia of boundary-pushers like Boris and Sunn O))), stoner metal’s influence is vast and unique, linking the worlds of ‘70s rock with that of ambient music, shoegaze, black metal, and more through its subsuming, hazy riffage. You don’t need to be under the influence to get sucked into the genre’s all-encompassing sound, so take a tour through our playlist and see if stoner metal is the strain for you.

Staying a step ahead of the competition is always tricky business, but electronic music presents a particularly unique challenge. As a genre dependent on the advancements of technology, it markets itself as the sound of the future, yet as we continue to develop advanced machinery at an increasingly frantic pace, this music has a tendency to date itself more rapidly than other forms. What’s more quaint than listening to music that purports to be cutting edge long after our cultural standards have surpassed its once-lofty goals?Warp Records has never had an issue with releasing timeless music. Formed in Sheffield, England, in 1989, Warp has built one of the most imposing and consistently challenging catalogs, not just in electronic, but in all types of music. Although Warp does pride itself on exposing strange, exciting new sounds, the artists it fosters are equally concerned with creating work that stands on its own two legs, regardless of what instruments were used to produce it. It’s music built as much for the dance floor as for your living room, not to mention Warp’s various detours into schizo-rap, indie-prog, dance-tent EDM, and whatever the hell Gonjasufi is supposed to be. Most of all, Warp has gracefully avoided the trap of desperately chasing after bandwagons to hop on, choosing instead to take chances on radical voices from the underground and give them plenty of room to push their work to wild new extremes.Though electronic music is at the mercy of technology to some extent, the human imagination has no limits. Take a tour through Warp Records’ expansive legacy, and remember that the future is always now.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

The Flaming Lips may be one of the few mainstream crossover acts whose latter-day material is actually even crazier than their early work. Over the course of their 30-plus year career as a psychedelic-pop mainstay, the Lips have maintained an inspiring ethos of consistently challenging themselves to never stay in one place for too long. In the field of psychedelic rock, phaser-pedal effects and guitar solos are so often used as shorthands for mind-expanding, reality-altering music. So it’s refreshing that Wayne Coyne and friends have found so many ways to work within that Technicolor playing field while constantly pushing its boundaries and reconfiguring the rulebook.At the outset of their career, The Flaming Lips wore their Oklahoma roots with pride, fusing a joyous cowpunk silliness with their LSD-fried noise rock freakouts. But it didn’t take long for major labels to see them as potential beneficiaries of the early ’90s alt-rock boom, and once the Lips signed to Warner Bros., they took to their expanded studio capabilities with glee. Albums like Transmissions From The Satellite Heart—which spawned the surprise hit single “She Don’t Use Jelly”—and Clouds Taste Metallic bear the same garagey feel as their earliest work, but with a newfound sense of instrumental chaos, as fuzzed-out bass guitars and crashing drums led the way for Coyne’s childlike tales of animals and Christmas. But the band took things to the next level with 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, an orchestral, Brian Wilson-style studio masterpiece that left the rock-band format behind for a layered collection of sonic experiments and celebratory declarations of life.As the Lips pushed into the ‘00s, they continued to work within this studio-sculpted realm on records like Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots before completely throwing that approach out the window with the loose, jammy 2009 LP, Embryonic. A dark, unsettling collection of minimal, rhythmic, but heavy songs, Embryonic shot a jolt of energy into the band’s seemingly complete major-label success, paving the way for even more radical visions from the group. Since that album, the Lips have continued to evolve, experimenting with longer, more improvisational songs (some lasting as long as 24 hours!), and exploring the moodier side of their sound with instrumental-leaning albums like The Terror and Oczy Mldoy.Where The Flaming Lips will go from here is anyone’s guess. For most bands, scoring a beloved ‘90s hit and signing to a major label is excuse enough to call it a day and spend the rest of your life playing reunion tours. But The Flaming Lips are too restless for that, too bursting with imagination and cosmic sounds—a rock band as experimental as they are pop. Their sound is a difficult beast to summarize, but with this mix we’ve attempted to illustrate what a colorful, slowly unfolding path the band has taken over the years. Strap in, and keep your eyes to the stars.

Photograph: Misha Vladimirskiy/FilterlessAs one of the most unbridled voices in rap today, Danny Brown can come off as something of an attention-starved maniac to the uninitiated. But get past the gritty hood politics, blacked-out benders, and turbulent fuckfests, and Browns music reveals itself to be largely about the pained, confused loss of one’s innocence. His lyrics are as dotted with old-school street poetics as they are ridiculously turnt up hedonism, and Brown confronts the addictive, drug-fueled culture of his native Detroit upbringing with an attitude that is both relentlessly eager and utterly horrified at itself. For all his delirious energy, hes an incredibly sentimental artist, a rapper whose braggadocio-filled nights tend to end with a sad, self-loathing walk home. A genuine wildcard with a taste for heavy atmospherics (the man is a self-professed Radiohead fanboy), Brown draws inspiration from the party animals and outcasts who bear a solemn knowledge of the brutal side of life in the city, and who refuse to let that darkness interfere with their good time. -- Sam Goldner

We’ve all heard the grievances lobbed at Auto-Tune before; that it’s a stand-in for actual talent, that it strips away any humanity from a singer’s voice, that it just doesn’t sound good, etc. Towards the end of the ‘00s, the technology developed such a negative stigma that everybody from JAY Z to Death Cab for Cutie was taking public shots at it, fretting over the implication that a musician might be able to modify their voice in order to make better music. Call it a plea for authenticity, or perhaps just fear of a changing world, but when Auto-Tune began to dominate pop music, many treated it more like an epidemic than a novel sonic trend.Needless to say, many artists have embraced the vocal technology with aplomb, and over the past several years we’ve seen some incredible work done in the field of vocal manipulation that could not exist were it not for everyone’s favorite pitch-corrector. Like any great electronic software, the magic isn’t really in the tools but the hands that use them. And with Auto-Tune in particular, the possibilities are ripe for contorting and inflating the human voice to extraterrestrial levels, whether in the mainstream or in the underground.Respects must be paid to Kanye West, who were it not for his 2008 cybernetic reinvention statement 808s & Heartbreak or his 2010 masterpiece “Runaway” (the crowning vocal finale of which may be Auto-Tune’s finest moment), the sound certainly would not have taken root in the way that it has today. Whether it’s in the basement rap shenanigans of Lil Yachty and Sicko Mobb (whose digitized vocals soar with ecstatic, lovable amateurism), or in the dystopic, self-loathing warbles of Future, it often feels like Auto-Tune has become a tool for distorting and reinventing pop vocals rather than perfecting them, unveiling new depths in between the unnaturally shifting notes. Even breakout indie figures like Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver have gleefully taken to the tool, further blurring the lines of what kinds of music we commonly associate with the sound.Much of the original gripe with Auto-Tune had to do with the sense of synthetic plasticity associated with just having a computer smooth out all of your melodies for you. It’s a completely natural instinct to crave that tactile, irreplaceable feel that comes with music made wholly from scratch, to say nothing of our society’s general paranoia over encroaching technological dependency. But the goal of art should always be to speak honestly, using whatever means are necessary to achieve that goal. In an age where artificiality rules the day, where human nature has become so deeply intertwined with algorithmic machinery, is it possible that a technology designed to turn our imperfections into beautiful music could be one of the most real things we have at our disposal?

As one of the stalwart holdovers from the early ‘90s indie boom, Drag City has released consistently lovable and knotty music for over two decades. While other labels of their kind built their names on too-cool-for-school slackerdom, Drag City have always been overachievers, putting out music that consistently redefines whatever genre or idiom they are working within. It’s country music that rejects tradition, punk music with a sense of dignity, and avant-experimentalism that feels more like hanging out with your buds than begrudgingly doing your homework. Above all, Drag City are the torchbearers for the concept that challenging, willfully elusive art should always remember to keep it fun, and this playlist is our token of gratitude for all the great sounds they’ve shared with us over the years.Note: The Drag City catalog is not available on streaming services, but can and should be purchased on iTunes, Amazon, or, better yet, your favorite record store.