Artists

With each new Gorillaz album, more attention is paid to the number of guest collaborators invited to perform than to the group’s only consistent musical member: Damon Albarn. Humanz, which arrives this week, is no different. The songs released so far center around performances from Benjamin Clementine, Popcaan, Vince Staples, Jehnny Beth, D.R.A.M., Pusha T, and Mavis Staples, with Albarn happily orchestrating things from behind the curtain. But he’s a strong performer and highly sought-after collaborator in his own right, one completely worthy of the spotlight he avoids. His selfless attitude, which foregrounds other performers in his own work, makes him such a great songwriting partner.Taking cues from The Kinks and XTC, Albarn’s early work in Britpop act Blur focused on couching his biting social commentary in character studies, a theme that continued even after the band’s influences drifted further and further beyond the white cliffs of Dover. As the band began to pull apart in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, Albarn walked away, melodica in hand, and started the horror film-loving, The Specials-aping, cartoon outfit Gorillaz, beginning a lifetime of long-standing—and very fruitful—collaborations with the eclectic and diverse likes of Bobby Womack, De La Soul, and Tony Allen, among many others.He’s had countless other projects, including Mali Music, Rocket Juice & The Moon, and DRC Music, as well as his Honest Jon’s label, all of which show the songwriter using his visibility in pop music to give credit where credit is due, and to highlight the work of incredible musicians who have inspired him.This playlist goes deep into Albarn’s discography, putting his songwriting talents front and center and focusing on the not-so-guest-heavy songs that form the bedrock of Gorillaz’s nearly 20-year career. It also contextualizes his work with Blur, the band that put him on the map, and any and every collaboration he’s been involved with in between.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

At this point in our young century, Dan Auerbach’s trademark sound is damn near inescapable. His entrancingly fuzzy slide work, moody atmospherics, velvety reverb, and love for prominently framed percussion all pop up in albums by garage punks, shaggy hard rockers, folkies, rappers, and even pop divas. Of course, it’s through the wildly influential jams of The Black Keys (whom Auerbach has co-produced for most of the duo’s career) that his sound has left such a profound impact on modern music, but that’s not its only path. After all, in addition to maintaining a solo career—including his upcoming June 2017 release Waiting On a Song—as well as a clutch of side projects (The Arcs record from 2015 is a particularly tasty highlight), he has evolved into one of the music industry’s most in-demand producers.Much like The Black Keys’ music, Auerbach’s immediately identifiable work behind the boards has become more sophisticated with time. Patrick Sweany’s “Them Shoes,” from 2007, is a slab of husky, stripped-down blues rock that’s light years removed from the intensely textural swamp funk and gris-gris soul comprising Dr. John’s 2012 gem Locked Down, one of Auerbach’s most ambitious productions to date. Even when Auerbach, who possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of music history, steps outside of his rock ‘n’ blues comfort zone, he leaves a unique sonic imprint on the work of other artists. This is certainly the case with Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, on which he wraps the singer’s art-pop noir in layers of nostalgia-kissed echo and sustain so plush, your ears will sink into them. This is also true of Nikki Lane’s outlaw-country epic All Or Nothin, which boasts the same throbbing groove hypnotics heard on the Keys’ albums.Compiling tunes from all these albums and a whole mess more, including some overlooked production nuggets like the Buffalo Killers’ stoner-rock trip Let it Ride, our playlist is sure to impress even the most diehard Auerbach fans.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Though best known as the electro-pop Pied Piper of the Baltimore underground, DIY deity Dan Deacon has also delved into modern-classical composition through commissions for Kronos Quartet and scores for ballets. His latest project marks his first full-album foray into the form—a soundtrack for Theo Anthony’s new documentary, Rat Film, an examination of the rodent infestation in their hometown and, by extension, the systemic poverty and racism that suppress the city’s underclass. For this playlist he created specially for The Dowsers, Deacon selects the film music that put him in a cinematic state of mind. “Music composed with the intention of being paired with a moving image is written with such a different mindset than music written for any other context. Being able to listen to soundtracks separate from the films allows my imagination to seep deeper into the universe of the films. For example, listening to Bernard Herrmanns themes for Taxi Driver or Jerry Goldsmith’s music for Total Recall puts me in the mindset and emotions of the characters and transports me to the locations. It adds levels of depth that further my enjoyment for subsequent re-watchings of the films. This playlist contains some of my favorite music for films available on Spotify.”—Dan Deacon

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

There’s a tragic feeling of incompleteness to Sharon Jones’ career, and it’s best be summed up with the phrase "discovered too late and gone way too soon." The soul and funk vocalist’s story is a well-told one: a criminally overlooked session powerhouse—who clearly possessed the chops and sheer life-force to be a star when she first turned professional in the ’70s—finally achieves fame in her late-’40s only to have pancreatic cancer claim her life in 2016 at the age of 60. Fortunately for the world, the Grammy-nominated Jones and her band, the Dap-Kings, made the most of her all-too-brief stardom, dropping seven stellar studio albums, including the posthumously released Soul of a Woman, recorded as the singer underwent debilitating chemotherapy treatments.What makes the group so unique is their ability to feel unapologetically old-school, yet without any residue of weepy nostalgia. Anchored not just by Jones’ attention-seizing voice, but the group’s agilely stabbing horns and preternaturally metronomic rhythm section as well, their music pops, sizzles, and jumps with a sweaty, determined modernism. (Especially relevant in this context is their funk-spiked reworking of Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately?”) It’s a sound that has exerted a huge impact on 21st-century pop, pushing retro-soul into the mainstream while also making the Dap-Kings, as well as their sister outfit the Dap Kings Horn Section, in-demand session musicians in the same vein as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section or the Wrecking Crew.Arguably the first artist to take notice was the late Amy Winehouse, who employed the Dap-Kings when crafting her own fusion of retro and contemporary R&B for 2006’s game-changing Back to Black. The album’s co-producer, Mark Ronson, then used the ensemble’s crack horn section on his massive retro-pop hit “Uptown Funk,” featuring dynamo singer Bruno Mars. More recently, the digitally minded Kesha used those soul-piercing horns on her crushing, feminist anthem “Woman,” from her emotional tour de force Rainbow.But not every session/appearance fits snugly between the poles of R&B and pop—there’s a slew of leftfield examples, too. On her self-titled full-length from 2014, avant-garde singer-songwriter St. Vincent leans heavily on the unswerving pulse of Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss (who also plays skins for the Dan Auerbach-led Arcs), while her collaborative effort with David Byrne, Love This Giant, weaves their horns into the duo’s art-rock pointillism. Other standouts include The Black Lips, whose garage-punk rave-up Underneath the Rainbow utilizes the services of baritone guitarist Thomas Brenneck and trumpeter David Guy, and country outlaw Sturgill Simpson, who worked with the the Dap-Kings horns on A Sailor’s Guide to Earth and then brought them onstage for his 2017 Grammy performance.On top of featuring cuts from each of the artists already mentioned, our playlists dips into the Dap-Kings many related projects (including The Budos Band and Menahan Street Band), as well as veteran soul and funk singers Charles Bradley, Lee Fields, and Rickey Calloway who, like Jones, found a welcoming home on Daptone, easily retro-soul’s most important record label. Of course, the absence left by Jones’ death will forever be felt; she was, after all, a once-in a-generation talent. But it becomes all too clear when exploring this diverse array of songs that her vision and style will continue to echo throughout modern music for a long time to come.

This playlist was curated by Soft as Snow. Like what you hear? Subscribe to the playlist here, and check out their music here. And be sure to pick up their upcoming album, Deep Wave.Since its inception five years ago, the Houndstooth label has quickly emerged as one of the leading lights of progressive, experimental electronic music. From Marquis Hawkes to Guy Andrews, the musicians on the label have consistently privileged artistry and innovation, and they continue to push boundaries. The label also oversaw the emergence of immensely talented Call Super, who would go on to become one of this generations more acclaimed new electronic musicians. To celebrate five years releasing electronic music, Houndstooth are delighted to offer a free 15 track compilation Hound5tooth, available here.The Norwegian-born, Berlin-based duo Soft as Snow are one of the Houndstooth’s stand-out acts. Their sound mingles the more gothic-tinged edges of post-punk with liberal swaths of classic Detroit techno and a splash of glitch. The result is a sound that is foreboding and mercurial. The group recently got together to capture some of their favorite synth classics. The playlist is titled “Dark ‘80s Synth Pop,” though most of the tracks are taken from their contemporaries in the synth trenches.

For all the alluring and disturbing images that David Lynch has presented to movie audiences over the last 40 years, the filmmaker has always been just as particular about how his films sound as how they look. This has been obvious to listeners since they were enveloped by the harrowing soundscape that Lynch and Alan Splet created for 1977’s Eraserhead, the two men spending months concocting a mind-bending array of noises and drones in a garage. The same process yielded a catchy, if eerie, ditty called “In Heaven (Everything Is Fine).” As sung by the chipmunk-cheeked figure known as the “Girl in the Radiator,” Lynch’s song provides the film with an even more startling and disorienting bolt of lightning, even with the gloom already surrounding it.Lynch would toy with the idea of extremes again and again in the soundtracks of his films and TV shows that followed, including Twin Peaks, his landmark work in WTF TV whose reboot has just arrived to the world. The new show finds him teaming up with Angelo Badalamenti again, his go-to composer since 1986’s Blue Velvet, and another master of generating unease by aural means. Together, their musical approach consistently emphasizes themes of flux and decay that start as sumptuous or sickly sweet and disintegrate into doomy ambient passages or something more psychologically assaulting.Likewise, Lynch’s song choices have been just as daring and confounding. The filmmaker’s fondness for keeping the time periods of his stories ambiguous is reflected in his continual juxtaposition of ‘50s pop, early rock ‘n’ roll, ‘60s girl-group ballads, and lounge music with discordant blasts of industrial and metal. The latter category is especially prominent in his harder-edged films, like 1997’s Lost Highway, for which he enlisted the help of Trent Reznor and used songs by Marilyn Manson and Rammstein for typically nightmarish purposes.This love of extremes has also been fundamental to Lynch’s own musical projects, which have long been part of his career and have become much more prominent over the last decade as he shifts away from filmmaking to other artistic endeavors. Lynch has released two albums bearing his own name, collaborating with American singer Chrysta Bell, engineer John Neff, Polish composer Marek Zebrowski, and the likes of Karen O and Lykke Li.Even so, for many fans, it’s the haunting approximation of a sock-hop in hell in Twin Peaks that best represents the director’s aural aesthetic—a sound first developed by Lynch and Badalamenti for Into the Night, a 1990 album for singer Julee Cruise. As such, it makes for a fitting first stop in our tour of Lynch’s sonic world, a place that’s as intoxicating as it is straight-up terrifying.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

L.A. singer and genuine son-of-a-preacher-man DAVIE has lent his golden voice to recordings by Childish Gambino and CeeLo Green, among others. But he’s recently stepped out on his own with his debut EP, Black Gospel Vol. 1, a modern update of church-schooled soul and smooth ‘70s R&B epitomized by the swaggering lead single “Testify.” For The Dowsers, he’s created “a soulful playlist for your ears and your heart.”Emily King, “Distance”This song is the most beautiful rhythmic whisper. Her voice is soothing and percussive at the same time.Prince, “Darling Nikki”I remember wondering about Nikki "not feeling well" when I first heard this as a kid—and then I realized as an adult it’s about SEXXXXXXX. I love the record and Prince’s seductive delivery.James Brown, “Papas Got A Brand New Bag”Feeling overwhelmed? Dance in your underwear to this song. Problem solved!Jazmine Sullivan, “Lions, Tigers & Bears”This song is so clever and the vocal performance is unmatched! Jazmine is R&B royalty to me.Beyoncé, “Jealous” This is a Beyoncé B-side to the world, but it is such a great song of human struggle with jealousy. The bridge is so simple, but takes the song into a different direction and the song becomes about being insecure.Stevie Wonder, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)”This the classic for every celebratory moment in my existence.N.E.R.D., “Provider”This song was my introduction to my hero Pharrell. He was like “we are punk, hip-hop, and rock all at once.” It was unapologetic and I watched TRL because I wanted to be like him in this video, riding the bike with the homies.”Tyler, the Creator, “911 / Mr. Lonely” The Frank and Tyler combo forever!Daniel Caesar, “We Find Love” Issa vibe.Sabrina Claudio, “Confidently Lost”Her voice is sexy, she is bae. I love the cadence in her falsetto—it’s seductive but angelic at the same time. Weird eh?The Clark Sisters, “You Brought the Sunshine” First song these ears ever heard. I learned how to sing and do every riff in the back of my parents’ car.Lauryn Hill, “Ex-Factor”Best song about false expectations towards an ex. Why didn’t they? Why don’t they still care? Also: Lauryn is the GOAT.Frank Ocean, “Bad Religion” Frank’s Channel Orange is the closest thing we have gotten to full body of work like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. “Bad Religion” is layered with so much heaviness. Each line could mean four things to the listener.Chris Stapleton, “I Was Wrong”I challenge any contemporary R&B singer to sing as good Chris Stapleton. They cant! Soul is blind to color—this is country, but soooo soulful. His runs are straight-up from the school of Aretha.OutKast, “Rosa Parks”First OutKast song I ever heard. I wanted to learn all the words to it, and I would sneak and watch TRL and write down the words so I could impress my friends at school.Kamasi Washington, “Henrietta Our Hero”This song is heavenly.Aaliyah, “At Your Best (You Are Love)” This song is so pure and beautiful. I love Aaliyah—this is her best song in my opinion. It lives on and still sounds so fresh and relevant.Missy Elliott, “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)”This video is everything! Missy is the ultimate hip-hop entertainer. This song introduced me to Timbaland’s production and I was hooked.Kanye West, “Cant Tell Me Nothing” This is Kanye at his best, being honest. My favorite line is “and what I do/ act more stupidly."DAngelo, “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” Sexxxxy time song.

Wats This Playlist All About? The masked mouse crusader shares an ever-changing, ever-expanding mix of "songs n stuff," which has been getting a heavy update in the days before the March 30 release of his new collaborative album, Wheres the Drop?, an orchestral rendering of his electronic works with help from composer Gregory Reveret.

What You Get: A heady, head-bopping, nearly 10-hour mix of slick, silvery progressive house and minimal techno—much of it atmospherically suitable for a futuristic sci-fi blockbuster or a sweat-soaked trip in an exotic, lavish club. Dreamy or robotic voices float through on occasion, but mostly its a study on dance music at the intersection of melodic and hypnotic. In other words, its a good way for you to get out of your head and for our keen curator to slip in some of his sounds and those on his mau5trap label.

Greatest Discovery: The stabbing metallic beats and slippery grooves of "Machines" by Bulgarian DJ and producer Gallya, a newcomer on the mau5trap roster.

Does This Prove the Death of EDM? Always a mouthy one—especially when it comes to his own mode of moneymaking—Deadmau5 was once quoted as saying that EDM will "eventually fuck itself so hard." He also tweeted, "I fucking hate fucking EDM." Ok, we get the message. We wont call this EDM. Its just a solid mix of electronic "songs n stuff."

This is part of a series where we create playlists for friends or colleagues. The following text is a transcript of an e-mail that accompanied the playlist. Hey Eric,Here is the Silver Jews playlist I promised you. I know you said that you’re interested in them, but hadn’t been able to dig into them, in large part because they are not on any streaming services. So I made you a Youtube playlist. You can find it here.I’m curious to see what you think of them. It’s difficult for me to separate myself from my personal attachment to their music to form an objective critical appraisal. To me, they represent both a certain time in my life (my early twenties) and a place: the South, or, more specifically, Virginia, where I lived on and off during that period in my life. I don’t think most people think of them as a Southern band. The opening sentence of their Wikipedia bio declares that they’re an “an indie rock band from New York City, formed in 1989 by David Berman along with Pavements Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich.” But that is bullshit. The Silver Jews are David Berman (the other guys just show up sometimes), and David Berman is Southern.But they/he embody a part of the South that most of us don’t know exist (or at least don’t think about). It’s steeped in history (in civil war battlefields and antebellum plantations and all that shit), but is very consciously burdened (and not ennobled) by it, and tries to navigate through these shadows with a fatalistic wit and soft-lit irony.In that way subverts the notion central to Americana that nostalgia equals purity. Memories -- personal and collective -- are conjured and batted away, or used as punchlines. On the song “Slow Education,” which opens this playlist, the narrator recalls “a screen door banging in the wind” and that “you wanted to be like George Washington back then,” all of which sounds like Richard Manual writing a Lana Del Rey song, before adding that “everybody going down on themselves/ No pardon mes or fair thee wells in the end.” Which is a jokingly formal and pretty funny way of describing a certain type of asshole.And that’s the thing about the Silver Jews. It’s incredibly, consistently sad music -- the title of the song “Death of An Heir of Sorrows” could double as the name of Berman’s biography; Berman quit music due (in part) to the (self) revelation that his father was an arms dealer or some such -- but he’s also funny. Exhibit #1 is the oft-quoted opening line on “Random Rules”: “In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection/ slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction.”The guy has duende, or at least a southern surburban version of it. Wikipedia defines duende as “having soul, a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity,” but they’re wrong (Wikipedia is wrong about so much today). I prefer to think of it as having an acute awareness of death -- both one’s own mortality and a larger, communal death -- and the ability to laugh and fuck and play music anyway. “Pretty Eyes” is a perfect sad song -- more perfect than any sad song Dylan or L. Cohen ever wrote, at least. It begins with the line “Everybody wants perspective from a hill/but everybodys wants cant make it past the window sill,” and has the completely obvious but totally devastating line in the middle that “one of these days, these days will end,” before nailing the landing on the last stanza with this couplet: “I believe that stars are the headlights of angels/ driving from heaven to save us to save us." But theres also this amazing (and hilarious) image at its core: “The elephants are so ashamed of their size/ hosing them down, I tell ‘em ‘you got pretty eyes’.” If you’re only going to listen to one song from this mix, listen to that one.I know this is a bit rambling. I also know that I haven’t discussed the music. It sounds kinda like really shambolic Americana, I guess. Um, members of Pavement do some of it! Members of Pavement do the best of it, actually, which can be found on the album American Water. Outside of that, it’s often rambling, amelodic and lo-fi. It occasionally fits the lyrics’ themes, I guess. It’s the achilles heel, but it doesn’t get in the way.But I don’t want to end on a down note, because I really love Silver Jews. I’ve listened to them for 20 years. The connect me with the place that I’m from like few other bands (Outkast also do this, fwiw). They’ve gotten me out of tough spots. They’ve gotten a lot of my friends out of tough spots. You’re my friend, so maybe it’ll get you out of a tough spot some day. Or, at the very least, I hope you enjoy this playlist.Sam