Artists

Kelcey Ayer is best known as the keyboardist and vocalist for L.A. indie-rock institution Local Natives, and on Sept. 22, he released his debut solo effort as Jaws of Love., titled Tasha Sits Close to the Piano. For his Dowsers playlist, he’s taking the opportunity to play catch-up on all the great music that came out last month—this is his “September Past, Present, and Future Friends’ Playlist.”“I was trying to think of an idea for this playlist and it occurred to me how difficult it can be doing what we do, and how it seems that playlists are becoming the go-to for getting music heard. We’re trying to get our music out there to the world, but with all the noise, its pretty fucking tough. I just released my solo project, and with all the feelings its bringing up from baring my insides to everyone, I could use some connection. So I thought fuck it, Im gonna hook it up! I love the idea of more community than less in the music world, so this is a playlist of either friends of mine, artists Ive always held in high regard, or new ones who I hope to have a beer with one day, whove released albums in September of 2017. So happy I did this too—it led me to so many awesome albums I missed. Enjoy!"—Kelcey Ayer

This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you.Shakespeare once famously declared that brevity is the soul of wit, but simplicity has been the last thing on Kendrick Lamar’s mind for the majority of his career. His two previous albums, 2012’s ghetto uprising saga good kid, M.A.A.D. city and 2015’s political prog-rap opus To Pimp a Butterfly were sprawling, intricately detailed patchworks, suffused with symbolism and strung together with the kind of recurring characters and monologuing one would expect from the Bard himself. But DAMN. is a different story. Having already claimed the throne as one of (if not the) most talented rappers in the history of the game, DAMN. is the sound of a young artist at the peak of his abilities delivering his music straight, no chaser. Not to say that DAMN. isn’t as multilayered and critical as anything else K.Dot’s put his name on, but now more than ever it feels like Lamar’s focus is entirely on the songs rather than the cohesive effect of the project. Each song on DAMN. feels as if it is coming from a different universe, be it the ‘90s slow ride of “HUMBLE.” or the futurist R&B of “LOVE.” or the absolutely bipolar “XXX.,” which travels between Metro Boomin minimalism, Public Enemy fury, and smooth boom-bap consciousness in the span of four minutes. Though Lamar’s influences are vast and easily traceable (the bassy Afrofuturism of Flying Lotus, the beat-poetry prophecies of the Last Poets, the self-aware party-rap of OutKast), on DAMN. he synthesizes them effortlessly, letting his own musical voice shine through more clearly than ever before.All of which makes DAMN. an incredibly fun, engaging listen, and adds another notch to Lamar’s already impressive catalog. With small-time songwriters emerging from the woodworks on major tracks (Zacari?) and mind-boggling appearances from big-name rock stars (U2!?), DAMN. is packed to capacity with ideas and influences and collaborators—so take a listen to this playlist and start unpacking the latest from one of our generation’s greatest.

This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you.

Long after MTV died, the golden age of music videos began. Freed from the constraints of corporate gatekeepers, cutting edge artists such as Kaytranada and ANOHNI crafted videos that were elegant and deeply personal, while established icons such as Gorillaz and Björk pushed technological boundaries in videos that were innovative and pleasantly disorienting.Perhaps no artist has taken such care at crafting a specific visual language as Kendrick Lamar. His videos not only function as promotional visual elements, but serve as an apocrypha of sorts, expanding and exploring the ideas put forth on his knotty, intricate tracks. A great example of this is “Alright.” Shot in stark black-and-white, and oscillating between locations in the Bay and Los Angeles, the visual maintains the loose narrative flow and spoken word interludes of To Pimp a Butterfly, but it’s most effective at playing with signifiers of a police state. Cops loom in the background, glaring out of police cars or aiming air pistols at protesters; Kendrick floats above the proceedings, seemingly hovering between transcendence and resistance. “Alright”—alongside Kendrick’s other best videos—achieve a sort of synesthesia, reflecting, both thematically and aesthetically, the MCs knotty but celebratory survey of modern blackness. “King Kunta” may be the most purely euphoric representation of inner-city life committed to video.Kendrick’s fans have responded to this approach, though Kendrick’s ascent to the top of the pop world has been a slower burn than most. As of this writing, Lamar has over two million YouTube channel subscribers and nearly 700 million overall views. While he has numerous videos that have been viewed over 50 million times, his latest clip, for Damn.’s leadoff single, “Humble,” was viewed 53 million times on YouTube in its first week. As a point of reference, it took previous singles “i,” “Alright,” and “King Kunta” months to reach this milestone, and, if projections hold, “Humble” will easily be his most successful single to date. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLemeQ5_nNS5VYdUxIWSd14cT1vIAcniBcIt’s fitting: Kendrick’s time has come, and “Humble” feels like a coronation. The video is a collection of startling, uncanny imagery. A shot of Kendrick rapping in a cathedral and dressed as a bishop segues into one of him in all black, lying on a table and surrounded by women in bras and surgical masks who count hundred dollar bills. In another shot, Kendrick, dressed in a patterned Caddyshack polo shirt, smashes golf balls atop a run-down car in a Los Angeles aqueduct. And, in perhaps the video’s most iconic shot, the MC sits at the center of a recreation of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”It’s easy to read the video’s themes as a meditation on the role of spirituality and religion in an increasingly secular society—topics that have become increasingly prevalent in the MCs work—but the video also reflects a technical acumen, an understanding and willingness to recontextualize pop culture signifiers. Much has been made of Kendrick as an icon for a new, woke generation, but, first and foremost, Kendrick is a badass rap stylist who makes videos that are visually stunning.

You may not be as excited as a lot of people are to have Kesha Rose Sebert back in action. But even the very worst of haters ought to give her a chance to make a second impression after what she’s been through.After she spent the first years of the decade establishing herself as pop’s preeminent hard-rocking, fast-talking, tik-tok-ing party girl, things came off the rails when her already rocky relationship with producer Dr. Luke took a toxic turn in 2014. The charges and counter-charges—including sexual assault and battery, unfair business practices, and much more from her side—put her in the starring role in a legal drama so ugly, it made the “Blurred Lines” case seems like 10 benign minutes in traffic court. Though that drama is hardly over, developments earlier this year freed her from the conditions that prevented her releasing any new music for three years.During that time, she did her best to convey her feelings through other people’s songs. Of course, that was far from ideal for a singer who’s long prided herself on being a songwriter, too— she clearly took far more satisfaction in her co-writing credits for Britney Spears and Big Time Rush than for any hook-up with Flo Rida. But at least Kesha’s choice of covers on recent tours—a smattering that ranges from Lesley Gore to Eagles of Death Metal—has proven she has a wider, more surprising set of musical tastes than was evident from the over-abundance of would-be club bangers on her two albums. Nor should the abundance of Bob Dylan tributes over the years—like her exquisite cover of “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” from 2012’s Chimes of Freedom tribute—be quite so surprising given the number of times she’s namedNashville Skyline as her favorite album.In fact, Kesha’s been eager to show off her affinities for classic rock, punk, and alt-rock since well before it all went sideways. When not citing The Damned as heroes, she was palling around with Alice Cooper and getting assists from The Strokes, The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney and Iggy Pop. And while that fabled Flaming Lips/Kesha collaboration—nicknamed Lip$ha—may have been sucked into a legal void from which it has yet to escape, we still got a tantalizing taste thanks to her mind-bending appearance on The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends.So as for all those haters and doubters who didn’t miss her, I say: You don’t know what you were missing. To mark the arrival of her third album Rainbow, here’s a set of her most adventurous and most surprising songs, and many more she loves, which should demonstrate there was always more to her than she got credit for… though maybe that’s about to change.

Tribe Called Quest created universes by cobbling together post-bop saxophones, rolling bass lines, and hard boom bap beats, topping them off with Q-Tip’s fluid freeform rhymes that played an alto sax to the gruff, declarative blurts of Phife’s deceptively straightforward lyrics. As music nerds, we’d already digested the Velvet Underground and De La Soul, so we instantly got Tribe’s vibes and references, but blending these two opposing worlds—despondent, glamorous sleaze rock and idiosyncratic, jazz afrocentrism—was a revelation. Here’s a playlist of some of their best and most well-known samples, from RAMP to Lou Reed.

On January 26, Texan trio Khruangbin release their second album, Con Todo El Mundo (on Dead Oceans), a supremely chilled fusion of classic funk grooves, sun-dazed psychedelia, and global influences spanning Mexico to the Middle East to South Asia. For their Dowsers playlist, the band open up their deep crates to recreate the soundtrack to a recent magical moment in India. "After playing our first Indian festival, we were lucky to enough to see the turning of the new year in Goa. These songs were the perfect company on the beach. Were trying to bring the Indian sun and warmth to any wintery grey places through this mix, which includes some of our favorites from all over the globe."—Khruangbin

In October 2017, L.A.-via-Nebraska phenom King Leg released his debut album, Meet King Leg (Sire/Warner), a winsome collection of heartland power-pop and twangy balladry gilded by his Orbison-esque croon. Here, he lets us ride shotgun with a Dowsers playlist of favorite road tunes: “Here are some songs Ive enjoyed listening to while driving around: windows down on many; windows up on some. Some of these songs are perfect for neighborhood driving with plenty of four-way stops, while some are better for speeding under a yellow light. Open-road driving or bumper-to-bumper wallowing, this list has a song for me. Mostly, I just like to start the car and turn it up and let the tunes do the steering.”——King Leg Watch the video for King Leg’s “Great Outdoors” (co-directed by Dwight Yoakam!):

Toronto-based jangle-punk combo Kiwi jr.’s debut album, Football Money, received a U.S. release in January 2020, mere weeks before the world was forced into hibernation by the COVID-19 virus. But if they can’t hit the road this year, the least they can do is relive past gig glories through this playlist of “people we have played with and hung out with and admire.” Their selections double as a pocket history of Canadian indie rock, spanning defunct ’90s icons (Thrush Hermit), dogged veterans (The Sadies, Fucked Up), unsung local heroes (Jim Guthrie, Daniel Romano), like-minded contemporaries (Nap Eyes), and a certain big-deal alt-pop group with whom they share a member (Alvvays). But the playlist is also a testament to Kiwi jr.’s rising cachet in the Toronto scene and their ability to score prime opening slots for visiting buzz bands like Aussie wonders Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Detroit singer/songwriter Stef Chura, and Brooklyn art-punk dynamos BODEGA.

Made up of vocalist and pianist Jenny Marie Sabel and multi-instrumentalist Eirik Vildgren, Norwegian duo Kondradsen make soft music that soothes with the freshness of a minty balm. Minimalist piano and synths create a vast landscape as gentle horns, strings, beats, samples, and field recordings fill it in with pastel colors. Sabel’s lullaby croons wrap around it all like a warm hug. It’s a sound and feeling that infuses every minute of their 2019 debut, Saints and Sebastian Stories, and extends into their 2020 EP, Rodeo No. 5, a five-song collection that they say tries “to capture the raw fragments that drift by in everyday life.” To go along with this theme, the pair put together a playlist for us that also attempts to encapsulate a moment in time.

Says Sabel of the playlist: “Here’s a playlist of songs much listened to the last few days—some new releases and old gems. Since we’re not supposed to travel much in these special times, the band doesn’t get to meet and make music. We live in different parts of the country at the moment. But what a perfect time to listen and get inspired by other musicians and work on some demos until we can meet again. This playlist is the latest inspiration blown through our ears.”

With the new third season of David Lynch’s mystery series set to begin on Showtime on May 21, the road back to Twin Peaks gets shorter every day. Now the actor we know best as Agent Cooper—with apologies to Portlandia’s mayor—has a hearty batch of mostly classic-rock tunes for your trip.While the title of Kyle MacLachlan’s “Coffeetime” may refer to the show’s G-man hero and his predilection for “a damn fine cup of coffee”—served with the Double R Diner’s cherry pie, of course—the selection is better suited to cans of Bud with the boys in a big way, thanks to the predominance of FM rock staples by the Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Cream.That may disappoint Lynch devotees who prefer gentler sounds more akin to the placid synths of Angelo Badalamenti’s scores for the director. Nor is there anything along the lines of the filmmaker’s own go-to musical cues: dreamy ‘50s pop like Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” in Blue Velvet, or industrial nightmares like the Rammstein tracks in Lost Highway. Instead, MacLachlan sticks with his flavor profile of “‘60s/’70s heavy,” which means the playlist could be the soundtrack-for-kicking-back of any easy-going 58-year-old dude aside from a few more personal quirks.The preponderance of Doors songs is only natural for the actor who played Ray Manzarek in Oliver Stone’s 1991 gonzo biopic. Meanwhile, the spate of grunge faves befits a proud native of Washington State. Then there’s the more mysterious plethora of Jethro Tull deep cuts. Apparently, MacLachlan loves Ian Anderson’s raggedy prog-folk travelers so much, he once lobbied his wife to name their son Jethro. Luckily for his marriage, good sense prevailed, but you have to hope MacLachlan found a way to get some Tull into the new chapter of Agent Cooper’s saga. After all, being trapped in the Black Lodge for 25 years gives a guy plenty of time for flute practice.