Genres

What makes the history of thrash so legendary is not just the time and place from whence it sprung, but the fervor behind it all: the aggression, the solos, the speed, the sheer collision of wailing NWOBHM and hardcores piss and vitriol. Its fast, its dark, its got an attitude—and its also got a sense of humor. But no matter what, its always an invigorating listen. And in 2005, when it came back around, thrash proved its also completely timeless.Bands like Municipal Waste and Toxic Holocaust dug the torch out of some filthy dumpster (most likely in an abandoned skate park littered with cigarette butts and shitty graffiti), dusted it off, and fired up a whole new explosion. Notable young thrash bands popped up in a seemingly endless supply and broke through the zeitgeist, bringing with them a love for the sound and the opportunity to take a trip back in time. But it wasnt all about nostalgia. Thrash became a necessary mainstay in a landscape overtaken by metalcore and mainstream active rock disguised as metal. The Big Four were working through their third decade and some of them had veered off in directions far beyond their thrash foundation. To the new school, the excitement and vitality of what once was needed to rise again. And since the mid-2000s, it hasnt stopped. In 2017, we see crossover bands like Power Trip and Iron Reagan raising the flag, guitar shredders like Ramming Speed and Foreseen HKI carrying the tradition, and full-on crushers—like the all-female Nervosa—waging their own assault. Meet the New School of Thrash.This feature is part of our Thrash 101 online course that was produced in partnership with the good rocking folks at GimmeRadio, a free 24/7 metal radio station hosted by heavy-music experts like Megadeths Dave Mustaine and Lamb of Gods Randy Blythe. Check them out here and sign up for the Thrash 101 course here.

Power pop could be perhaps the most ironically named of rock subgenres. Sure, as a purely sonic descriptor, it makes sense: Take the pristine jangle of ‘60s melody makers like The Byrds and Love and add some Marshall-stack muscle. But historically speaking, power pop has been the playground of the powerless: the aspiring Anglophiles who dreamed of being as big as The Beatles only to get crushed by an indifferent music industry (Big Star, Flamin’ Groovies); the eccentrics whose expertise with a hook belied their peculiar personalities (Todd Rundgren, Cheap Trick); the down ‘n’ out misfits for whom the ringing chords of a Rickenbacker are the only salve for a world of pain (The La’s Ted Leo).For enthusiasts, power pop represents rock ‘n’ roll in its most immaculate state—the perfect synthesis of melody, harmony, and riffed-up swagger. But at its most potent——be it Badfinger’s swooning “No Matter What” or Sheer Mag’s aching “Just Can’t Get Enough”——it’s also the frozen-in-amber sound of dreams unfulfilled, love unrequited, and halcyon days that can never be relived. Even as its gamely adapted to every rock trend of the past 40 years (punk, indie rock, lo-fi, grunge), power pop’s essential chemistry remains the same: It’s the sugar rush and the bitter pill all in one.

Psychedelic music emerged in the mid-60s as a mutant offspring of the British Invasion and American garage rock, but has since morphed into so many different forms that it is more accurate to describe it as a feeling than a sound. Be it the the brain-melting feedback of Jimi Hendrix or Ty Segall, the dreamy reveries of Spiritualized and Tame Impala, or the heady, head-nodding beats of Flying Lotus and J Dilla, psychedelica is hard to pin down—but you’ll know you’re hearing it when you feel your mind altering. Heres our curated guide to the best head music to help you chase the rush, including our genre-spanning psych playlist (at right) and links to past Dowsers mixes for even deeper trips.

PSYCH FUNKPsychedelic music has traditionally been used as a way to explore the inner workings of your mind. But if you take off the headphones, its also a great way to explore your body on the dance floor. Soul, funk and R&B have a long tradition of making music that rocks the hips and the third eye at the same time, from Eddie Hazels righteous riffing on Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop to Dâm-Funks alien synth-funk bangers.Recommended Listening:A Deeper Shade of Psych SoulThe Afrofuturist Impulse in MusicInto the Nite: Synth-Funk Fantasias

PSYCH RAPPsychedelic music has drifted into every form of music, and since any worthwhile hip-hop producer keeps their ears open, its only natural that it’s became part of the mix. Revered producers J Dilla and Madlib have made hip-hop tracks that oozed with so much mood and shimmer that they didnt even need MCs to rewire the listeners brain, while the genre’s heady offshoot, trip-hop, has been obliterating genre lines and listeners’ minds for more than two decades.Recommended Listening:Great (Post-Donuts) Instrumental Hip-Hop TracksBehind the Beats: Madlib and DillaBest Trip-Hop Tracks

PSYCH JAZZAt its mid-’60s moment of origin, psychedelia immediately found a natural host in jazz. After all, both are concerned with evoking a feeling and a mood, and following inspiration wherever it leads—from the spiritually searching compositions of Alice Coltrane to Mulatu Astatke’ slippery Latin-flavored explorations to Flying Lotus dedication to feeding brains with jazz-damaged trance whispers.Recommended Listening:The Black Experimental Music MixtapeChampions of Ethiopian GrooveThe Best of Brainfeeder

PSYCH-TRONICAWhy settle for rocking minds and rocking bodies when you can do both at once? From the Chemical Brothers to Neon Indian to Boards of Canada, many of the most cutting-edge electronic-music producers spend equal amounts of time focussing on booming beats as well as keyboard lines, sine moans, and digital gurgles designed to tickle the mind. And if you need to rest after a night out, theres plenty of trippy ambient chillout tracks for that as well.Recommended Listening:Essential Acid House TraxThe Art of Psychedelic Disco-RockThe Best Electronic Shoegaze

INDIE PSYCHPsychedelia never dies, it just keeps getting weirder. Animal Collective threw down the gauntlet with 2004’s Sung Tongs, their childlike, free-spirited update of psych rock, and a generation of indie artists have taken up the challenge. From Deerhunters fearsome ambient punk to Zombys scrambled dubstep to Ariel Pinks wounded daydreams, the youngest generation continues to push music inward.Recommended Listening:Animal Collective’s Outer LimitsDreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky RecordsNew Tropics: The Modern Los Angeles Underground

PSYCH ROCKWhen rock first got psychedelic in the 60s, the most obvious proponents were self-professed freaks like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. But nearly everywhere you looked, you could find someone trying to access their inner mind via some radical noise, from cult acts like Love and The Fugs to icons like The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Since then, every generation since has found their own way to look inside, from the Dream Syndicate in the ’80s, to Slowdive in the ’90s, to My Morning Jacket in the 21st century.Recommended Listening:Bad Trips: The Dark Side of the ‘60sSpace Rock: A Cosmic JourneyHow Psychedelia Reclaimed Modern Rock

PSYCH FOLKIn the beginning, psychedelic music was associated with guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix and waves of feedback. But that big bang was soon followed by generations of artists—from 60s Greenwich Village folkie Karen Dalton to Bert Jansch and his 70s British folk group Pentangle to modern dreamweavers like Devendra Banhart— who used acoustic guitars, pared-down arrangements, and dexterously plucked melodies to pull the listener into their headspace without the need for amplification.Recommended Listening:Way Past Pleasant: A Guide to Psychedelic FolkReligion, Rock, and LSD: A Brief History of Jesus Freaks

PSYCH PUNKThe common myth about punk is that it formed in opposition to bloated 70s rock, and rejected Pink Floyd and anything associated with psychedelia. But the truth is that plenty of punks, such as restless hardcore purveyors Black Flag and volatile noiseniks the Butthole Surfers, not to mention punk-adjacent acts like the Jesus & Mary Chain and Dinosaur Jr., looked back to the ‘60s when deciding how to expand their sound and beguile their fans.Recommended Listening:When Punk Got WeirdPsychedelia in the ‘80sThe 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time

The loss of Leonard Cohen is an incalculable one. But part of the reason he’ll be missed so much is also one of the reasons the world without him might be a bit less bleak than we expect. The power of his poetic vision was so strong that he ended up deeply influencing generation after generation of artists operating in every stylistic sector, from folk rock to post-punk. Countless singers have covered Cohen’s songs over the years (including some of the artists you’ll encounter here), but these are the people whose own work has been irrevocably imprinted with the inspiration of the man from Montreal. It might not always be immediately obvious, but it’s undeniably there, whether it’s in the devilish alt-rock antics of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, the moody singer/songwriter style of Suzanne Vega, or even the grunge-era growl of Afghan Whigs and Nirvana (whose longing for “a Leonard Cohen afterlife” in “Pennyroyal Tea” takes on a whole new resonance in this context).

Surveying any “story of punk” is going to be a fraught endeavor, the limits of what constitutes the genre—indeed, can punk truly be considered a genre? An attitude? A movement?—proving far-reaching and objectively elusive. Which makes Pitchforks Story of Feminist Punk playlist, curated by Vivien Goldman, even more daring and triumphant. This isnt just a list of women who make punk; rather, its a treatise on the protest song, as told by Crass, Bikini Kill, Kleenex, White Lung and a smorgasbord of feminist classmates. Working chronologically—and without the flabby context of other era-hits—Goldman teases out a defiant lineage of feminist thought, like a thread running through a woolen sweater, stretching from Patti Smith (“Land”) and the Bush Tetras (“Too Many Creeps”) to Priests (“And Breeding”) and Sleater-Kinney (“#1 Must Have”). Its a brazen collection of pitch-perfect choices, an unapologetic fuck-you to the male-dominated annals of punks past and present, a statement of intent, and, without doubt, a rallying call to arms.

Krautrock wasn’t all about fuzzed-out guitars and primal drumbeats; much of the innovation that came out of the German underground in the late ‘60s and ‘70s (spilling over slightly into the early ‘80s) came from mighty Moog-wielding electronic sorcerers eager to rewrite musical history in their own image. From the hypnotic, highly textured synthscapes of rock’s first real synth band, Tangerine Dream, to the proto-techno man-machine music of Kraftwerk, the electronic side of the krautrock revolution could be soft or stormy, melodic or assaultive, accessible or out on the edge. But those trailblazing German synth meisters laid down sounds that influenced the whole world for generations to come, from the synth-poppers who followed in the footsteps of Kraftwerk to the trance nation that claims Tangerine Dream among its key influences.

Psychedelic music emerged in the mid-60s as a mutant offspring of the British Invasion and American garage rock, but has since morphed into so many different forms that it is more accurate to describe it as a feeling than a sound. Be it the the brain-melting feedback of Jimi Hendrix or Ty Segall, the dreamy reveries of Spiritualized and Tame Impala, or the heady, head-nodding beats of Flying Lotus and J Dilla, psychedelica is hard to pin down—but you’ll know you’re hearing it when you feel your mind altering. Heres our curated guide to the best head music to help you chase the rush, including our genre-spanning psych playlist (at right) and links to past Dowsers mixes for even deeper trips.

PSYCH ROCKWhen rock first got psychedelic in the 60s, the most obvious proponents were self-professed freaks like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. But nearly everywhere you looked, you could find someone trying to access their inner mind via some radical noise, from cult acts like Love and The Fugs to icons like The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Since then, every generation since has found their own way to look inside, from the Dream Syndicate in the ’80s, to Slowdive in the ’90s, to My Morning Jacket in the 21st century.Recommended Listening:Bad Trips: The Dark Side of the ‘60sSpace Rock: A Cosmic JourneyHow Psychedelia Reclaimed Modern Rock

PSYCH FOLKIn the beginning, psychedelic music was associated with guitar gods like Jimi Hendrix and waves of feedback. But that big bang was soon followed by generations of artists—from 60s Greenwich Village folkie Karen Dalton to Bert Jansch and his 70s British folk group Pentangle to modern dreamweavers like Devendra Banhart— who used acoustic guitars, pared-down arrangements, and dexterously plucked melodies to pull the listener into their headspace without the need for amplification.Recommended Listening:Way Past Pleasant: A Guide to Psychedelic FolkReligion, Rock, and LSD: A Brief History of Jesus Freaks

PSYCH FUNKPsychedelic music has traditionally been used as a way to explore the inner workings of your mind. But if you take off the headphones, its also a great way to explore your body on the dance floor. Soul, funk and R&B have a long tradition of making music that rocks the hips and the third eye at the same time, from Eddie Hazels righteous riffing on Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop to Dâm-Funks alien synth-funk bangers.Recommended Listening:A Deeper Shade of Psych SoulThe Afrofuturist Impulse in MusicInto the Nite: Synth-Funk Fantasias

PSYCH JAZZAt its mid-’60s moment of origin, psychedelia immediately found a natural host in jazz. After all, both are concerned with evoking a feeling and a mood, and following inspiration wherever it leads—from the spiritually searching compositions of Alice Coltrane to Mulatu Astatke’ slippery Latin-flavored explorations to Flying Lotus dedication to feeding brains with jazz-damaged trance whispers.Recommended Listening:The Black Experimental Music MixtapeChampions of Ethiopian GrooveThe Best of Brainfeeder

PSYCH PUNKThe common myth about punk is that it formed in opposition to bloated 70s rock, and rejected Pink Floyd and anything associated with psychedelia. But the truth is that plenty of punks, such as restless hardcore purveyors Black Flag and volatile noiseniks the Butthole Surfers, not to mention punk-adjacent acts like the Jesus & Mary Chain and Dinosaur Jr., looked back to the ‘60s when deciding how to expand their sound and beguile their fans.Recommended Listening:When Punk Got WeirdPsychedelia in the ‘80sThe 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time

PSYCH RAPPsychedelic music has drifted into every form of music, and since any worthwhile hip-hop producer keeps their ears open, its only natural that it’s became part of the mix. Revered producers J Dilla and Madlib have made hip-hop tracks that oozed with so much mood and shimmer that they didnt even need MCs to rewire the listeners brain, while the genre’s heady offshoot, trip-hop, has been obliterating genre lines and listeners’ minds for more than two decades.Recommended Listening:Great (Post-Donuts) Instrumental Hip-Hop TracksBehind the Beats: Madlib and DillaBest Trip-Hop Tracks

PSYCH-TRONICAWhy settle for rocking minds and rocking bodies when you can do both at once? From the Chemical Brothers to Neon Indian to Boards of Canada, many of the most cutting-edge electronic-music producers spend equal amounts of time focussing on booming beats as well as keyboard lines, sine moans, and digital gurgles designed to tickle the mind. And if you need to rest after a night out, theres plenty of trippy ambient chillout tracks for that as well.Recommended Listening:Essential Acid House TraxThe Art of Psychedelic Disco-RockThe Best Electronic Shoegaze

INDIE PSYCHPsychedelia never dies, it just keeps getting weirder. Animal Collective threw down the gauntlet with 2004’s Sung Tongs, their childlike, free-spirited update of psych rock, and a generation of indie artists have taken up the challenge. From Deerhunters fearsome ambient punk to Zombys scrambled dubstep to Ariel Pinks wounded daydreams, the youngest generation continues to push music inward.Recommended Listening:Animal Collective’s Outer LimitsDreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky RecordsNew Tropics: The Modern Los Angeles Underground

It could be argued that Colemans greatest influence was beyond the borders of jazz. Generations of rock and experimental musicians have internalized the lessons of Coleman, understanding that oftentimes some of the most beautiful music first sounds ugly and random. You can hear Ornettes jagged, screeching stabs in everyone from the Grateful Dead to Television, but more than just a style or type of playing, Coleman taught musicians a new way to approach music -- an improvisational and at times confrontational method that was akin to a primal scream. Of course, Ornette could pull that off because he had chops, and the head-first style would later generate a lot of really bad noise, but weve tried to collect some of the better examples here. Some of these artist are explicitly indebted to Ornette. Thurston Moore has sited him as an influence; Nation of Ulysses named their song after him; and both the Grateful Dead and Lou Reed played with the man.

While self-seriousness tends to rule both mainstream EDM and underground dance music alike, Stockholms Studio Barnhus label follows more lighthearted impulses, with a playful streak of gentle absurdism informs twinkling deep house tunes sourced from sentimental disco, R&B, and easy listening. Founded in 2010 by Axel Boman, Kornél Kovács, and Petter Nordkvist, Barnhus taps a similar vibe as DJ Kozes Pampa label (which might not be surprising, since Boman has recorded some of his best work for Pampa). Bright colors, squirrelly melodies, and unusual textures are the order of the day, and although an undercurrent of melancholy runs beneath even its most whimsical releases, theres no one style or sound to sum up all the labels output; the catalog runs from swirly sampledelia to convoluted synth jams, and from lo-fi tone poems to double-time footwork jams.More than 16 hours long, this frequently updated playlist gathers the labels entire catalog, from a debut EP (Good Children Make Bad Grown Ups) drenched in soul and big-band jazz to Kornél Kovács debut album, The Bells, one of 2016s finest house long-players. For best results, select shuffle mode, and spend the rest of your day flipping between day-dream reveries and delirious rug-cutting—all of it with a giddy smile pasted from ear to ear.

Afrobeats is the sound you heard on pop radio for much of 2016. It’s not to be confused with Afrobeat, the funk-based form that Fela Kuti made famous in the 1970s. (It’s a common error that even a New York Times story recently made.) Afrobeats emerged from Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana in the mid-to-late 2000s, and serves as an African response to post-millennial hip-hop, electronic music, Jamaican reggae and dancehall, and R&B. There are tracks that rely on familiar tropes—Auto-Tuned vocals, English-language lyrics about partying and sex—as well as build upon distinctive traditions like highlife and Afrobeat, resulting in songs that could only be African. It has informed some truly sublime music, like Maleek Berry’s sensuous, hip-swaying “Kontrol,” and WizKid’s “Ojuelegba,” a mesmerizing striver’s anthem about scraping together an existence in Lagos. The latter was featured on The Fader’s best tracks of 2015 list, a sign that Western tastemakers are keen on African pop.Much of what the U.S. mainstream has heard of Afrobeats so far are watered-down, chart-topping approximations like Drake’s “One Dance,” and Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself.” However, it thrives online, gathering hundreds of millions of YouTube views, and turning artists like Yemi Alade (whose “Johnny” has accumulated 75 million views thanks to its colorfully frenetic video), Mr. Eazi, DaVido, and others into virtual cult artists. WizKid has toured with Future, and his most recent album, Sounds from the Other Side, yielded a modest hit in “Come Closer,” a collaboration with Drake. D’banj’s new album, King Don Come, includes a number with Gucci Mane, “EL CHAPO,” that gives Southern trap form a distinctly Nigerian twist. It’s anyone’s guess whether the rise of Afrobeats results in African musicians cracking the Billboard Hot 100, or turns out to be a fad that burns brightly and dissipates. Regardless, it’s a sign of how global music has returned to prominence in America—as if Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” hadn’t proved that already—opening up a new world of Afrobeats to discover.