Lily Moayeri

Basement Jaxx got the ingredients right for their multiflavored house music seven albums ago: bumping beats, Afro rhythms, carved-out vocals. On their latest, Junto, house music is the framework but style mixture remains a Jaxx tradition. Steel drums on "Power to the People," breakbeats and ragga vocals on "Buffalo," sped-up......

Los Angeles' Stones Throw Records hosts an elaborate event at Grand Performances for Fourth of July weekend. The independent label helmed by Peanut Butter Wolf, who will be showcasing his turntable skills, doesn't limit itself musically, talent-wise or with the evening's activities. Appearances by stalwart Stones Throw artists such as......

Röyksopp and Robyn have been teasing the masses with guest appearances on each other's songs. With the mini-album Do It Again, the Norwegian soulful techno duo and the Swedish dance-floor queen finally combine forces. Two 10-minute epics, pulsating techno ballad "Monument" and electronic symphony "The Idle Hour Club," bookend Do......

Jaded Incorporated is Mayer Hawthorne and fellow Michiganite 14KT, aka Kendall Tucker of the hip-hop collective Athletic Mic League. Although they're longtime collaborators, this is the duo's first project together. Coining the term "beat wave" on their debut, The Big Knock, they draw from synthesizer-based postpunk and new wave, with......

For every pop tart, there are countless talents whose music isn't exposed to enough people. Kendra Morris has been kicked off three different singing-competition series, exponentially upping her credibility factor. The Florida-bred, New York - based singer-songwriter let loose her powerhouse voice on her debut full-length, Banshee (2012), creating painstakingly......

In the last decade and a half, Kelis has tried the modern R&B crooner and dance-diva personas. But it's the vintage soul songstress of her latest, Food, that best suits her. Skillfully produced by TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, Food is a culinary concept album on its surface but,......

U.K. bass ambassadors Chase & Status' slick commercialization of the underground sounds of drum 'n' bass continues with an admirable lack of genre loyalty on their third full-length, Brand New Machine. Paying overt tribute to the duo's influences, the Italian piano house of "Count on Me" and "Deeper Devotion" throw......

London Grammar is eminently likable. The youthful British trio, whose album If You Wait was released last year, has won over a diverse audience with a combination of haunting vocals, dewdrop guitar plucks and multilayered, electronically driven keyboards and percussion. Comparisons to The xx run rampant, and that's not a......

Big Scary's second album contrarily asserts itself as art by its very title, Not Art. Where the duo's debut, Vacation, was of the navel-gazing variety, Not Art uses a hip-hop approach to production. Ironically, "Why Hip-Hop Sucks in '13" is a piano-led number, which highlights Joanna Syme's vocals, but the......

Boy George, the iconic, gender-bending vocalist for the universally appealing '80s group Culture Club, releases his first album of original material in almost two decades with This Is What I Do. Never one for musical restriction, Boy George dabbles with lazy, horn-laced reggae on "Live Your Life," loose rock riffs......