Leslie Feist has more range, but when it comes to pure octane, it’s hard to beat Amy Winehouse’s soul-on-bourbon-with-ice bawl. She could probably take Feist in a punch-up, too. After all, she’s had more practice. But those tabloid headlines just make us like Winehouse more. They prove that the live...

Leslie Feist has more range, but when it comes to pure octane, it’s hard to beat Amy Winehouse’s soul-on-bourbon-with-ice bawl. She could probably take Feist in a punch-up, too. After all, she’s had more practice. But those tabloid headlines just make us like Winehouse more. They prove that the live...

If we had our druthers, we’d rather our World Music winners sing in a language other than English, so consider this a special ESL ballot entry. Ukraine-to-Brooklyn transplant Eugene Hütz might sing in English, but his subject is exile, globalization, the immigrant experience. As he likes to sing: “Have...

Riff ’n’ roll pop has been a specialty of the White Stripes, and “Icky Thump” is one of the duo’s best, but it’s also a spirited protest number. Maybe the only protest number with “la, la, la, la” in its lyrics, as well as the first Top 40 song with a buzzy Blue Box-effects guitar solo since Led Zeppelin...

The naysayers who still think that Radiohead don’t deserve the Most Important Band in the World tag don’t have much of an argument after the events of the past seven months, which found Oxford’s favorite sons turning the music industry on its head by “leaking” their own album on the Web a week and a...

The naysayers who still think that Radiohead don’t deserve the Most Important Band in the World tag don’t have much of an argument after the events of the past seven months, which found Oxford’s favorite sons turning the music industry on its head by “leaking” their own album on the Web a week and a...

The naysayers who still think that Radiohead don’t deserve the Most Important Band in the World tag don’t have much of an argument after the events of the past seven months, which found Oxford’s favorite sons turning the music industry on its head by “leaking” their own album on the Web a week and a...

Like Jewel, Jack Johnson’s a kinda hippie-ish singer-songwriter who happens to enjoy surfing. Unlike Jewel, Johnson can surf — well enough that the Hawaian-born hunk turned pro as a teenager and started making and starring in those surfing films that make catching a wave look positively heroic. But Johnson...

This mantle would have fit Wilco more easily during the band’s first seven years, when twang was “kang” and country and folk influences poked through all their songs. But that changed with the reinvention, or maybe resurrection, of Jeff Tweedy. He took a battle-axe to his personal demons during the making...

Shrewd in both the art of the beat and the art of noise, Mathangi Arulpragasam — better know as M.I.A. — made last year’s most inventive CD, Kala (XL/Interscope). It’s ostensibly a dance-pop album, but it’s also an ambient masterpiece with riveting sonic interludes supercharged with political passions...