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Kamasi Washington plays his father’s saxophone. But the Grammy-nominated artist who rose to fame working with legends like Kendrick Lamar and Herbie Hancock didn’t start out on the horn. Nor did he or his musician father ever think he’d play sax at all, the instrument for which he’s now become famous. For at the beginning, young Washington imagined himself a drummer. Today, he remembers seeing pictures of himself playing drums as young as three years old. His father, Rickey Washington, was the sax player in the family. So, the younger Washington tried his hand at piano, then later clarinet. At this point, around the time he was 12 years old, his dad was a little fed up with his son’s musical wanderlust. He kept telling his son that the clarinet was (essentially) the same thing as sax. But that never felt true for the aspiring Washington. The day he picked up his father’s horn and played—that’s when he knew.

One note twirled out from singer Cat Power’s tongue and it’s clear: the artist is a genre unto herself. When the songwriter, also known as Chan Marshall, offers her voice in melody, it’s like a homemade amalgamation of different woods: birch, cedar, maple, applewood (folk, rock, blues, bluegrass), all fused and nailed together to create some echoing birdhouse tone that’s completely singular. It’s a mystical-going-on-mythical combination that many in Marshall’s wake have attempted to mimic or adapt. But that’s the thing with singularity, there’s but one, simply by definition. And so Marshall strides and stumbles through life knowing this, whether or not she admits it to herself out loud, knowing she’s a one-of-one, which must be both paradise and fraught. All the while still, Marshall continues to release glorious new work, both original and cover albums, applying her unique lens overtop each composition. Marshall’s latest offering, Covers, is a new record of just that, with a release date a mere week before her 50th birthday.

As the name might suggest, the story of the popular 1991 Sega Genesis video game, ToeJam & Earl, is dual-pronged. But that’s not the case just because the original game focuses on the two crash-landed aliens, ToeJam and Earl. It’s not just the case because the game was the creation of Greg Johnson and Mark Voorsanger. In fact it’s both of those things and this: the original ToeJam & Earl game, which earned a beloved underground following that’s not so underground anymore, was created in a “stream of consciousness” way, Johnson says. But ever since that beloved first title, the game has experienced many planned-out sequels and each of those more hard-framed blueprints haven’t given fans what they’ve wanted from the goofy, big-hearted, music-loving original. Now, though, ToeJam & Earl are back with the sequel it always should have had since its debut in the early ’90s. With the recent ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove, the series is on sturdy legs again—those of Big Earl’s and the three-legged ToeJam.

Colin Meloy, front person and principle songwriter for the Pacific Northwest-based indie band The Decemberists, says he grew up admiring artists who were vocal about their politics. Now, as an adult, Meloy says he intentionally uses his platform to speak his mind on issues important to him. Today, that means speaking out about neuro diversity.

If everyone in the world went vegan, says acclaimed musician Moby (real name Richard Melville Hall), then the lives of some 200 billion animals (land and sea) would be saved each year. Beyond that, there are other benefits. According to the singer, a vegan world would diminish carbon and methane emissions by roughly 30-40-percent. Additionally, 90-percent of rainforest deforestation is a product of animal agriculture. Trees are cut to make room for cows and the corn they eat. There are more benefits: 80-percet of antibody resistance in humans is a result of animal agriculture and somewhere around 100-percet of all health pandemics are a result of humans eating animals they shouldn’t. Not to mention, the water saved and the reduction in diabetes and obesity. Why then, some might ask, do people consume so many animals? The answer, the musician says, is often convenience and government subsidization.

To record his latest solo album, By the Fire, Thurston Moore, co-founder of the legendary rock ‘n’ roll band, Sonic Youth, compiled three different sessions from stints he spent in the studio in 2019 (two in London and one in Paris). Each, Moore says, had a “different nature” to them. The idea for the new record was to create an album similar, in a way, to The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main St., which itself was comprised of different sessions. By the Fire feels as much like a sonic tornado as it does a contemplative spell made up of tracks ranging in length from four to nearly 17 minutes.

John Linnell, co-founder for the Grammy Award-winning alternative rock group, They Might Be Giants, knows that process is as important as product, if not more so. For the band—which has released around two-dozen albums, recorded popular television show theme songs and impacted a globe of music fans, taking its time and remaining true to what makes it tick uniquely is paramount. This is especially true when it comes to They Might Be Giants’ new LP and accompanying tome, both of which are named BOOK, and both are out this Friday.

Natalie Imbruglia knows everything is transient. To put it another way, she says, “I just don’t give a shit anymore.” The “Torn” singer, who became globally famous for her voice and beauty in the ’90s, has seen the ways of the world and she’s not really impressed anymore. That also means she’s not captivated or led by any of it either. As a young person, Imbruglia was more affected by the possibilities and the promises of celebrity. But she learned quickly that they don’t satisfy or fulfill. She turned to meditation to help. She remembers wanting the attention from everyone around her knowing that she’d landed a role on an important Australian sitcom as a young person. Then, two weeks later, she’d flipped, wanting anonymity, hiding her face behind books in taxicabs. Today, Imbruglia is like a needle, weaving through different patches of life, one day living in the bustling city, the next inhaling a deep sea breeze. All of these elements comprise Imbruglia’s latest LP release, Firebird, which she released in September.