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Playing music can feel magical. Songwriting, too. The perfect note can pop into your head mid-jam and the whole room can explode. Or the right lyrical line can flutter into your fingers and a universe can open up. But without practice, without sitting down and doing the thing, none of this can happen. Songwriting and performative excellence come to those who do. You have to be in the stream to get wet, so to speak. Lake Street Dive frontwoman, Rachael Price, knows this well. In fact, her favorite aspects about music are getting in a room and hunkering down to dive in headfirst.

She thinks about the band’s upright bassist, Bridget Kearney, who says it’s like fishing. You may not catch a fish in the lake, but you have to go fishing to catch a fish. There are no two ways about it. You have to write, and practice if you’re going to be a musician. So, Price, Kearney and the rest of the band do just that: they work. And that effort is evident on all their records, and most recently on the band’s new EP, Fun Machine: The Sequel, which is out Friday (September 9). It’s an album born of musical appreciation and dedication.

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For Son Little, a weight has been lifted. The artist, born Aaron Livingston, had been carrying around the trauma and shame of experiencing sexual abuse as a young person for his whole life. As such, for years, as he kept the secret silent, he “absorbed” anxiety and difficult moments. He built his life around an absence of security, what he calls “a hole.” While he’d built a successful music career for himself, something was always off. Like a person walking down a dark street late at night, wondering at every moment if a stranger would leap out and hurt him, Livingston felt vulnerable and targeted.

This is common amongst those who have been hurt in their childhood in the ways Livingston unfortunately had. But in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the world (and Livingston’s touring schedule) shut down, he rediscovered some old writings, disconnected from his contemporary life, and reconnected to his roots. The result was the strength to admit what happened, let loose the trauma and write new songs. Now, Livingston is poised to release a new LP, Like Neptune, in September. And he feels free.

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In America today, seemingly every conversation about art or politics or society, in general, includes the concept of identity. And it’s regularly understood in singular terms. Person X is often reduced to either this or that. But this is not the way everyone expresses themselves around the world. People, like countries, can be melting pots. Can be fluid. Can be comprised of many different influences, which themselves are comprised of many different influences, too. In the country of Malaysia, for example, which is the home of the celebrated songwriter and performer Yuna, people are understood to reflect where they come from: a region rich with different national influences, from Chinese to Indian to British to Malay. And it’s this cornucopia of styles that comprise the music that Yuna makes and shares with her listeners. It’s these types of songs that drew audiences to her. And Yuna’s latest release—well, releases—reflects this, too. This year, Yuna will drop five EPs that will, come November 11, make an entire full-length. And her latest, Y4, is out today (September 2). But careers do start somewhere and for Yuna, it was as a kid with her father and his guitar.

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When it comes to the music of R&B star Eric Bellinger, there is a great deal of world-building, character crafting, and message delivery. In some ways, Bellinger is like a novelist, composing story arcs and wielding his pen-like punches, breaking through the proverbial blank page. To do so, Bellinger has been blessed with many significant inspirations. The first came from church and the second from his grandfather. Bellinger, who grew up singing in church services, didn’t think at the time that it would become his career. But it helped lead him to his first musical group and later to songwriting, before eventually going out as a solo artist. But Bellinger was buoyed by his own family in this way, too. Namely by his grandfather, Bobby Day, who blazed a trail with his own group in the 1950s, The Hollywood Flames, which Bellinger would later study and follow. Today, Bellinger has released a myriad of albums, earned Grammy nominations and award victories, and is set for much more as his career unfurls.

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When Beatrice Laus (aka the popular songwriter and performer beabadoobee) was first thinking about what her life might look like professionally, she didn’t consider being a global pop star. Who would ever assume something like that could happen? Instead, she wanted to be a nursery school teacher. Bea loved the idea that she could be the first person for young children to learn from outside of their homes and help explain to them what the world was all about. She would teach them about music and culture. “Just the very basic stuff,” she says, just to help them get on their first feet.

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Rewards. Immediately the idea seems positive, right? But it can be a mixed bag. What if the reward comes for a poor practice or habit? What does it reinforce then? In other ways, though, a reward can be wonderful. Hard work can pay off and that’s almost always a good thing—right?

For Jim Adkins, frontman and principal songwriter for the acclaimed rock group Jimmy Eat World, the concept of a reward has been both life-changing and at times fraught. When his band rose to immense popularity in the early 2000s with their song, “The Middle,” they reaped the rewards. Heck, the song itself was even about the thought: Just try your best, Try everything you can… It just takes some time… Everything, everything’ll be just fine. Those are the lines Adkins sings, the lines that helped propel his Mesa, Arizona-born group, which was started in high school amongst friends, to world fame. Rewards. But life is hard, curious, and rife with unknown futures. Sometimes the rewards can rain down and hit strangely. Since its early days, though, the band has worked through its ups and downs (like any group, really) and these days they have a new single out, “Something Loud,” that fans crave.

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If songwriter and performer Regina Spektor was ever to write a memoir, she says it would probably be fiction. Reality for the standout is often merely a jumping-off point for her relentless imagination. But whether she’ll ever need to write a memoir, in the end, may be a moot thought, since so much of Spektor’s experience is already embedded in her bevy of brilliant songs. Not necessarily literally, of course. Rather, emotionally so. For Spektor, it’s about the feeling of a work rather than its adherence to real-life detail. But that doesn’t mean her life has been boring. In fact, it’s been tumultuous since her birth abroad in the censorship-rich country of Russia. Spektor, who moved to the United States at the age of 9, has often known a tough day. For example, her beloved musical father passed away earlier this year. Now, though, Spektor has a new album out in the world: Home, before and after, which dropped on June 24. It marks her latest marvelous and gut-wrenching chapter.

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Rock ’n’ roll and the genre of music that birthed it—the blues—are immediate art forms. Within a few beats of a drum kit or a few notes on the electric or acoustic guitar, the listener is taken to the core of the sound. Whether it’s rock and its electric punch or the blues with its solemn intimacy, feelings are transmitted quickly and true. And it’s this reality that drew a young Billy Gibbons to their sounds. Gibbons, who would go on to co-found the legendary blues-rock band ZZ Top as an adult, was first introduced to these styles of music as a kid. At a time when most his age were preparing for kindergarten, Gibbons was getting a different education. Now, some six or seven decades later, Gibbons has harnessed those lessons into an acclaimed career that continues to this day with the release of ZZ Top’s new live 12-track album, Raw, which features many of the band’s biggest hits and is officially out on July 22.

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Grammy-winning artist Jewel Kilcher—better known simply by her first name—became a star in the ’90s starting with her 1995 LP, Pieces of You. At the time, bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam had a hold on the music-loving public consciousness. But Jewel also worked her way into fame. While many considered the blonde Alaskan the antithesis of the flannel-wearing, stringy-haired rockers, in a more precise way, she was complementary to the grunge ethos.

Today, Jewel says she loves grunge. It was a revolution. When glam and synth-pop ruled the airwaves, grunge came along with an honesty that said we’re not all fine, we’re not all happy. At the time, Jewel says, she knew deep sadness, too. She appreciated grunge’s message. And her own added to the ideas grunge offered. You can only be in pain for so long before you either end it or build out of it, Jewel says. Thankfully for her fans, Jewel didn’t find her end then. Instead, she prospered and continues to today with the release of her 2022 LP, Freewheelin’ Woman.

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Mandy Moore is ready for new roads. For the famed artist who rose to popularity in the late ’90s at 15 years old with the bubblegum hit “Candy,” music has long been the key that unlocks the best sides of her life. Moore, who has enjoyed a parallel career in acting throughout her professional days, crescendoing in her role on the immensely beloved television show This Is Us, has benefited from the confluence of her two careers and found ways to appreciate them individually.

Now, though, Moore is set to embark on the newest chapter. With her time taping This Is Us now behind her, she is set to hit the road and tour this summer on the back of her latest LP, In Real Life, which dropped on May 13. For someone who has been in the public eye over varying stages in her career, to be on the highway and supported by her family (and accomplished musician husband, Taylor Goldsmith) is the cherry on the sundae of the past few decades.

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The strands and building blocks that comprise the DNA of any given songwriter can involve just about anything. Perhaps it’s nostalgia and affection, or sincerity and abundance, or superheroes and daydreams. For John Darnielle, founder and principal songwriter for the indie rock band The Mountain Goats, it starts primarily with literature and camaraderie, though a dash of late-night TV and movies are sprinkled in healthily, as well. Such is the stuff that comprises Darnielle’s career with the group he founded some three decades and twenty-plus albums ago. More recently, the musician-turned-best-selling novelist has given his attention to a new LP—Bleed Out, which is set to drop on Friday (August 19)—one he wrote quickly, he says, but that boasts some of his best material to date. For Darnielle, that’s the beauty of creativity and, more specifically, of music. It’s versatility. It’s a language unto itself that offers even much more than that. It’s emotive and lush, fulfilling and inspiring. It’s who he is, which has been the case since his first record player at five years old.

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There are many factors that can contribute to a lifetime of music. For the Oahu, Hawaii-born, Grammy-nominated songwriter and performer Jack Johnson, those factors were initially comprised of an old ukulele, Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix. Johnson, who released his latest LP, Meet the Moonlight, on June 24, says he can remember way back to strumming the traditional Hawaiian stringed instrument as a kid. His parents had one around the house. But he also had older brothers, who would pass them their old vinyl albums when they were done with them. Black Sabbath was prized among them, but others included KISS and Queen.

He remembers staring at the album art, playing them on a little plastic record player he had at the time. Later, he bought a Hendrix cassette tape, the first album he purchased with his own money, which he earned from working at a pizza place, he says. He was lucky, found it at a “trippy hippy shop” that sold crystals. He recalls buying moonstone earrings for a girl there for her birthday. He played the cassette out in a waterproof yellow Walkman. He moved next to Fugazi, which he heard on the radio. Hearing that band made him want to form his own.

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