Mothers were a short-lived indie band from Athens, GA, led by singer-songwriter Kristine Leschper, leaving two imaginative and highly rewarding albums and a good deal of wistful, exquisite songs.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/mothers
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Mothers | the PROPAGANDA site
Mothers were a band originally from Athens, GA that is led by guitarist, singer, songwriter Kristine Leschper, who intended the name to be a moniker at first. She tends to write songs that are often spacious in sound and wistful in tone. Her distinct voice has a mournful and wailing quality that would be worthy of Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker, but more subdued. Their first album was filled with soulfully constructed mood pieces. There were some vague Throwing Muses strands in the music especially with some of the shifts and turns and the way the two guitars interacted and played against the vocals. They turned towards a harsher sound on their second album, where the flow was more fractured and the melodies were more angular. The band quit in 2018 as Leschper moved on to solo projects, not all of them music-related.
Gentle ballads delivered as intimate folk pieces are central to Mimi Bay's sound, whose whispery vocals perfectly match the bedroom pop charm her songs are drenched in.
Find out more about her music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/mimi-bay
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Mimi Bay | the PROPAGANDA site
Mimi Bay, aka Mimi Bergman, is a singer-songwriter from Gothenburg, Sweden, whose songs have an intimate, desktop production type feel. She started out as a YouTube artist, which is not uncommon for artists in her generation. Her early songs were mostly bare ballads she sang over her ukulele. Later on she brought on keyboards, started using soft and reverbed electric guitar, and combined them with subtle beats in the background. A touch of alternative R&B overtones made its way into her music as well. She has a soft and murmury voice that brings out the misty and dreamy quality of her even-keeled and somewhat muted songs.
Artsy, glammy psychedelic indie with a quirky tone is the bread and butter of MGMT, a band that loves to shift between pop and rock in their idiosyncratic ways.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/mgmt
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MGMT | the PROPAGANDA site
MGMT is an indie rock duo whose music combines glam and psychedelia in ways that follow the tradition set by early '70s icons Marc Bolan and David Bowie, followed later by Flaming Lips and of Montreal. When they first broke out with 2008's Oracular Spectacular, they had created a series of single-ready pop songs in that vein. Then they took a step back from being a hit production machine for a few albums, though they continued to produce highly melodic music with big hooks and big sound and some rough edges that drew the audience in just enough but did not give them a hit song. They returned to a flashier style in 2021 with Little Dark Age, which was an unusually upbeat album from them in that it was more dance-friendly and had a kind of polish on the songs they hadn't had in a long while.
Experimental artist Mary Ocher creates music that ranges from an accessible, pop-conscious style to an artsier form that draws from electronic, modern, and post-classical.
Find out more about her music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/mary-ocher
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Mary Ocher | the PROPAGANDA site
Mary Ocher (aka Mariya Ocheretianskaya) is a Berlin-based experimental artist that still works within the boundaries of rock, in a general sense, but mostly uses the idioms of the genre to build a kind of music that sidesteps some of the norms and expectations that audiences tend to hold about popular music. Her songs may sometimes come across as the audio track of a larger performance art piece that is playing out backstage, out of sight. Her work generally has a somber tone, often dealing with politically heavy questions. It can also be strongly percussive when she is backed up by her band of drums, Your Government. Born in Moscow, raised in Tel Aviv, a multimedia artist by trade, a political activist by choice, she is a one of a kind artist that comes to the table with a distinct point of view. She has an expressive voice and has the ability to put together highly melodic songs.
Australian artist Mallrat creates songs with low-key feel in the way she brings introverted bedroom pop notes and hip-hop accents to her contemporary R&B inspired tunes.
Find out more about her music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/mallrat
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Mallrat | the PROPAGANDA site
Mallrat is the stage name of Grace Shaw, an indie singer-songwriter who creates mostly low-key pop music with an intimate feel. Her melodies feel introverted and fairly restrained. She does not jump at the audience with any big sonic gestures. The songs are sweet and melodic without overdoing it. She has a nice and slightly misty voice and a somewhat aloof delivery. The production has the type of blurriness that is typical of bedroom recordings. The arrangements are lively, and they serve the songs well. Her 2022 full length album Butterfly Blue comes across as a great leap for the artist who started out with dance oriented electronic pieces in her first EP, Uninvited (2016), then moved on to a more folksy tone and mid-tempo contemplative songs in between.
Drummer, composer, producer Makaya McCraven creates jazz as a work of fusion in the way he embraces hip-hop, funk, rock, and a variety of musical traditions around the world.
Find out more about his music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/makaya-mccraven
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Makaya McCraven | the PROPAGANDA site
Makaya McCraven is a jazz drummer, producer, and composer who works primarily in the fusion genre, but only in the broadest sense of the world. He has built a career on creating a jazz-based hybrid music that incorporates hip-hop, funk, and electronic as well as various musical traditions from around the world. A technique that he often favors is to record his extended improvisation sessions then create the final product through mixing and editing, which is how he captures a sound that is both spontaneous and cutting edge at the same time. This method also informs the shadings of the music he creates, though as a drummer, he is fairly focused on the groove and beat construction rather than flashy gestures. His 2021 album is a reinterpretation of Gil Scott-Heron's last recorded album, I'm New Here.
Maisha emerged in the late '10s London scene as a band loaded with talent that merged elements of some of the classic jazz trends of the early '60s with West African and Caribbean musical traditions.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/maisha
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Maisha | the PROPAGANDA site
Maisha is a London-based jazz band led by drummer and arranger Jack Long, also boasting musicians like Nubya Garcia on sax, Shirley Tetteh on guitar, and Daniel Casimir on bass, who are all prominent figures in the current London scene. Their music draws from the familiar Caribbean and West African traditions, as do many other bands and artists that are currently active in that area. An additional component they also bring is the introspective and meditative jazz that recalls the work of the greats artists of a previous generation, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef, as well as the mid to late '60s work of John Coltrane. Their membership has been on some rotation recently as the members have been involved in multiple ongoing projects simultaneously.
Lorde pretty much set the tone on bedroom pop production in the '10s with her break out success, and continues to inspire a whole generation of artists a decade plus later.
Find out more about her music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/lorde
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Lorde | the PROPAGANDA site
Lorde (birth name: Ella Yelich-O’Connor) is a singer-songwriter from Auckland, who emerged as an unlikely pop phenom in 2013 with her highly influential album, Pure Heroine. With its strong songs, dark tones, lyrics that hit the spot for a generation, as well as its sparse arrangements (see Tennis Court, Royals), the album had ripple effects in pop music in the following years. When she came back in 2021 after a long hiatus, she had moved away from her original minimalist sound and was tacking closer to conventional pop, accompanied by a full band with a full-bodied sound. Instead of keyboards and electronic tools driving her music, she had multiple guitars strumming some lively chords, leading into big, uplifting choruses that conveyed a more relaxed vibe, while still retaining her distinct voice and instantly recognizable point of view, both lyrical and melodic.
King Krule's music captures the feel of late night cityscape cool with its distinct combination of chill jazz, trip-hop, and post-punk with darkwave tones.
Find out more about his music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/king-krule
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King Krule | the PROPAGANDA site
King Krule (aka Archy Marshall), is an indie artist with a highly distinct blend of post-punk, jazz, and trip-hop, with some occasional dub beats, combined to produce an overall bleak but also quite compelling type of music. He often sings with a gruffy snarl that may bring to mind some classic punk acts. He accesses jazzy chords, dub beats, and trip-hop grooves with such a lot of clarity and coherence that nothing feels tacked on. The output is layers of isolation, restlessness, and yes, gloom that wraps around a melancholic core. His melodies are understated and subtle, almost gestural, but they effectively draw the audience into the particular headspace Marshall wants them in. He can be hypnotic in the best trip-hop tradition, which helps him lure the listener down the path into that dark place that some folks may be reluctant to take.
Between their makeshift instruments and electronic layers, KOKOKO! combines intricate Congolese rhythms with western dance grooves for a maximum load of genre-crossing, upbeat fun.
Find out more about their music at https://thepropagandasite.com/artist/kokoko
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KOKOKO! | the PROPAGANDA site
Kokoko! (stylized in all caps as KOKOKO!) is a band from Congo that combines traditional Central African music with western electronic dance music. The native Congolese members of the band are famous for having built their instruments by hand using actual scrap material they salvaged from a junkyard. The only non-Congolese member of the band is Débruit, a Frenchman, who brings in the electronic production aspect and synthesizers to the combo. The band's music is driven primarily by the polyrhythmic structure of Central African dance beats with all their infectious wonder, but the western texture is not too far below the surface. The combination of the two strands produce a satisfying amalgamation that hits the audience on multiple fronts.
The Propaganda Site