One thing you should know about Lloyd Kaufman is that he isn’t dead. The introduction to Mathew Klickstein’s new interview collection is very adamant about this. The Troma founder was certainly well enough to engage in an hour-long conversation about the early days of indie filmmaking, Michael Bay and making transgressive art amid a second Trump administration. Besides, at very least, the man needs to make to the end of August to see the Toxic Avenger’s triumphant return to the big screen.

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At 17, Duke Amayo moved from Nigeria to U.S. for a football scholarship at Howard University. Despite his study, a career in medical illustration wasn’t in the cards. After making his way to Brooklyn, he landed a role as the frontman of beloved Afrobeat band, Antibalas. Amayo set out on his own, after nearly a quarter-century with the band. The musician released Lion Awakes in January, an eclectic solo album dedicated to his "shamanic medicine woman” grandmother.

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Recorded over the course of two years, Anything At All is, fittingly, about slowing down. Denison Witmer finds beauty in domesticity. It’s a meditation on mindfulness, fatherhood and even banal. Witmer’s 11th album is also a collaboration, birthed from a songwriting session with long-time friend, Sufjan Stevens, who also came on as producer.

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Seventy years since kicking off his music career in his hometown of Nashville, Charles “Wigg” Walker is still madly in love with music. This Love is Gonna Last is the soul singer’s first album in more than a decade, and a testament to surviving all that life throws at you. Dedicated to his late-wife, who passed in 2024, the album is a joyful celebration of life from an artist who has performed with the a Mt. Rushmore of musicians, including James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Otis, Redding and Sam Cooke. While his own work never released the heights of popularity experienced by those singers, Walker carries the flame of soul music’s heights, as a legend in his own right.

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After 35 years, Tsunami returned with a bang. The Virginia-based band capped off 2024 by reuniting to deliver a massive, career-spanning boxset, Loud As. During their time away from the band, however, Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson were never too far apart. The roommates, turned bandmates, turned cofounders of indie label, Simple Machines never started too far from activistic – and musical -- roots. In 2000, the pair formed the Future of Music Coalition, a non-profit focused on music education and advocacy.

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“I am edging away from apathy,” Chuck Ragan bellows, “I am drifting away from the dark. The rain has got my mind in motion.” The stanzas that open Love & Lore, the latest from the Hot Water Music frontman, feel strangely appropriate as we speak. Ragan is a few days out from dealing with a flooded basement, courtesy of torrential rains. It’s a consequence, perhaps, of living in a land of rivers near the California/Nevada border. There is, however, no place he’d rather be. When he’s not touring, the musician works as an in-demand river guide, spending days off nearby, fly fishing.

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Music is, at once, a vector for connection and escape. Chuck Prophet found both, as at a bar in San Francisco’s Mission District. Cumbia, a popular dance genre born in Columbia, pulsates through Wake the Dead. Forty years into his professional and on the other side of a battle with stage four lymphoma, the album finds the Bay Area musician with a new musical lease on life.

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Following the release of Tank and the Bangas' Grammy nominated The Heart, The Mind, The Soul, singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball returns to the show. The three-part collection presents a new side of Ball for those only familiar with the Bangas' joyful New Orleans funk. Prior to her time as a music star, Ball sharpened her lyrics as a rising star in the world of poetry. The album follows the 2021 release of her first poetry collection, Vulnerable AF.

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Fe finds Rafael Cohen returning to his roots on multiple fronts. The latest from the !!! multi-instrumentalist's Las Palabras finds the musician returning to his native Spanish, while pulling the thread of his family's Jewish faith.

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What does “maturity” mean for a rock band? The answer is, perhaps, a bit easier to answer when you’ve been together since age 18. For Naked Giants, it means grown up things – getting jobs, starting families. It’s not necessarily fodder for a band’s young punk days, depth of subject is in an important part of growing up as a band – and having a fanbase that grows along with you.

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