Daily Newsletter, December 7, 2023

Luckily, Morricone Youth was able to do all of these things, infusing the spirit of the original film and its accompanying music, and creating a set of modern musical pieces along the way.

Blacklisters strike the perfect level of sardonic humor and cultural disgust, so interwoven it’s hard to tell exactly where one ends and the other begins. Sludge and bludgeoning density are paired with acidic noise and a stumbling resolve that feels like a reprieve from polite society or a scourge o

Featuring Sufjan Stevens, Kali Uchis, SZA, boygenius, Caroline Polachek, André 3000, and more

Stereogum started off as an indie rock-focused website, and that’s still our bread and butter. But it’s getting harder and harder to define “indie rock,” both as a genre and as a web of associations. In 2023, plenty of longtime Stereogum favorites rose to something resembling full-on pop-star status, while some actual pop stars continue to play around with sounds and aesthetics that previous generations would’ve associated with ashtray-smelling dive bars and handmade mixtapes. Context collapse is happening all over the place, and it can be hard to answer a seemingly simple question: What’s good now?

It's that time of year again. Over the next few weeks at NPR.org and here on the All Songs Considered podcast, we'll be sharing lists of and conversations about the best music of 2023. We're kicking things off with the standout albums of the year. Gathered on the show are NPR Music's three main critics: Rodney Carmichael, who writes about hip-hop and R&B; Nate Chinen of WRTI, who covers jazz and classical and Ann Powers, maven of pop, rock, folk, country and a little of everything else. Speaking with editor Daoud Tyler-Ameen, the trio dives into a heavy and heady year to discuss the releases that inspired the most vivid feelings, and together make a case — in an era when singles and playlists drive the industry numbers — for the album as a still-indispensable art form.The fun won't stop there. Stay tuned for more conversations about the songs that made us drop everything and the tours that turned into vessels for community. There will be lists of our favorite releases on NPR.org and conversations about the sounds and stars that defined the year, enough to keep you listening well into 2024.

JR Moores surveys a year marked by AI barrel scraping, sociopathic governments and interstellar transmissions, and revisits his favourite psych rock records of the year

From CHAI and CHAII to JayWood and Jay Wood, here are all the sets of artists we struggled to differentiate in 2023.

In The Beatles Anthology, John Lennon says: "In Paris in 1964 was the first time I ever heard Dylan at all. Paul got the record [The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan]."

For our festival-averse film critic, movies about concerts and musicians are essential viewing – and he believes we are living through a golden age for the form

Three contributing critics pick their best fiction of the year, including work by Victor LaValle, Ed Park, Lauren Groff, Yiyun Li and Tania James.