Awesome Music

The Black Keys dropped by the Helpful Honda Sound Space at KROQ and turned in a fantastic short concert for a lucky few in attendance. The 24-minute set includes classics like Howlin for You, Gold on the Ceiling, and Lonely Boy, as well as three tracks off their latest album, Beautiful People (Stay High), On the Game, and This Is Nowhere.

Get your day started right with this weird and wonderful mashup from remixer Bill McClintock. Combining Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell, Teena Marie’s disco-funk track Square Biz, and Iron Maiden’s Wrathchild makes absolutely zero sense, but as usual, Bill created a delicious musical melange from seemingly incompatible ingredients.

We’ve seen alot of unusual instruments, but this is the first time we’ve come across the Cornu de Pompeii. Evidence of this G-shaped horn were found in the ruins of Pompeii, and María Ruíz and Abraham Cupeiro built a replica of it so we could hear what it might have sounded like. Listen to more here.

To create the music video for his original song Farewell, musician Bernth dove beneath the water with his guitar and performed the track while holding his breath for more than two minutes. It’s a beautiful and emotive track, and the studio recording really was performed with his guitar partially submerged in water to give it a dream-like quality.

James Blunt’s track You’re Beautiful is about as soft as pop songs get. But thanks to Otu Suurmunne of Moonic Productions, the 2004 hit song just got way more intense. His growly impression of German lead singer Till Lindemann is spot-on. His Rammsteined versions of Baby One More Time and Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! are similarly entertaining.

Lorde provides her take on Talking Heads’ cover of Al Green’s Take Me to the River. It’s chill and minimalist, but you can still chicken bop to it. The single is part of A24’s upcoming tribute album, which will feature covers of songs that Talking Heads played in their 1984 concert fil Stop Making Sense. The list of artists is on A24’s Instagram page.

Franzoli Electronics is back with another high-voltage cover of a classic song. This time, his musical Tesla coils performed a version of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. Take our strong advice and remember to always think twice before playing with this much electricity.

It’s been over 50 years since Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon. To celebrate the occasion, drummer Nick Mason asked fans to create their own animated music videos for each song on the classic prog rock album. This playlist is gradually revealing all ten winners plus behind-the-scenes interviews with the artists.

“And we said nay, we are but men.” Polyphonic’s April Fools’ video is only partly silly. In it, he explores the references, metaphors, and themes in Tenacious D’s seminal song Tribute. It’s a surprisingly rich dive with lots of interesting trivia. It ends with a pragmatic reflection on chasing perfection versus finding fulfillment in the act of creation itself.

This cool, single-purpose device connects to your phone and displays album art. Instead of a standard screen, it uses a grid of 4096 individual RGB LEDs to create artful, pixelated images. It works with iOS and Android devices and is compatible with Spotify, Apple Music, Sonos, and last.fm.

Do you like music and math? Then you’ll dig polyrhythms. JLChnToZ (Vistanz) created this captivating video that displays a representation of these complex and often hypnotic sounds in concentric circles. For maximum effect, put the video on full screen, dim the lights, and crank up the volume.

Speedbag Bard has a unique talent – he can punch a speed bag in time with music. Here, he shows off his bag skills with a rhythmic performance of the hit Gorillaz track Feel Good Inc. His YouTube channel is packed with other speed bag covers, includingPost Malone & Swae Lee’s Sunflower, and Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger, and Sisqo’s Thong Song.

To create this pleasantly hypnotic sequence of sounds, musician Jeremie Carter played 15 different notes on a marimba. He performed each note repeatedly at a rate of 0.2 bpm faster or slower than its neighbor, then edited them side-by-side. He says every time you hear a bell ring, a subdivision has been reached, progressing from quarter notes to various tuplets.

veridiz vz•tv put together a full-length recreation of Pink Floyd’s classic album Dark Side of the Moon using 8-bit synthesizer sounds. After a very monotonous start with Speak to Me, things kick into gear by the time they hit On the Run and Money. veridiz has also made chiptune covers of Another Brick in the Wall, Echoes, and The Final Cut.

Singer Otu Suurmunne of Moonic Productions replicated the powerful scream of AC/DC’s Brian Johnson with this remake of Queen’s hit We Will Rock You. Both the original and Moonic’s versions are ideal arena rock anthems, but this interpretation definitely has a harder edge.

To celebrate the release of his new album Everything I Thought It Was, Justin Timberlake and 14 musicians from The Tennessee Kids crammed into the NPR Music offices and turned in this fantastic short concert. The seven-song R&B set includes Señorita, Rock Your Body, Pusher Love Girl, Until The End of Time, Selfish, What Goes Around, and SexyBack.

You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’, Billie Jean. Mashup maestro Bill McClintock took these two very different songs and combined them with Steely Dan’s Do It Again to create the heaviest pop song imaginable. We think Rob Halford’s spiked leather sleeves would look great paired with MJ’s sequined glove.

Borrowing a page from Drumeo’s book, the YouTube channel Pianote invites keyboardists to create their interpretations of popular songs they’ve never heard. In this video, Snarky Puppy’s Justin Stanton takes on Dua Lipa’s Don’t Start Now, imparting the dance-pop hit with a smooth blend of jazz and funk after only hearing the drums and vocals.

“It’s living on your own after kids and a wife. It’s the question you ask in the middle of the night.” New York City’s soft rock sibling band Infinity Song broke out with their sarcastic hit Hater’s Anthem. But the latest single from their debut album Essentials is a melancholic earworm about the dull pain that inevitably grows and gnaws at us.

Musicians Alexandr Misko and Alexander Boldachev performed this powerful acoustic arrangement of The Cranberries song Zombie as a tribute to fallen Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The duo’s nuanced performance serves to remind us not to be indifferent zombies and to stand up to oppression.

On 3.11.2024, NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert dropped this excellent short performance by alt-rock band 311. Lead singer Nick Hexum and his bandmates sound as good as ever, with a four-song set that includes Beautiful Disaster, All Mixed Up, Amber, and Down. We always loved the way they blened rock, reggae, and funk sounds.

Without The Beatles, rock and pop music might have evolved very differently. We’re not sure if there’s a direct connection to bands like Green Day and Blink-182, but it sure seems like it after listening to Daniel Swisher’s medley of Fab Four songs performed in ’90s pop-punk style. Like what you hear? There’s a second video with eight more tracks.

From Star Wars to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Jurassic Park, composer and conductor John Williams is the maestro behind some of the best and most memorable movie music ever. Williams sat down with Variety to discuss his approach and inspirations behind some of his best-known scores. His exuberance and positivity make 92 seem young.