Awesome Music

Musician Rob Scallon proves that with the right technique, you can play any genre of music on any instrument, despite its original intent. While this “metal” track loses a bit of its edge on a traditional Indian 19-string sitar, it’s still surprisingly pleasing to the ear.

Roy Orbison’s classic track Crying already makes us weepy every time we hear it, but give it to the sad clown with the golden voice, and the emotional impact escalates to another level. Has somebody been cutting onions up in here?

(PG-13: Language) “Doctors of death, curing our patients of breath, we are the pain you can trust.” They’re a bit out of breath themselves, but Killer Mike and El-P still made NPR go RTJ! as they performed songs from their third album.

As part of his extensive Squeeze Box retrospective, “Weird Al” Yankovic dusted off this previously unreleased 1982 parody of the Beatles’ song Taxman, replacing its subject with one more appropriate to the time – at the height of Pac-Man Fever. Wakka-wakka-wakka.

(PG-13: Language) Rapper Mac Lethal’s latest challenge to himself was to create a rap which manages to work in every number between 0 and 60 in a way that makes sense. We think he gave it a solid effort – that First 48 bit was sick. Beats by Danny Grooves.

Ambient synthwave band Pentagram Home Video stay true to their minimalist horror melodies in their second album. The spare tracks give just enough clues for your mind to craft visions and nightmares at its own pace. Also available on vinyl.

The Warp Zone and MatPat take on the theme song from the awesomely dark and hilarious Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events. Seriously though, if you haven’t watched this series yet, drop what you’re doing for the next 8 hours and look away right now.

During NAMM 2017, musician Marco Parisi turned in a nuanced instrumental performance of the Prince classic Purple Rain with the help of the amazing ROLI Seaboard RISE, a keyboard which offers touch and pressure sensitivity along the length of each of its keys.

Eclectic Method teamed up with Martyn Ware to remix of one of our all-time favorite movies, Stanley Kubrick’s dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The march-inspired drumbeats are the perfect complement to the military theme.

♫ Iced hazelnut latte… with soy milk ♫ Vanity Fair managed to coax Michael Bolton into working behind the counter at Los Angeles coffee shop Alfred {Coffee + Kitchen}, where he was tasked with using his golden pipes to sing customers’ drink orders when they were ready.

(PG-13: Gore) Since we don’t speak Russian, we don’t understand what the song is about, but the sheer insanity of the events that play out make this one of the wildest music videos we’ve seen. The clip was directed by Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry and The Stampede)

An album that’s equally important to watch as to listen to. You’ll be quickly transfixed by the imagery which accompany Jerobeam Fenderson’s electronic sounds. The album’s videos were created entirely by feeding signals into a Tektronix 5103N oscilloscope.

YAOG’s minor-key reworking of Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy transforms the bubbly 1988 pop hit into a sad dirge which will do anything but achieve the song’s original goal of lifting your spirits.

We’re not sure why, but the Smash Mouth song All Star seems to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Here, we get James Nielssen’s interpretation of the pop hit played entirely with system sounds from Windows XP, and Clippy on lead vocals.

An awesome bit of classic footage from the 1985 Grammy Awards ceremony in which Herbie Hancock, Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones and Stevie Wonder do battle on a stage packed with their favorite electronic keyboards. Oh, and on the same night, this happened. Damn.

(PG-13: Language) Musician Jay Foreman starts out with a simple tale about being off by a single syllable on a childhood song, then goes on to demonstrate his ability to do the same with just about any song. Watch him mess with a couple more songs here.

(PG-13: Language) “I got money, you got money too, so let’s go half on rent. When I buy you a new purse it’s cause you bought my kicks.” The charming Shelley Massenburg-Smith dropped by NPR Music to perform tracks from one of our favorite albums of 2016, Big Baby D.R.A.M.

Common and The Roots’ Tariq Trotter prove why they’re professional rappers, and you’re not, as they’re challenged to take three totally random words and work them into a freestyle. “Girl reaching their climax, I’m larger than life, I’m like the IMAX.” Black Thought, you win.

Fans of classic SEGA games can find a wide variety of music from classic video games like Sonic The Hedgehog, Jet Set Radio, Out-Run, Virtua Fighter, Alex Kidd, Space Harrier, and many more over on Spotify. We still can’t get enough of Sonic’s Chemical Plant level.

“Children of the sun and moon are coming to the same conclusion, we are made of the same light reflection, an illusion.” The Flaming Lips’ Jake Ingalls makes dreamy pscyhedelia with his bandmates in Spaceface. Sun Kids is the title track for their upcoming album.

Mystery Guitar Man dusts off the slightly past its prime musical genre to present a dubstep track made primarily from the strange and unusual sounds that our avian pals can make. Now if only he could find a bird that sounded like a drum machine.

Like many great artists, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter pay tribute to their sources of inspiration through their own work, putting their unique spin on the imagery that helped guide their vision. Cartouche explores a few of these parallels.

The latest episode of The Gregory Brothers’ Song Voyage sees them off on a vacation in Australia, but they’re not singing about Vegemite sandwiches. Instead, they seem to be obsessed with their own land down under.