Arooj Aftab Blends Sweetness With Beguiling Mystery on 'Night Reign' Ahmed Gallab says that We Belong, the latest Sinkane album, is his first that isn’t “all about [him].” Speaking with SPIN backstage at SXSW, the versatile musician explains that he wanted to “take [himself] out of the narrative” and, rather, write about the joy that he’s...

10 Pedals Every Guitarist Should Own A little over 15 years ago, I was a bright-eyed freshman in college looking to take what I’d learned in my shitty high school band (which peaked with a few 100-degree days on Warped Tour the summer after we graduated) and turn it into a music degree — or at least a minor.  Under the esteemed California...

Arooj Aftab Blends Sweetness With Beguiling Mystery on 'Night Reign' It’s hard to describe Arooj Aftab’s music in a way that captures its uniquely protean beauty. The singer and composer, who was born in Saudi Arabia, grew up in Pakistan, went to school in Boston, and has lived in New York for the past decade-plus, makes music that doesn’t...

Get Schooled By Arooj Aftab It’s over for AI.  Or, rather, it’s about to get much more difficult for its users to mislead the public with dangerously (and purposely) deceptive content. More from Spin: Sinkane’s Ahmed Gallab on ‘We Belong,’ His ‘Love Letter to Black Music’ Death of the Studio Get...

Urban Heat on How to 'Go Deeper' Creatively Onstage Owning a record store can be a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it. It’s the message that Brett Ruland and Amy Kesting—husband-and-wife owners of the Columbus, Ohio music shop Spoonful Records—embody in their auto mechanic-inspired work attire. But nestled in the city’s downtown, adjacent...

Urban Heat on How to 'Go Deeper' Creatively Onstage Dr. Tom Zoellner is a tenured Professor of English at Chapman University, the author of numerous distinguished works of non-fiction, and an editor-at-large of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Dr. Zoellner has graciously consented to briefly withdraw his critical gaze from classic literature...