Quotes from Anthony Fantano

Tame Impala is more about impact than innovation, sure, but the music still stuns on contact.

Despite being an ocean apart, New York's ESG and France's Lizzy Mercier Descloux were shooting for roughly the same idea: disco beats with a rough and energetic presentation.

On its self-titled debut, Happy Birthday flirts with several flavors of love, and 'Girls FM' is where taste gets confusing.

Four Tet, a.k.a. Kieran Hebden, is a U.K. electronica artist whose diverse tastes have helped fuel a lengthy discography.

Sounding like a toned-down Sufjan Stevens - or an even more toned-down Arcade Fire - Seabear's quiet execution gives its music a breezy quality. It's a sonically lush whisper, sharing secrets with anyone curious enough to listen.

Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar sounds decades older than he is, and it's not necessarily the wear and tear that comes from a rough life; instead, his world-weariness seems to result from years of soul-searching.

The Internet is the fastest way to get what you want and expose yourself to music you would never have heard otherwise.

Justin Broadrick's career isn't widely celebrated, but it's still shockingly uncompromising. From his place at the beginning of grindcore with Napalm Death to his role in Godflesh's expansion of industrial metal, the U.K. musician specializes in artistic hairpin turns.

While some artists hunt for more groundbreaking ideas, A Hawk and a Hacksaw finds novelty in tradition, proving that what's new depends only on who's listening.

I don't know if TV is where I see my format working.

Tame Impala's music revisits a time when guitar effects and studio tricks were music's newest frontiers; when rock was barely old enough to drive and violently threw conventional ideas out the window.

More than a quarter of a century into the band's career together, it's inspiring to hear Melvins continue to deafen new generations of listeners.

Bands such as LiLiPUT and Essential Logic were just as unorthodox as Gang of Four or Wire, even taking their sounds a step further with shrieking vocals and saxophone.

For all its reverb and defiant noise, the sound of Black Tambourine barely reached past the borders of Washington, D.C., in the early '90s.

I just love a great groove.

With its distinctly rural feel, the New York band Woods makes an ideal soundtrack for balmy walks amidst mammoth trees and crunchy beds of dead leaves.

Gonjasufi may sound at first like a rambling hip-hop crackpot, but there's more to the California rapper and singer than mere eccentricity: What appears messy and thrown together is anything but.

The musical era depicted in 'Round and Round' may not be pop's brightest moment, but rather than abandon its ideas, Ariel Pink reclaims them for himself and holds on tight.

Tightly embracing guitar effects and tape loops, Mission of Burma made sound an important commodity in rock 'n' roll, and its members carried that tradition into their first album after a 19-year hiatus, 2004's 'ONoffON.'

The Italian duo Dumbo Gets Mad specializes in psychedelics for the sober, bringing experimentation together with detailed pop songwriting.

Gang of Four doesn't reinvent anything in 'Never Pay for the Farm,' but its members are having a blast with their second lease on life.

Souljazz doesn't reinvent soul, jazz or the fusion thereof, but it plays all of the above with the passion that drove its forefathers.

Mash-ups have gained a lot of credibility between the fall of Danger Mouse's infamous 'Grey Album' and the rise of Girl Talk's overwhelming mega-mixes. There's just something marvelous about hearing seemingly mismatched ideas work together, as two worlds collide to a heavy beat.

From 'The Money Store,' 'I've Seen Footage' seems to run the beats from Tone Loc's 'Wild Thing' and Salt-n-Pepa's 'Push It' through a rusty meat grinder.