Lars Gotrich

Michael Turner — better known as Double K, rapper and producer in the Los Angeles duo People Under The Stairs — died Jan. 30 of unspecified causes. He was 43. A friend, DJ Mark Luv, shared the news via Instagram, writing that Turner "passed away peacefully." An examination by the LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner has yet to be performed.

Updated Feb. 16at 2:27 p.m. ET.

It can be hard to keep pace with life's restless forward motion – chores and news, friends and family, work and play. At the very least, let us help you find some new music via Press Pause, a regularly updated playlist keeping track of new songs deemed absolutely essential by the NPR Music staff.

Daniel Dumile, the rapper and producer best known as MF DOOM, died Oct. 31, according to a message posted on his Instagram account by his wife, Jasmine Dumile on Thursday. No cause of death was given. He was 49 years old.

Jasmine Dumile's post reads:

Stream this playlist via Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube.

Update: The Listening Party has ended, but you can listen an edited version of the conversation in your All Songs Considered feed.

Riley Gale, the throat-shredded vocalist for the Texas-based metal band Power Trip, died Monday of unspecified causes. He was 34.

His death was announced in a Facebook post by his bandmates:

The first time I heard Pylon, I lost my dang mind.

Phil Elverum has built and battled entire universes. From 1996-2003, his band, The Microphones, was mostly just him alone in a studio, as friends from Olympia sang and banged on instruments as needed. With a bull-headed bravado that comes from a dreamer's naïveté, chests swelled to the size of the moon, the dead flew off as vultures and the dawn promised something new every morning.

Updated on July 20 at 1:47 p.m. ET.

The listening party has ended, but you can stream the album below via Spotify or Apple Music.

Updated on July 20 at 1:50 p.m. ET

The listening party has ended, but you can stream the album below via Bandcamp.

Updated on July 20 at 1:52 p.m. ET.

The listening party has ended, but you can stream the album below via Bandcamp.

Updated on May 18 at 9:47 a.m. ET.

The listening party has ended, but you can stream the album below via Spotify or Apple Music.

"Nothing to be done."

Estragon's opening line from Waiting for Godot has been spooling around like a tape loop, decaying yet cacophonous, in my head all week. Revisiting a dog-eared copy from high school, Samuel Beckett's play reads like the same piece of music played in two noise-canceled rooms — we the audience experience a melody waver in discord, briefly align, turn out of sorts, and on and on.

Updated on June 18 at 1:33 p.m. ET.

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As more festivals, performances and concerts are canceled due to the coronavirus shutdown, musicians of all stripes and sizes are taking to social and streaming platforms to play live for their fans,

When Jay Electronica dropped "Exhibit C" in late 2009 — first on Sirius Radio, then on New York's Hot 97, before hitting the big time as the pumping music behind The Boondocks' season three trailer — it was absolutely... well, electrifying. After a bidding war, Electronica signed to Jay-Z's company Roc Nation in 2010.

You know those scenes in horror movies when some creep (who, of course, turns out to be a skull-sucking monster from hell) opens its mouth wider than it should? With jaw unhinged, Code Orange's Underneath, out Friday, devours a body of extreme sounds — sludge, noise, metallic hardcore, doom, grunge, industrial and whatever else it takes to make the mosh pit swarm — to make uncompromisingly chaotic metal.

Donning floral gasmasks and brandishing liberty torches against an apocalyptic, ombré pink landscape, Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire look ready for battle. And that's just the promotional photo.