On the late singer Judee Sill, the virtual cemetery site Find a Grave, and memorials in the age of the Twitter RIP.

Inside the cluttered Los Angeles apartment of lo-fi auteur Ariel Pink.

A profile of Chan ‘Cat Power’ Marshall adrift in Miami.

On singer-songwriters Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks.

I get the sense that the labels' attitude toward these guys wasn't altogether different from a parent's attitude toward gifted children: Get them through the system, but make sure to give them a clean little corner to doodle in and pat them on the head when they show you what they've done, whether you understand it or not.

"I don't know if I was as angry as much as I was misunderstood.  A lot of the things we did contained a lot of humor that went over people's heads."

On the increasing tension between the pleasant, thoughtful indie rock of car commercials and those who insist on something weirder.

An excerpt from a new oral history of MTV.

An oral history of the Strokes.