meta-scriptThe Mars Volta Just Released Their First Album In A Decade. What Have They Been Up To During The Time Off? | GRAMMY.com
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The Mars Volta (L-R: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala)

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The Mars Volta Just Released Their First Album In A Decade. What Have They Been Up To During The Time Off?

The Mars Volta's decade-long hiatus found co-leaders Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez reuniting their other major band and duking it out in short-lived projects.

GRAMMYs/Sep 16, 2022 - 01:51 pm

As it turns out, the Mars Volta's florid, labyrinthine journey — sidelong jams, Ouija-fueled nightmares, an 18-LP boxed set — was in the shape of a circle.

After 11 years together and a decade on hiatus, the progressive-rock duo just released a streamlined, self-titled record on Sept. 16 — no lysergic graphics on the cover, no five-movement suites with titles like "Plant a Nail in the Navel Stream." Eva Gardner, their original bassist from their debut EP Tremulant, is back.

Mellow, pared-down and Caribbean-influenced, The Mars Volta  is by far the group's most accessible to date. But this doesn't contradict their MO one iota: the cardinal rule of the band has always been that it's whatever their co-leaders, guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala, want it to be.

So, the GRAMMY-winning band has opted to hit the reset button, and grow up before our eyes and ears — with Gardner, synthesist Marcel Rodríguez-López and drummer Willy Rodriguez Quiñones behind them.

"We've been warning you guys; we were saying 10 years ago that the most revolutionary thing we could do was make a pop record," Rodriguez-Lopez told The Quietus in 2022. "We're in our mid-to-late 40s, and you can't just still be doing the same s—, expecting to wear an old T-shirt that doesn't fit any more."

This belies the fact that the Mars Volta have been totally game to revisit the past — not only with that leviathan of a career-spanning boxed set, La Realidad de los Sueños, but in the brief 2010s reunion of At the Drive-In, their incindiary post-hardcore band that put them on the map in the first place.

But the reignition and subsequent flame-out of AtDI was just one development between Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala during our sadly Volta-less decade. Their recent story ranges from the tragic (an allegedly traumatizing run-in with the Church of Scientology, resulting in an ongoing legal firefight), to the boundlessly creative (Rodriguez-Lopez's waterfall of solo releases), to the bizarre and hilarious (Bixler-Zavala's, erm, interesting TMV reunion announcement.)

Now, The Mars Volta is out in the world, following well-received advance singles "Blacklight Shine," "Graveyard Love" and "Vigil." Here's a quick rundown on what the experimentalists have been up to during their wildest, wooliest band's downtime — focusing on the music rather than the personal drama.

At The Drive-In Rode Again

Although it seemed the Mars Volta had evolved several epochs past the slash-and-burn theatrics of At the Drive-In, they decided to revive the band in 2011, during the waning days of the Mars Volta's initial run.

While this resulted in a handful of festival gigs, AtDI fell apart upon the pair's falling-out in 2013. Out of their reconciliation via the band Antemasque — which featured bassist Flea and drummer Travis Barker at various stages — came another shot at a reunion, albeit with Sparta guitarist Keeley Davis replacing founding AtDI member Jim Ward.

This reunion produced 2017's in•ter a•li•a, their first album since 2000's unforgettable swing for the fences, Relationship of Command — but the album earned mixed reviews, At the Drive-In followed it up with an EP that year, Diamanté, before calling it quits once again.

Offshoot Bands Came And Went

When the Mars Volta first broke up, one sticking point for Bixler-Zavala was Rodriguez-Lopez's new band, Bosnian Rainbows — which featured vocalist Teri Gender Bender of Le Butcherettes. (Fun fact: she's direct support for the reconstituted Mars Volta's 2022 fall tour.)

"Thank u 2 all VOLTA fans u deserved more especially after the way u rooted for us on [2012's Noctouriniquet]," Bixler-Zavala seethed on Twitter. "But Bosnian Rainbows was what we all got instead. I can't sit here and pretend any more. I no longer am a member of Mars Volta."

Bixler-Zavala simultaneously launched his own band, Zavalaz, featuring Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete among its ranks. And in 2014, the pair buried the hatchet to form Antemasque.

While none of these three bands publicly announced a breakup, none are currently active, and it remains to be seen whether they'll pop up again in the foreseeable future with the Mars Volta back in action.

Solo Records… So Many Solo Records

During the gulf of time when the Mars Volta were no longer active, Rodriguez-Lopez seemingly decided to duke it out with Jandek, Merzbow and Guided by Voices in prolificity: his Discogs page is truly staggering.

Are you a true fan if you haven't checked out Gorilla Preacher Cartel, or Killing Tingled Lifting Retreats, or Cell Phone Bikini? How about Chocolate Tumor Hormone Parade? (At least some of this epic streak were part of a 12-album series, released every fortnight in the latter half of 2016.)

Does this leave out some music the pair put out while the Mars Volta was on ice? Probably; these two have always been insatiable fountainheads of creativity, and it's almost guaranteed that will continue in the 2020s.

But after (or before) you seek all of it out, dive deep into The Mars Volta, where extraneous elements are stripped away — leaving a glowing core that may well be enticing to diehards and newcomers alike.

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(L-R) Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney attend the 'This is a Film About The Black Keys' world premiere as part of SXSW 2024 Conference and Festivals held at The Paramount Theatre on March 11, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
(L-R) Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney attend the 'This is a Film About The Black Keys' world premiere as part of SXSW 2024 Conference and Festivals on March 11, 2024 in Austin, Texas.

Photo: Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images

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5 Memorable Moments From SXSW 2024: A Significant Protest, The Black Keys, De Facto, & More

More than 340 new bands played SXSW for the first time in 2024, while many others returned to the annual fest. Read on for some of the most inspiring and exciting moments from SXSW 2024 — from performances by legends to groundbreaking new acts.

GRAMMYs/Mar 18, 2024 - 10:57 pm

The 2024 South By Southwest Festival got off to a dramatic start: approximately 80 artists, speakers, and event sponsors pulled out of the event to protest the sponsorship of the U.S. Army and defense companies and then a hit-and-run traffic incident in a crowded festival area resulted in a fatality and serious injury early Tuesday.

SXSW spokespeople issued statements about both. They were "saddened" by the tragic traffic incident, and reiterated that they are an organization that welcomes diverse viewpoints and therefore saw no issue in allowing the military sponsorships. They also did not criticize anyone who pulled out of the festival to show solidarity with Palestine and protest genocide. Republican Texas Governor Ron Abbott was not as diplomatic.

And yet the music portion of the festival pushed on. 

Some of the bands who pulled out of the festival performed "unofficial" shows, and as with previous SXSW festivals, the diversity of music offerings was staggering: artists played genres such as folk, pop, indie rock, psychedelic cumbia, punk, electronic, and Americana, but also offered regional lenses to musical styles — Texas rap, Southern California soul-jazz  — and social justice viewpoints like indigenous hardcore. Artists also offered global perspectives on jazz, hip hop, and psychedelic funk.

Read on for TK of the most inspiring and exciting moments from SXSW 2024 – from performances by legends to groundbreaking new acts.

The Black Keys Take Audiences Behind The Scenes (And Back To Their Salad Days)

Music keynote offerings felt slim compared to previous years, but festival goers did get an authentic, revealing glimpse into the world of the Black Keys — there to promote a new documentary film about their band history and to perform two shows. 

Drummer Patrick Carney stole the show with humorous, deadpan anecdotes —including that time he slept in the van to guard the $500 they made at a show and woke up in the middle of the night to a crowd of drunk people dressed like Santa Claus in the middle of July — and self-effacing jokes about himself and the group: "The first time we came to SXSW we couldn’t afford to stay in town." 

One thing the film makes clear is that two key elements of the Black Keys are simplicity and technology. They kept things simple by being a two-piece band: a few bass players auditioned early on but Carney and Dan Auerbach preferred the sound of drums and guitar. But the key element was Carney’s four-track recorder: he taught himself how to use it, which enabled the band to record themselves in Carney’s basement and fine-tune their nuanced approach to rock music.

 "We wanted the kick drum to sound like the speakers were blown," Carney said in an interview

Carney and guitarist/singer Auerbach later performed a blues-driven sold-out show at Austin’s Mohawk, joined by artists on Auerbach’s Nashville-based record label Easy Eye Sound. There was no banter, just music.

Bootsy Collins Brings The Funk & A Lot Of Flair

Legendary funk bassist, singer, and producer Bootsy Collins — who played with James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic, boasts a long solo career, and collaborated with artists like Deee-Lite, Fatboy Slim, Silk SonicKali Uchis and Tyler, the Creator — hosted high-energy shows with the Ohio group Zapp and his entourage of collaborators and proteges at the 2024 festival. 

A long line of people snaked down Austin’s busy Red River Street waiting to get into the packed Mohawk club for a March 15 show, which featured guest artists Henry Invisible, Tony “Young James Brown” Wilson, and FANTAAZMA. A few fans wore big hats and star-shaped sunglasses to emulate Collins’ distinct look.

Collins, who announced in 2019 he wouldn’t play bass in live performance anymore, was in town to promote his anti-violence initiative, "Funk Not Fight," and a new song and album of the same name. He also promoted his Bootzilla Productions company and Funk University, which aims to mentor younger creatives like Hamburg-based FANTAAZMA, who joined Collins for a SXSW Studio interview with TikTok creator Juju Green.

“At some point James Brown saw something in me, you know, and grabbed us in, and I’ll never forget that, and so that’s what I try to do,” Collins said about his efforts to help mentor younger artists. 

Omar Rodríguez-López & Cedric Bixler-Zavala Get Weird

What a journey these two have had: they met as teens in the hardcore scene in El Paso, Texas, formed two influential alternative rock bands — At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta — and one obscure dub project — De Facto — that earned them rock and roll acclaim from the music press and respect from musical peers in bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird, a new documentary about the creative partnership between Rodríguez-López and Bixler-Zavala, premiered  at the 2024 festival. The film illuminates the duo’s struggles with bandmates, addiction, racism, Scientology, and their ups and downs in the music industry. 

Rodríguez-López recorded loads of footage over the years of them on the road, in recording studios, and in live performance. Those intimate, up-close moments used in the film reveal a partnership that begins in solidarity, drifts apart, and comes back together stronger than when they started. It’s essentially a film about friendship.

The two appeared briefly onstage before the film’s screening, alongside director Nicolas Jack Davies, but said nothing. For the first time in 21 years, the two performed at this year’s SXSW festival as De Facto, their lesser-known reggae-influenced side project, to promote the new film.

Cumbia Is The Real Soundtrack To SXSW 2024

Cumbia in 2024 is conscious party music, still closely linked to its Colombian origins but expanded and modernized by elements of psychedelia and the young players from across the country and the world interpreting the genre. 

Cumbia could be heard throughout the festival, in particular at a heavily attended party March 12 at Hotel Vegas in Austin, which featured more than 10 bands on four stages. A few fans could be seen wearing T-shirts with the phrase “Cumbia is the new punk,” the title of a song by Mexican cumbia fusion group Son Rompe Pera

Bands mostly from Texas — including the “barrio big band” Bombasta and Latin psych bands like Combo Cósmico and Money Chicha —  and the rock-influenced Denver band Ritmo Cascabel played dance music driven by hand percussion, heavy bass lines and guitars drenched in reverb.

Earlier this year, Billboard predicted that cumbia music in all its entirety and subgenres — chicha, sonidera, norteña, villera — would see a massive growth in 2024, citing higher-profile artist collaborations and social media viral hits.

Classical Music Unveils Its Changing Profile

Classical music is most often associated with beautiful concert halls and polite, well-dressed audiences who sit quietly as music is being played. This was not the case for Vulva Voce, an all-female Manchester-based string quartet that played their unique blend of modern classical music at various SXSW stages this year. 

Band members wore one-piece jumpsuit coveralls with Doc Martin boots and performed mostly original, high-energy, uptempo compositions to loud crowds at dive bars throughout Austin. They shredded strings and swayed and bounced onstage as if it were a rock show, and said they loved every minute of it.  Vulva Voce also performed live with Ash, a Northern Irish rock band whose career in music spans 30 years.

Vulva Voce’s modern approach to classical music comes at a good time. Mid-week, a group of classical music artist managers, lawyers and classical music label executives spoke about classical music’s revival in gaming and soundtracks

Traditional classical music performance continues to struggle with attendance, but the genre has gained traction on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, and has seen a surge in interest in film scores, Netflix soundtracks, video games, and sports broadcasts. 

More than 340 new bands played SXSW for the first time this year. Each year, SXSW awards three emerging artists The Grulke Prize, in honor of festival Creative Director Brent Grulke, who passed away in 2012. Sabrina Teitelbaum, who performs as Blondshell, won for developing U.S. act, the South Korean alternative K-pop band Balming Tiger won for developing non-U.S. act, and British psychedelic pop band the Zombies won the career act award

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Kendrick Lamar GRAMMY Rewind Hero
Kendrick Lamar

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

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GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016

Upon winning the GRAMMY for Best Rap Album for 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' Kendrick Lamar thanked those that helped him get to the stage, and the artists that blazed the trail for him.

GRAMMYs/Oct 13, 2023 - 06:01 pm

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala of the Mars Volta
The Mars Volta (L-R: Omar Rodríguez-López, Cedric Bixler-Zavala)

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

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The Mars Volta's 'De-Loused In The Comatorium' Turns 20: Inside Their Alien New World

At The Drive-In's energy was, and still might be, unmatched. But as the Mars Volta, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López got even more outré — and their debut album, 'De-Loused in the Comatorium,' was an opening salvo to remember.

GRAMMYs/Jun 23, 2023 - 02:50 pm

Rock history contains reams of bands that blew apart just as they blew up — and At the Drive-In might be the most extreme example.

Their guitarist, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, may have decried the mix of 2000's Relationship of Command as "passive, plastic… it's the one record I still to this day cannot listen to." But he was doing it a disservice, perhaps by being too close to the object: every scream and arcane lyric and rhythmic left turn adds up to an album of whiplash impact.

But maybe he had a point, in that the final At the Drive-In record — almost by necessity — couldn't capture the napalm of the band live. Just watch them tear into "Arcarsenal" or "One Armed Scissor" or "Cosmonaut" back then — their bodies seem to never touch the ground.

One world tour later, At the Drive-In announced they were taking an "indefinite hiatus"; Rodríguez-López cited "a non-stop six-year cycle of record/tour/record/tour," adding that the group needed "time to rest up and re-evaluate."

That break would last for an entire decade, and couldn't solely be chalked up to exhaustion. "We just have to iron out a lot of personal things," vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala said in 2009 — more than a year before At the Drive-In would officially announce their reunion.

Given how hard-partying, high-flying and hard-everything At the Drive-In were — and how relationships had frayed in the wake of their implosion — Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López could have hit a wall. Instead, they created music that married the post-hardcore band's intensity to more cerebral, complex and challenging ends.

Thus, the very same year At the Drive-In ran aground, the Mars Volta were born. After a promising 2002 EP, Tremulant, they fully flowered with 2003's De-Loused in the Comatorium.

On June 24, the Rick Rubin-assisted album turned 20. Although there have been a multitude of twists and turns in the band's career since — including a recent return after a decade off — it remains one of their most beloved albums, if not the most beloved.

For one,
De-Loused in the Comatorium featured one of the lineup-fluid band's most powerful iterations: Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López, along with keyboardist Isaiah "Ikey" Owens, bassist Flea, drummer Jon Theodore, and effects whiz Jeremy Ward. MVP moments from all these accompanists are abundant, but Flea has a particularly revealing showing; his tense, understated playing is vastly divergent from his slap-saturated Red Hot Chili Peppers parts.

Compositionally, highlights like "Iniertiatic ESP," "Drunkship of Lanterns" and "Cicatriz ESP" stretch far beyond the bounds of post-hardcore. Bixler-Zavala pivoted from belting and screaming, instead employing his bracing, incisive and sweet tenor. Despite their alien, unpredictable and teeming natures, the tracks on De-Loused were more than ever, songs  rather than sonic assaults.

De-Loused in the Comatorium also marked Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López's first capital-c concept record. It follows the protagonist, Cerpin Taxt — namechecked in the closer, "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt" — through a phantasmagorical world after he overdoses on morphine and rat poison.

This narrative thread pulls along the listener from beginning to end — even if they may never know what a "boxcar cadaver," "carpal jets" or a "cartweel of scratches" is.

The story also had tragic and unintentional prescience: Ward died in 2003 — a month before De-Loused was released — of a heroin overdose. (Owens, too, passed — in 2014, from a heart attack while on tour with Jack White in Mexico.)

De-Loused was met with critical acclaim; Yahoo! Music declared it's "not an album to listen to casually. It insists on taking over your life for an hour, demands a level of concentration rare in rock, amply repays multiple plays."

Clearly, itss aesthetic, compositions and narrative showed that Bixler-Zavala and Rodríguez-López had a lot to say post-At the Drive-In. Better yet, it was just the beginning of a potent new chapter for the artistic partners.

The manic ambition of 2005's Frances the Mute and 2006's Amputechture; the spiritistic meltdown of 2008's The Bedlam in Goliath, their turns toward accessibility with 2009's Octahedron, 2012's Noctourniquet, and 2022's self-titled reunion album — all of it was made possible by De-Loused in the Comatorium.

"Past present and future tense/ Clipside of the pinkeye fountain," Bixler-Zavala announced through his nasal midrange in the unforgettable "Inertiatic E.S.P."

And De-Loused in the Comatorium felt Janus-like in that regard — their past settled, their present known, their future deliciously strange and boundless.

The Mars Volta Just Released Their First Album In A Decade. What Have They Been Up To During The Time Off?

Franc Moody
Franc Moody

Photo: Rachel Kupfer 

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A Guide To Modern Funk For The Dance Floor: L'Imperatrice, Shiro Schwarz, Franc Moody, Say She She & Moniquea

James Brown changed the sound of popular music when he found the power of the one and unleashed the funk with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag." Today, funk lives on in many forms, including these exciting bands from across the world.

GRAMMYs/Nov 25, 2022 - 04:23 pm

It's rare that a genre can be traced back to a single artist or group, but for funk, that was James Brown. The Godfather of Soul coined the phrase and style of playing known as "on the one," where the first downbeat is emphasized, instead of the typical second and fourth beats in pop, soul and other styles. As David Cheal eloquently explains, playing on the one "left space for phrases and riffs, often syncopated around the beat, creating an intricate, interlocking grid which could go on and on." You know a funky bassline when you hear it; its fat chords beg your body to get up and groove.

Brown's 1965 classic, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," became one of the first funk hits, and has been endlessly sampled and covered over the years, along with his other groovy tracks. Of course, many other funk acts followed in the '60s, and the genre thrived in the '70s and '80s as the disco craze came and went, and the originators of hip-hop and house music created new music from funk and disco's strong, flexible bones built for dancing.

Legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins learned the power of the one from playing in Brown's band, and brought it to George Clinton, who created P-funk, an expansive, Afrofuturistic, psychedelic exploration of funk with his various bands and projects, including Parliament-Funkadelic. Both Collins and Clinton remain active and funkin', and have offered their timeless grooves to collabs with younger artists, including Kali Uchis, Silk Sonic, and Omar Apollo; and Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, and Thundercat, respectively.

In the 1980s, electro-funk was born when artists like Afrika Bambaataa, Man Parrish, and Egyptian Lover began making futuristic beats with the Roland TR-808 drum machine — often with robotic vocals distorted through a talk box. A key distinguishing factor of electro-funk is a de-emphasis on vocals, with more phrases than choruses and verses. The sound influenced contemporaneous hip-hop, funk and electronica, along with acts around the globe, while current acts like Chromeo, DJ Stingray, and even Egyptian Lover himself keep electro-funk alive and well.

Today, funk lives in many places, with its heavy bass and syncopated grooves finding way into many nooks and crannies of music. There's nu-disco and boogie funk, nodding back to disco bands with soaring vocals and dance floor-designed instrumentation. G-funk continues to influence Los Angeles hip-hop, with innovative artists like Dam-Funk and Channel Tres bringing the funk and G-funk, into electro territory. Funk and disco-centered '70s revival is definitely having a moment, with acts like Ghost Funk Orchestra and Parcels, while its sparkly sprinklings can be heard in pop from Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, and, in full "Soul Train" character, Silk Sonic. There are also acts making dreamy, atmospheric music with a solid dose of funk, such as Khruangbin’s global sonic collage.

There are many bands that play heavily with funk, creating lush grooves designed to get you moving. Read on for a taste of five current modern funk and nu-disco artists making band-led uptempo funk built for the dance floor. Be sure to press play on the Spotify playlist above, and check out GRAMMY.com's playlist on Apple Music, Amazon Music and Pandora.

Say She She

Aptly self-described as "discodelic soul," Brooklyn-based seven-piece Say She She make dreamy, operatic funk, led by singer-songwriters Nya Gazelle Brown, Piya Malik and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham. Their '70s girl group-inspired vocal harmonies echo, sooth and enchant as they cover poignant topics with feminist flair.

While they’ve been active in the New York scene for a few years, they’ve gained wider acclaim for the irresistible music they began releasing this year, including their debut album, Prism. Their 2022 debut single "Forget Me Not" is an ode to ground-breaking New York art collective Guerilla Girls, and "Norma" is their protest anthem in response to the news that Roe vs. Wade could be (and was) overturned. The band name is a nod to funk legend Nile Rodgers, from the "Le freak, c'est chi" exclamation in Chic's legendary tune "Le Freak."

Moniquea

Moniquea's unique voice oozes confidence, yet invites you in to dance with her to the super funky boogie rhythms. The Pasadena, California artist was raised on funk music; her mom was in a cover band that would play classics like Aretha Franklin’s "Get It Right" and Gladys Knight’s "Love Overboard." Moniquea released her first boogie funk track at 20 and, in 2011, met local producer XL Middelton — a bonafide purveyor of funk. She's been a star artist on his MoFunk Records ever since, and they've collabed on countless tracks, channeling West Coast energy with a heavy dose of G-funk, sunny lyrics and upbeat, roller disco-ready rhythms.

Her latest release is an upbeat nod to classic West Coast funk, produced by Middleton, and follows her February 2022 groovy, collab-filled album, On Repeat.

Shiro Schwarz

Shiro Schwarz is a Mexico City-based duo, consisting of Pammela Rojas and Rafael Marfil, who helped establish a modern funk scene in the richly creative Mexican metropolis. On "Electrify" — originally released in 2016 on Fat Beats Records and reissued in 2021 by MoFunk — Shiro Schwarz's vocals playfully contrast each other, floating over an insistent, upbeat bassline and an '80s throwback electro-funk rhythm with synth flourishes.

Their music manages to be both nostalgic and futuristic — and impossible to sit still to. 2021 single "Be Kind" is sweet, mellow and groovy, perfect chic lounge funk. Shiro Schwarz’s latest track, the joyfully nostalgic "Hey DJ," is a collab with funkstress Saucy Lady and U-Key.

L'Impératrice

L'Impératrice (the empress in French) are a six-piece Parisian group serving an infectiously joyful blend of French pop, nu-disco, funk and psychedelia. Flore Benguigui's vocals are light and dreamy, yet commanding of your attention, while lyrics have a feminist touch.

During their energetic live sets, L'Impératrice members Charles de Boisseguin and Hagni Gwon (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), and Tom Daveau (drums) deliver extended instrumental jam sessions to expand and connect their music. Gaugué emphasizes the thick funky bass, and Benguigui jumps around the stage while sounding like an angel. L’Impératrice’s latest album, 2021’s Tako Tsubo, is a sunny, playful French disco journey.

Franc Moody

Franc Moody's bio fittingly describes their music as "a soul funk and cosmic disco sound." The London outfit was birthed by friends Ned Franc and Jon Moody in the early 2010s, when they were living together and throwing parties in North London's warehouse scene. In 2017, the group grew to six members, including singer and multi-instrumentalist Amber-Simone.

Their music feels at home with other electro-pop bands like fellow Londoners Jungle and Aussie act Parcels. While much of it is upbeat and euphoric, Franc Moody also dips into the more chilled, dreamy realm, such as the vibey, sultry title track from their recently released Into the Ether.

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