Melissa Kacar

Happy Record Store Day! To celebrate the semi-annual independent record store event, Billie Eilish released a special 10" vinyl commemorating her acoustic performance apart of Amazon's Songline series.  She performed four songs off of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT ; "SKINNY", "L'AMOUR DE MA VIE", "WILDFLOWER" and "BIRDS OF A FEATHER". It's just Billie, her brother Finneas , her band, and three backing singers in an empty studio space performing them live in one take. These versions aren't available on streaming, other than this rendition of "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" , which is exclusively on Amazon Music. The videos of these performances are available to watch on YouTube though, and they are really incredible. I love that she chose to perform "SKINNY" first, as it is such an emotional and vulnerable introduction into this album. It sounded so beautiful in a stripped down format like this and reminded me of the way sh...

Ten years ago,  Billie Eilish  uploaded her very first song onto SoundCloud. When she recorded "ocean eyes" she was only 13 years old, yet instantly cemented herself as one of the defining voices of this generation of music. The track was written, produced, and mixed by her brother,  Finneas , who was 18 at the time. Originally intended for his band, he realized his sister's voice would suit the song much better. They recorded it together and uploaded it independently to SoundCloud, simply with the intention of wanting Billie's dance teacher to choreograph a routine to it. What happened next was beyond anything they imagined, with the song organically going viral overnight. "So my brother wrote it, and he kind of just came into my room one night and said, 'I have this song, and I want you to sing it.' I sang it, and it was weirdly exactly what I was going through at the time, which was weird," Billie said in a 2017 interview for Lexus' Artist Spo...

"The Subway" by Chappell Roan The long-awaited official release of "The Subway" is finally here and it is absolutely the best song that Chappell has released thus far. There's so much emotion packed into every lyric. The song is deeply heartfelt and unflinchingly honest as Chappell recalls the kind of specific, intimate details of a love that got away. All of the memories still linger, almost as if she is haunted by them. After performing the song live for the past year, I'm so happy the studio version of it is finally out! "Ice In My OJ" by Hayley Williams Earlier this month Hayley Williams surprise released a seventeen standalone singles, which she later compiled into an official album titled Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party . It's already a very strong contender for my favorite album of the year so far, I'm continuously discovering new aspects of it that I love each time I listen to it. "Ice In My OJ" was one of my initial f...

"my future" was released as the first single off of Billie Eilish 's sophomore album, Happier Than Ever . Released exactly a year prior to the rest of the album, this song signaled a transitional period for Billie as an artist. Coming off of her record-breaking debut album the year prior, with this song, Billie and Finneas set out to prove that they weren't interested in doing the same thing twice. They experimented with a wide range of influences across the album, but "my future" was definitely a more understated and simplistic sound than what they had went with on much of her debut.  "'Cause I, I'm in love with my future, can't wait to meet her," she sings in the chorus. "And I, I'm in love, but not with anybody else, just wanna get to know myself". With this song, she embraces change and growth above all else. The dreamy jazz-inspired melodies reflected her growing maturity, willingness to experiment and expansion of h...

"Cross Yor Mind" by Shelly Shelly, the side project of close friends Clairo , Claud , Josh Mehling, and Noa Getzug returns after five years with two addicting new singles, "Cross Your Mind" and "Hartwell". I absolutely love both songs, but "Cross Your Mind" just might be my favorite song of the summer so far. Hopefully they release a full-length collaborative project soon, I can't wait to hear more from them! "Gasoline - triple j Like A Version" by Djo Earlier this year, Djo recorded an incredible cover of Haim 's "Gasoline" for triple j's Like A Version series, and now it's finally been officially released on streaming platforms. He took what was already one of my favorite songs by the band and completely made it his own, giving a fresh perspective and edge to it while still capturing everything that made the original so special. "don't speak" by Wet Leg I've been loving Wet Leg 's new a...