New Zealander Kimbra is officially the “coolest” according to Nylon magazine, telling their readers that if they’re not already familiar with the singer then, “it’s time to get acclimated.” “Her music has the power to…
At the inaugural Australian Record Industry Association awards (ARIAs) in 1987, New Zealand judge (and now Australianised) Jenny Morris was joined by a countryman whose second band was named best new talent and went…
How does a teenager from Devonport, Auckland get plucked from relative obscurity to become a worldwide chart-topping phenomenon? Once-in-a-generation talent helps, but those gifts need to be paired with music execs who have the…
An example of soul music’s possible future is 22-year-old New Zealander Estère, who recently played at the annual Australian World Music Expo (AWME) in Melbourne. The Wellington-based bedroom artist – she literally writes and records…
Waikiri-born percussionist Nathaniel Combs, 31, has played with world-famous ensembles such as Les Percussion de Guinea, Les Visage de Guinee, and the prestigious Kaloum Lole during time spent in Guinea, West Africa in 2004. Now,…
After a decade apart, indie rockers Luna, fronted by New Zealand-born Dean Wareham, have “insouciantly” announced their reunion with a string of dates in Spain and vague hints at US dates, planned for next…
New Zealander Hayden Tee is one of Melbourne’s East End Theatre district’s hottest stars, playing Javert in Les Misérables, which then tours Australia over the next 20 months. Tee, who is based in New York,…
Singer Chelsea Jade Metcalf has created considerable buzz in her home of New Zealand, and she’s finally ready to take her art elsewhere; she’s been in New York recently for the CMJ Music Marathon,…
Lorde “comes from a land of pioneering women with sometimes perverse perspectives, from the writers Katherine Mansfield and Keri Hulme to the filmmaker Jane Campion,” Los Angeles Magazine contributor Evelyn McDonnell writes in a…
Some of the biggest names in music, including New Zealanders DJ Zane Lowe and singer Lorde, have united to record a cover of the Beach Boys track God Only Knows for the…
One of the founding members of iconic Australian band, New Zealander Todd Hunter (pictured second from right), talks to Digital Journal about the band’s new album and their very modern way of working. Forty one…
Mumbai-based New Zealander, songwriter and composer Mikey McCleary, 45, is a musical jack-of-all-trades making it in the Indian advertising world reinterpreting Bollywood songs and writing music requiring an “international-esque” sound. One of McCleary’s most famous…
The second album of New Zealand duo Electric Wire Hustle Love Can Prevail was released worldwide last month, and features on Jon Pareles’ Playlist in The New York Times. Pareles describes the R&B, soul and…
Billboard has put New Zealander Lorde, 17, at the top of its 2014 edition of 21 Under 21, the magazine’s annual ranking of music’s most powerful minors, “and perhaps the most impressive crop of…
University of Canterbury graduate Gemma New has been selected by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association as one of two conductors to participate in the 2014/15 Dudamel Fellowship Program. New will be conducting ‘Peter and the…
New Zealand folk singer Jackie Bristow hasn’t released a new album in four years. But she has a really good excuse: Bristow has been touring non-stop, and consistently appearing on some lofty play bills,…
Lorde has become the first female artist to win in the category Best Rock Video at the MTV Video Music Awards, beating Arctic Monkeys, Linkin Park, The Black Keys and Imagine Dragons. The 17-year-old scooped…
Auckland University student Laurence Larson, 20, is generating a big following on social media where his music videos sung in the unusual blend of Mandarin and English have been viewed millions of times. With dreams…
“The Golden Echo is less of a sophomoric follow-up and more of a bona fide pop classic from singer Kimbra …”, in fact declares the Guardian, it’s “a straight-up masterclass in sheer…
Christchurch-born bluegrass singer-songwriter Marlon Williams, 24, made a good impression when he played Mullum Music Festival in New South Wales last year, claiming the title as one of the most talked about acts on…
Kimbra only intended to stay in Los Angeles for a month, but after she saw an online listing for an urban farm in Silverlake – “20 chickens, eight sheep, three sheepdogs, an outdoor kitchen…
Broods only started writing music together last year, but the Nelson brother-sister duo, Caleb and Georgia Nott, aged 21 and 19, are being tipped as New Zealand’s next big musical exports. They speak to…
Lorde will pen a new lead single for the latest installment of the popular film franchise, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, also overseeing the selections for the soundtrack album, where her single…
Broods make Hype Machine’s Ones To Watch feature for the second half of 2014, selected under the qualifiers, that it’s their first time on the most-blogged list, and they’ve yet to release a full-length…
Joel Kefali has directed music videos for Lorde, The Naked and Famous and David Dallas – but he’s just released his biggest one yet. The Kiwi director is the man behind Katy Perry’s latest video, This…
Lorde should feel honoured, according to Billboard magazine, because on Weird Al Yankovic’s new album Mandatory Fun, Royals is the only song the professional parodist reimagines as a song about food, called Foil. “Fortunately, he…
Over the course of The Vine’s 20 minute telephone interview with Grammy winner New Zealand singer Kimbra, 24, her “voice changes shape, tone, and accent, like an opalescent sheen shifting in the light.” “Like her…
Auckland-raised award-winning composer Rosie Langabeer, 34, has been working on the music for Philadelphia dance company BalletX’s production, Sunset, o639 Hours, which was inspired by the true story of Pan Am’s Captain Edwin Musick,…
Electro-pop duo Broods, comprised of brother and sister Georgia and Caleb Nott, have helped draw the eyes of the music industry to a country that had only rarely troubled the international charts, Laura Barnett…
Grammy winner 17-year-old Lorde, who has urged people to believe that teenagers are wiser than adults think, has made the Telegraph’s Radhika Sanghani pine for the passion of her younger self. “Defender of teens
“If you believe in the nurturing influence of parents upon their children, then Jess Cornelius is a worthy example,” says the Sydney Morning Herald’s Craig Mathieson. “The Melbourne-based singer-songwriter, who performs with Teeth…
New Zealand rockers Dead C are rated highly by Portland musician Grouper in his Inner Sleeve column for Wire magazine. “I bought this 7” because it was by Dead C, whose music I love; also, honestly,…
Teenage pop star Lorde reminded the Telegraph’s entertainment writer Alice Vincent of a young Kate Bush at her Shepherd’s Bush Empire show last week – a five star review. “Despite being described by youth blogger…
Blair Jollands, who is signed to Boy George’s label More Protein, “is a real songwriter’s songwriter with sustenance and soul”, according to Contactmusic, who talked recently with the London-based New Zealander about writing for…
David Kilgour’s 1990 solo debut album, Here Come the Cars is about as good as guitar-based pop music gets, according to Peter Krbavac at the Age, and “in a just world,” he says, “the…
From Grammy winner to production whizz, Kimbra is breaking new ground. Kimbra Lee Johnson turned 24 in March this year, and while she didn’t have a party she still had a good time, spending the…
PopMatters has selected a sampling of essential tracks by 15 of New Zealand’s finest underground pop acts in anticipation of a forthcoming Bats reissue and a Clean anthology – and with hopes for additional…
Christchurch-born composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood, who is perhaps best known for her Glass Concerts, in which she made use of the sonic and physical characteristics of glass, as well as her Piano…
Among New Zealand’s fervent soul underground, which has produced such musicians as Ladi6, Electric Wire Hustle and Benny Tone, is another contemporary soul outfit, Sorceress. “ Dose, which updates their take on…
Teenage pop star Lorde, who has just won two Billboard music awards at a ceremony in Las Vegas and is in the midst of a sold-out world tour, talks to solo artist and Bright…
Neil Finn thrilled fans in the United Arab Emirates on stage at the Dubai Tennis Stadium last week “demonstrating why he is regarded as the songwriters’ songwriter”, according to Gulf News senior writer Leslie…
Lorde has visited former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark in New York – all in between winning Billboard awards and launching her own make-up line with M.A.C Cosmetics. Ms Clark posted a…
Eighteen-year-old Auckland pianist Sylvia Jiang has been offered full scholarships to four prestigious American music school: Juilliard School, Yale School of Music, Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and New England Conservatory. Jiang started learning…
Grammy award-winning Kimbra, 24, is “no flash in the pan”, says Slate blogger Sharan Shetty. The Hamilton-born singer is currently working on the follow-up to her 2011 album, Vows, and the first single “90s…
From New York on the eve of Broods’ first full tour of the United States, the Nelson-born brother sister act, Georgia and Caleb Nott, talk with Vancouver’s Straight about trading in university for the…
Now on a UK and European tour promoting his third solo album Dizzy Heights, Neil Finn, 55, talks with the Manchester Evening News about why the British city has always been a very homely…
Aucklander Ray Chan, 23, has become one of only two students in the world to be accepted into a prestigious conducting programme at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Chan beat about 30 international…
Yet another magazine cover for Lorde; this time the 17-year-old singer graces the front of Teen Vogue, sporting a giant Marc Jacobs bowtie. The Aucklander admits that her life is pretty wild right now. While…
Music legend Dave Grohl, founder of the Foo Fighters and member of Nirvana, has told Rolling Stone magazine that Lorde gives him hope for the future of music. Dismissing most music on the radio…
Liam Finn’s new album The Nihilist navigates “through deliciously chilly soundscapes that oscillate tantalizingly into the warmth of big semi-processed drumbeats and his fuzzy guitars,” Jessica Letkemann writes for Billboard.com. “But while the New Zealander…
New York-based conductor New Zealander Gemma New, 27, makes her debut conducting Canada’s Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra on 26 April, her “one and only shot” for the position of HPO music director, according to Leonard…
Lorde, who performed Nirvana’s All Apologies at the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, may not have seemed like an immediate choice for the evening, but then Ella Yelich-O’Connor is not your…
Musician (and occasional actor) New Zealand-born Dean Wareham moved to Los Angeles last year after nearly a quarter-century in New York. Wareham, a permanent fixture in the indie rock scene, “informed a generation of…
21 March 2014 – The long and the short of it is if you’re a Kiwi in America you support one another. New Zealand’s two most famous US exports – basketball prodigy Steven Adams…
“Assembled via email, at night, from far-flung corners of the globe is the debut EP from these ex-pat New Zealanders,” Guardian reviewer Paul Lester writes, including Yumi Zouma in the publication’s “Band of the…
New Zealand singer-songwriter, Bradley Hanan Carter (pictured second from left), 33, is founder of Los Angeles sextet, NO which is celebrating the launch of its debut album El Prado with a tour at legendary…
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