Soundcheck

Updated: 21 Aug 2025 • 286 episodes
www.newsounds.org/shows/soundcheck

WNYC, New York Public Radio, brings you Soundcheck, the arts and culture program hosted by John Schaefer, who engages guests and listeners in lively, inquisitive conversations with established and rising figures in New York City's creative arts scene. Guests come from all disciplines, including pop, indie rock, jazz, urban, world and classical music, technology, cultural affairs, TV and film. Recent episodes have included features on Michael Jackson,Crosby Stills & Nash, the Assad Brothers, Rackett, The Replacements, and James Brown.

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The singer Elisapie is an Inuk musician, filmmaker, advocate, and writer who has become a nationally-celebrated figure in Canada – her portrait appears on a postage stamp in that country’s Indigenous leaders series. Her latest album, Inuktitut, is notable for a couple of reasons: first, it’s sung in the language called

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Named after being mis-identified while returning a uHaul, the pop’n’roll band We Are Scientists has been making melancholic, nostalgic, and melodic songs, familiar and fun, for some 20 years. Since their debut album With Love And Squalor, they’ve wandered into the worlds of comedy and English soccer while continuing th

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Eleanor Friedberger, best known as one half of the indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces, has recently shifted her musical landscape, swapping out live instruments in favor of drum programming and synths for a sound that she can create mostly on her own. (Part of her desire to be more self-reliant, in the wake of the 2016

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The duo of Rachael & Vilray turns the idea of "Everything old is new again" on its head – making new things that sound really old. Over the course of three albums they offer a contemporary take on tin pan alley, the great American songbook, and vintage small combo jazz.  The duo’s latest album is West of Broadway and i

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New York based composer Cassie Wieland first unveiled her ambient songwriting project she calls Vines in 2023. Now she’s released a full LP under the name Vines – that record, called I’ll be here, is full of atmospheric, textural washes of sound and processed vocals that suggest a story rather than actually telling you

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Indianapolis-based group 81355 (pronounced ‘bless’) is a collaboration between the rapper/singers Oreo Jones and Sirius Blvck, and the lyricist/producer Sedcairn, and while they’re clearly rooted in hip hop, they’re not bound by it. On their impressive new album Bad Dogs, the band races through electropop, future soul,

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