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South Korean producer Park Hye Jin makes evocative house music for late nights. On her new EP, How Can I (Ninja Tune), her vocal delivery and production are poised and searing, building on the template of her 2018 debut, If U Want It. On the EP’s first track, “Like This,” she accompanies a swell of synth pads and percussion with a repeated line about how she’s opening her eyes, as if she’s been in a hypnotic trance....

On his fourth album, December’s War & Leisure (ByStorm/RCA), California pop auteur Miguel wants you to know that politics and the state of the world are front and center in his mind (hey, look, the word “war” is even in the title!). But Miguel’s best political statements are similar to any of the other messages in his sultry R&B songs, which can make rooms steam like a sauna—his astute, activist affirmations come forth easily and feel as unique to him as his right index finger....

Sault are an anonymous UK trio who create music grounded in the tenets of Black rights and Black freedom, and there’s never been a better time than now to hear their message. Last year they put out their debut album, 5, and an almost immediate follow-up, 7, and this summer they released their third record, Untitled (Black Is)—like its predecessors, it came out on UK label Forever Living Originals without the fanfare of a typical promotional campaign....

Shamir spent the first months of quarantine directing the video for “On My Own,” the first single from their new self-titled album, entirely within their Philadelphia home. Using wardrobe and hairstyle changes, the mononymous singer and multi-instrumentalist depicts themselves in various personas: a childlike figure surrounded by stuffed animals, a confident rocker swinging her hips behind a buttercup-yellow guitar. It’s a fitting visual for lyrics about finding solace in solitude as well as a reminder that, as an independent artist, he’s self-directing his career more than ever....

We might not be able to go to movie theaters for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stream and support some new releases. Now more than ever feels like a perfect time to dive into some fresh genre films—they are uniquely able to transport you to another world and provide a much-needed distraction, but they can also allow you to think about the current state of our world with a fresh perspective....

Apples to Improv You’ve got to hand it to this Under the Gun troupe for opening its family-friendly improv show on a holiday weekend—perhaps unsurprisingly, our audience was only slightly larger than the entire cast of five. The somewhat casual production is loosely inspired by the card game Apples to Apples Junior; familiarity with it might help but isn’t required as dealt cards offer subjects, topics, and themes to inspire the team-based competition....

There’s not much Logan Square is short on when it comes to restaurants and bars: the neighborhood is packed with them, offering almost anything you could want. But while there are plenty of places to get a good burger, there hasn’t been a restaurant specializing in them since Parts and Labor closed last December. (And don’t tell me about Kuma’s; that’s in Avondale) Sports bars are also few and far between, which has never broken my heart, to be honest, but it’s a gap that needed filling....

Last year the Curious Theatre Branch’s Rhinoceros fringe festival celebrated its 25th year by celebrating one of its founders, Jenny Magnus. This year the appreciation continues with a tribute to the other founder, Beau O’Reilly. The seven-week 2015 Rhinoceros Theater Festival, aka Rhinofest, will culminate in an extended visit to “Beautown” (Thu 2/26-Sun 3/1), where you’ll find six of his idiosyncratic, beboppy plays plus a concert of songs he wrote for his late, lamented, profoundly underrated rock band Maestro Subgum and the Whole (Fri 2/27, 9 PM)....

For three years, Chicago thrash band Texas Toast Chainsaw Massacre have been booking DIY shows that combine sets from up-and-coming local metal, hardcore, and punk bands with body-slamming, table-trashing brawls. On Saturday, October 28, at a Pilsen DIY venue whose name I can’t share here (“Ask a punk,” as they say), TTCM present the 11th installment in their Toastamania series, named in tribute to the WrestleMania ladder matches that helped inspire it....

Two clear messages emerged from a blizzard of opinions expressed Wednesday evening at the most highly charged meeting yet about the Obama Presidential Center: An actual blizzard in New York kept architect and panelist Michael Sorkin from making the trip (his remarks were read by Mitchell). But Charles Birnbaum, president of the D.C.-based Cultural Landscape Foundation was there, arguing against putting the Obama Center in Jackson Park, invoking Janet Jackson....

A group of resident artists from the Mercy Housing Lakefront art therapy program are sharing work based on their life experiences in “Those People,” a special exhibition at the Weinberg/Newton Gallery. The residents use a variety of media, but all of their work explores the sense of “otherness” that they have been made to feel within their communities. It also plays on themes of identity and security. Eventually, he found his way to Mercy Housing where he was introduced to art therapy....

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. For at least three decades, our national government has primarily served the interests of the one percent—the major donors to the Democratic and Republican parties. To carry on in such an undemocratic fashion in a country that still requires leaders to stand for election, our leaders need to lie with impunity, especially about matters of war....

Nasee Yehuda is the proprietor of Madison Street Barbers (2429 W. Madison) on the near west side. During last month’s Major League Barber Original Midwest SuperBarber & Stylist Tradeshow at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, the 39-year-old took first place in the Fastest and Cleanest Fade event. He spoke about how he got immersed in the world of competitive barbering. So I went to college, and I flunked out, because I barely went to class, because I was cutting hair....

Contrary to popular belief—at least insofar as the populace has any beliefs at all on the subject—the word “fringe” doesn’t necessarily mean “experimental” when applied to the performing arts. The usage was coined in 1947 to refer to eight productions that sprang up unbidden at the fringes of Scotland’s highbrow, highly selective Edinburgh International Festival. A better synonym might be “uninvited.” Cole’s To Relax and Laugh at least has a heartbeat—and an amusing situation too, centered on an uptight woman named Sloan who seeks help from a therapist lacking not only credentials but sanity....

For years Canadian composer Sarah Davachi has created stunning works of meditative sound art that deal with psychoacoustics, drone, and site-specific acoustic properties, often through hypnotic long-form pieces. She developed much of this material alone, using either strictly synthetic sources or subtle manipulations of long tones played on various keyboard instruments. In recent years, though, Davachi—who’s currently a doctoral student in musicology at UCLA—has increasingly collaborated with other instrumentalists. On last year’s stunning All My Circles Run (Students of Decay) she bathed live sounds produced on strings, piano, or voice in immersive, transformative electronics, but her new album, Let Night Come on Bells End the Day (Recital), suggests she hasn’t left her older methodologies in the past....

Since 1996, Chicago electronic producer Christopher Grabowski has experimented with IDM under the name K-Rad. The name initially represented a small, loose collective with Grabowski, Joe Hahn, and Mark Hardy at its center; all three producers worked on K-Rad’s debut for the Someoddpilot label, 2002’s Deli Mood Spot. Since then Grabowski has made K-Rad his solo project, and while he’s sometimes issued collaborations with other producers as K-Rad singles or full-lengths, in recent years he’s made all the material on his own....

Chicago drummer Tommy Carroll first came to prominence as a skateboarder in the late aughts. Blind since he was two years old, he picked up the sport in third grade, and by age 15 his skills and dedication had caught the attention of Tony Hawk, who traveled to Glenview in 2008 to skate with him. But in a 2013 interview with McSweeney’s, Carroll briefly noted his interest in drumming and jazz, and since then, public interest has focused more on his music than his skating....

DEAR READERS: This is the final week of my summer vacation—but you’ve been getting a new column every week I’ve been gone, all of them written by Dan Savage, none of them written by me. A: First off, I think a long time between relationships is good. I also think not having things in common can be OK if you create new hobbies and experiences you can share. Having said that, TDTBW, four months is plenty of time to know if it’s working....

Living in Vancouver in her mid-20s, Jeanette Tran-Dean was struck by the similarities between the food she grew up with and the food her Guatemalan friends ate. “I’d go over for their grandfather’s birthday party or something and they’d have, like, a tamale wrapped in a banana leaf,” she says. “I was like, ‘Vietnamese people wrap everything in banana leaves.’” Another friend’s mom regularly made the Central American-style quesadilla, which is a lot like a sweet, cheesy, rice-flour pound cake—and a lot like the Vietnamese cassava-coconut cake called banh khoai mi nuong....

Dwid Hellion, founder and core member of Integrity, sure can be intimidating, what with his burly stage presence, fierce intelligence, and dogged devotion to unblinking study of the darkest sides of the psyche, but his real superpower is his work ethic. Throughout Integrity’s two-decade career with constant personnel changes (including periods that included stars from bands such as Hatebreed and Sepultura), the iconic metalcore band have maintained a steady maelstrom of releases, including singles and EPs in between albums—and each one has been fiercer than the last....