When I first listened to the new AKRIILA album, I was pretty thoroughly disappointed.  Around the fifth track, a crushing sense of disappointment washed over me; was this really all there was to...

There are many things that Bratislava is. The capital city of Slovakia, a former seat of kings and queens, is nowadays a site of clubs, fountains, way too many cafés , and (on good days) a strong con...

Happy September! We’re very close to finally shipping out our first print issue! In the meantime, here are a few of our favorite releases from the past month, including music by angelus, underscores...

hEvery famous group has one: a meltdown record. The Beatles' White Album is probably the oldest example of the concept, but the basic idea is that the longer a pop star stays in the game, the harder...

Happy August! We’re baaaaaaaack, and we’re here to share some of our favorite new releases by ADÉLA, Frost Children, 2hollis, Cyst, saoirse dream, PIKOTARO, Ninajirachi + Porter Robinson, and tracey b...

Caller ID? More like Smaller ID… Haha. Get it? It’s because it’s smaller than usual. Do you guys get it? No seriously. Do you get it? I can explain it if you want.

Something has been brewing in the club scene for the past five or six years. Nothing is cool, and everything is consumed through a layer of post-irony, which somehow actually makes it cool to care aga...

“horsegiirL??? What the fuck? Are you a horse or a girl? You have to pick one. The US can't even handle trans people — what do you expect them to do with this reverse centaur bullshit? Is this related...

Happy Pride Month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We’re kicking things off with our latest edition of Caller ID, featuring reviews of May releases by Charli XCX, Skrillex + ISOxo + Cristale + TeeZan...

What happens when you give experimental pop fans exactly what they wanted? Well, turns out they actually don’t want what we wished for… Namasenda’s Limbo is everything I thought I wanted: excellent ...

Drain Gang moves like a mystical force. They only appear when they want to be seen, and picking a favorite member is like choosing a favorite Pokémon. Bladee is a chameleon and the de-facto leader of ...

funeral’s new album, EXILER , did not surprise me, but I guess that’s okay. He’s never been a particularly boundary-pushing musician. He first came to my attention with the release of his 2024 album ...

Happy May! Here are some of our favorite new releases from April by tsubi club, 8485, Rustie, ADÉLA, Jackie Extreme, fakemink, and vimkitt + Lucy Loone.

There are a lot of strange things about Dorian Electra’s latest album. The tracklist is a diverse array of cover songs whose original versions span three continents and multiple centuries, and severa...

Slayyyter’s self-titled first mixtape has an honorable place in the hall of fame of pop albums so mind-blowingly good that I honestly think queer people would go to war for them. It sits right between...

In hindsight, it was naive of me to even hope that Jimmy Fallon might say the word “fuckers” on national television . Fcukers is a name that EDM fans started to see so surprisingly high up on rave and concert bills sometime around 2024 that they may have thought, “How is a band with like 5 songs pl

Happy spring! Here are some of our favorite new releases from March by Public Appeal, underscores, Hadren, and Skrillex + Young Miko. There’s a twist, though: one of them is a least favorite this time…

I have written Substack articles extolling the virtues of underscores . If I didn't like her music so much, I would probably talk far more shit, but unfortunately I can't merely be a hater. When your...

Hello! We’re a bit late this month because of a big announcement… Our first print issue features Danny Brown, Cortisa Star, and galen tipton, and it’s available for preorders now! Yay!!!!

Hyperpop, once a jarring new sound, has been steadily eroded by commodification ever since its inception, which arguably peaked with BRAT in 2024. Since then, the novelty of the genre has disapp...

gum.mp3 is somewhat of a renaissance man. From scoring a comedy show to teaching his own university course , the musician is a one man army with his finger firmly on the pulse of dance music. g...

Hey! Happy 2026 :-) Quick note before we get back into the music review zone: we normally send out our newsletter alongside Caller ID, but it’s headed out a bit later this month. Keep an eye on your...

It takes barely a minute into the opening song for Fraxiom to assert herself as “the motherfucking best,” and honestly, who can blame her? The past twelve months have been a victory lap for Fraxiom an...

025 is almost over! We say this every single year, but it was a big year for music, and it was also a big year for us. We announced our first print issue , started a newsletter , debuted our mascot...

In October, hyperpop duo Frost Children opened their show at The Regent in Los Angeles with the opener from their latest album, “Position Famous.” One feature of the track's lyrical composition is tha...

WOW! It’s December already. We’re entering year-end roundup season, and we’ll have our 2025 edition of Ringtone Wrapped ready later this month. For now, bundle up and stay warm with our favorite new...

The Chinese rap scene has been gaining a steady prominence in America for close to twenty years. Jin’s 2004 cut “ Learn Chinese ” might be the first mainstream example to bring a Chinese perspective...

Tickets for Oklou’s debut headlining show in Chicago were $25 when I bought them in February. The night before the concert in mid-October, they had been sold out for months and were on resale for upwa...

In an age where we seem to drown in fun horny pop albums (and I love it — give me more), Ashnikko’s latest album Smoochies still sticks out with its vulnerability and narrative about healing. The id...

Danny Brown has been to hell and back, something anybody familiar with his discography would know. His breakthrough 2011 mixtape XXX is soaked in a rockstar-style excess of substance abuse, and it’s...

IT’S NEW MUSIC TIME ONCE AGAIN! This month’s edition of Caller ID highlights our favorite (and least favorite) new releases by Danny Brown, underscores, lily, Intentions, Lil Mariko, ChiChi, Cecilia G...

Music died? Well shit, who killed it? Certainly not indie veteran galen tipton. Was she trying to? The jury (consisting of Anne-Claire Kröger and Theresa Sweetheart) was unable to reach a verdict. Sur...

Scrolling through the singles and EP releases of the pop divas of the 2000s, such as Mariah Carey and Brandy, you’ll find their releases in bundles, coupled with a handful of remixes. Some feature...

September was weirdly packed with historic collabs. Here are our favorite tracks from September, featuring new collabs by Yaeji, underscores, Aliyah’s Interlude, Holliday Howe, 8485, Mysie, SOXX, Nera...

Describing an artist's breakthrough as “exploding onto the scene” is music critic cliche 101, but for Iglooghost, it's hard to describe it in any other terms. His first era, consisting of three EPs th...

Do you remember the feeling you got when you heard Black Eyed Peas’ “I Got A Feeling” for the first time on the radio? I was 13 years old, just old enough to have experienced the incredible power this...

Summer’s almost over… Luckily, August was a massive month for last-minute song of the summer contenders. It was also a massive month for Ringtone — our little website is 5 years old now, and we’re of...

The impact of dance music culture, especially Black dance music culture, on the mainstream is hard to overstate, yet music writing usually tends to do the opposite, understating and neglecting the history as if genres like techno, house, and jungle just appeared at sold out raves for thousands. As

Have you ever wondered what it sounds like to be cosplaying a fairy, running barefoot across a meadow, and wearing a gossamer dress on your way to a daytime rave in the woods with all your internet fr...

Happy August! We hope everybody’s soaking up the summer sun. Here are our favorite releases from July, including new music by Frost Children, athing, Kim Petras, glaive, FKA Twigs, fakemink, LustSickP...

What do vegetables and hyperpop have in common? This is the question at the heart of the project vgtbl.pl, a quickly-rising Polish duo made up of Franek Warzywa and Młody Budda (Franek Vegetables and ...

Vylet Pony is an enigma to me. She’s¹ very online, of course, and you can learn almost everything about her music through a 600+ row spreadsheet that keeps track of her releases (and a Wiki that k...

A lot of music released this month invites questions such as: Is Ice Spice good again? Is leroy back against all odds? And, most importantly, “It sounds like iPod Touch, little crack in thе screen” ...

HEY! We’re breaking character to let you know that Ringtone has given birth to its very own unnamed baby newsletter, and you can sign up NOW! (Long overdue — this website is almost five years old .)

Here I am, once again, listening to the latest record of an artist I have never heard of before . My knowledge of FaltyDL consists entirely of the copy I read from the press release I received befo...

Here I am, once again, listening to the latest record of an artist I have never heard of before . My knowledge of FaltyDL consists entirely of the copy I read from the press release I received befo...