Tune-Yards

When Merrill Garbus released her debut album, Bird-Brains, under the sticky caps handle tUnE-yArDs in 2009, it was immediately clear that indie pop had a new visionary. Like David Byrne a quarter-century before her, Garbus gathered a world of sound—Afrobeat, Caribbean pop, New Wave, and No Wave alike—into songs that were concise despite how much imagination they contained and accessible despite their idiosyncrasies. Working with partner Nate Brenner, Garbus both expanded and tightened her sound, resulting in 2011’s compulsive whokill. Songs like “Bizness” and “Gangsta” became part of a generational soundtrack, their ecstatic rhythms and her unmistakable vocals feeling like the auditory equivalent of caffeine. Garbus also sang about radical politics in a way that made listeners want to enlist, to find solidarity within their own communities because they now had such a compelling soundtrack.

“Turn away from those who hate you/Turn to meet the ones that keep you warm,” Garbus sings over a plunging soul beat near the start of “Swarm,” from her powerful 2025 album Better Dreaming. “Turn away the absent future/Come away, and we’ll become the swarm.” The song drifts briefly into an instrumental fantasy, like an auditory hallucination of some utopia. Whether singing about the challenges of motherhood, neighborhood organizing, or simply the quest to have fun in an era that can feel like it’s breaking you, Garbus makes fight music for the future, her panoramic sense of rhythm and glorious approach to singing always pointing forward even as the topics feel as heavy as barbells. The world’s circumstances have not gotten easier since tUnE-yArDs began putting them to tape nearly 20 years ago; she, however, has only grown more adept at singing them down.