After rocketing to the top of the charts, Ariana Grande rolls out the retro video for her smash hit “Problem” featuring Iggy Azalea.

^^

Out June 10th.

Now out!

Nice Al Green grove.

Navihanke ~ Vem, Kaj Hočem

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Lucy Hale may be best known for her role on ABC Family’s wildly successful Pretty Little Liars, but the 24-year-old actress is hoping to make her mark on the world of country music with the release of her debut album, Road Between, set to drop June 3.

EW caught up with the singer to get the scoop on her new album at YouTube Space LA, where Hale spent the day cutting a multi-song session for her own YouTube channel and partaking in a live Q&A with What’s Trending Live host Shira Lazar.

“It’s been quite the ride,” Hale told EW of making the record. “I’ve been sitting on this album for a while. We started working on it over two years ago, so it’s a little surreal that the release is right around the corner, but I’m so proud of it — it’s probably the thing I’m most proud of.”

Hale, who did a bit of co-writing for her debut album, says she found the entire process to be “therapeutic” and also said she was surprised to find out how much she learned about herself in the process. The rest of the ll-track country album boasts songs penned by the likes of Ashley Gorley (Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley), recent Grammy winner Kacey Musgraves, and former Whiskeytown member Mike Daley. Despite the big names in the album credits, Hale said the most important thing to her was making sure she could connect on a personal level to every song that made the cut on Road Between.

“What I really wanted for this album was for it to be a timeline of major events that have happened in my life, whether I wrote the songs or not,” she said. “‘Nervous Girls’ is a good example of a song I personally didn’t write but I wish I had. I connected to it so much when I heard it, because it touched on subjects that I had personally experienced and that I felt really strongly about.”

For those really looking to get inside the starlet’s head, Hale said fans should look no further than the album’s title track, which she says is the most personal song of the bunch.”‘Road Between’ just kind of explains where I’m at in life right now. I was going through some stuff at the time that song was written, and it really captures how I felt in that moment and how I still kind of feel– it’s kind of like my anthem.”

As for what fans can expect from her upcoming debut album, Hale said it’s a combination of “really catchy tunes” and “personal lyrics.” “I think whether you relate to one song or the whole album, there’s literally something for everyone here, whether you like country music or not.”

Now out! Always loved her voice check her out.

New Jack White!

Soul singer Erin Barra's wonderful new album, Undefined, is out now and garnering critical praise.


"Dear John" live in studio


Official site

Liam Bailey - "On My Mind" Awesome track

http://bossip.com/973772/...ind-audio/

Marsha Ambrosius Releases Video for "Run"

June 2014


Marsha Ambrosius has delivered a heartfelt video for her new single, "Run." The song appears on her long-awaited album, Friends & Lovers.

In the cinematic clip, the singer gets emotional as mini-vignettes play showing people overcoming everyday struggles. "Run" is available via digital retailers now. Her sophomore album is due later this year.

EP now available on iTunes. "Try," which was co-written by R&B legend Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds. Single Try is free on iTunes.

http://www.shantytownmusi...eely%20Jam

New to me--2009 released.

Marsha Ambrosius has revealed the cover for her sophomore album Friends & Lovers, due out July 15.

[Edited 6/10/14 20:52pm]

^^Bout' time.

Sister Act First Aid Kit Are Resplendently Winsome on 14-Karat 'Stay Gold'

"I won't take the easy road," cry Johanna and Klara Söderberg of First Aid Kit in the chorus of "Silver Lining," their third album Stay Gold's opening track. Lord knows they could've: These Stockholm sisters are young and beautiful, and no doubt have access to their nation's pop Svengalis who could reshape them into conventional stars. Their last album, 2012's The Lion's Roar, was a chart-topper back home. But Johanna and Klara don't need those people. They write their own songs; their dad Benkt Söderberg, veteran of '80s rock band Lolita Pop, plays bass, and they've got Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes, their first serious musical crush, producing them.

The road they take is a singular one that unites blatantly traditional country, soft indie rock, '60s singer-songwriters, Swedish folk, and now, on Stay Gold, ornately arranged baroque pop. "Silver Lining" announces the difference: No longer confining themselves to what three people can play onstage, First Aid Kit now flaunt orchestrations as grand as their newly majestic melodies, a combination that conjures wide-open Midwestern skies, Southern swamps, West Coast palm trees, Simon & Garfunkle's New York, and even Swedish fjords. For as hard as they crush on Americana, a romance made manifest in The Lion's Roar's attention-grabbing "Emmylou," where they offer to be their suitors' Emmylou Harris and June Carter if those guys will be their Graham Parsons and Johnny Cash, they've got that particularly Scandinavian thirst for sunlight that now, more than ever, makes their music yearn and radiate.

Still in their early '20s, Johanna and Klara wail through identifiably fresh pipes, but their lyrics often feel old and world-weary. "My life is a setting sun," they proclaim in "Fleeting One." Even in "White Picket Fence," where they contemplate love and commitment, they anticipate how the story's going to end. But settling down remains a fantasy: Stay Gold instead fixates on the flux of touring. At least half the album references "the road"—"Silver Lining," the even lusher title track, the travel-worn "Cedar Lane," their fanciful "Waitress Song," and the flute-festooned "The Bell," which feels as though it could waltz right into ABBA's "Fernando."

Ultimately, it's their sisterly harmonies — not their lyrical content — that provide the salve of this First Aid Kit. For as lonely and as longing as their words and tunes get, Johanna and Klara still have each other: Even though Klara, the guitarist and youngest one, typically takes the lead, Johanna almost always joins her after a phrase or two, and that near-constant vocal bond makes even their saddest songs — quite often their best — a shared celebration. So when they lament the damage done by their rolling stone ways in the album's concluding "A Long Time Ago," the Söderbergs' shining synergistic voices nevertheless imply mutual steadfastness. May that gold never tarnish.

Watch Broken Twin's Haunting Cover of 'You Can't Wrap Your Arms Around A Memory'

Danish singer's debut album 'May' out now on Anti Records

WRITTEN BY
Garrett Kamps

Broken Twin is the nom de plume of Danish singer-songwriter Majke Voss Romme, whose stunning debut album, May, was released April 29 on Anti. Dark and stormy, the record is suffused in Romme's melancholy, piano-driven dirges. She applies the same formula to her cover of Johnny Thunder's "You Can't Wrap Your Arms...A Memory," transforming the power pop track into a haunting ballad. Says Romme, "We shot this while rehearsing for our first show ever as a band. It's always nerve wrecking playing live with new people for the first time. I like those moments. It makes everyone so tense and aware. It's vulnerable. No one wants to be the one fucking up." Watch Romme perform the song in the video above and read our Best New Artist profile of the singer while you're at it.

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LP Focuses on LP With First Album in a Decade

By Gary Graff | June 03, 2014 5:30 PM EDT

Amanda Demme/Warner Brothers

The singer, a hired gun for Rihanna, Christina Aguilera among others, releases "Forever for Now" on Warner Bros.

Despite numerous label deals before this, LP says she's not gun shy at all about "Forever For Now," her full-length debut for Warner Bros.

The New York-born singer (full name Laura Pergolizzi) released previous albums a decade and more ago for Koch and Lightswitch Records, while deals with Island Def Jam and RedOne's 2101 imprint never quite panned out. In the meantime LP staked her reputation as a songwriter for Rihanna ("Cheers (Drink To That)"), Christina Aguilera ("Beautiful People") and others. But with 2012's "Into the Wild (Live at EastWest Studios)" EP and now "Forever For Now," which comes out this week, she's ready to stake her own claim as an artist.

"I honestly didn't care this time. I wasn't apprehensive," LP tells Billboard. "If there's one thing I've learned with all aspects of my career, whether it's with a manager or an agent or a label or whoever, they've got to think you're the shit. They've got to really believe in it. I find that good, fruitful things come from that. And I felt like that was Warner Bros. I felt like they really got it -- not just got me musically but got me visually and my vibe and everything."

The support didn't take long to kick in, either, LP says. "The day I signed my deal was at (label chief and 'Forever For Now' producer) Rob Cavallo's house," she recalls. "He was having a big party with the whole label at his house -- 150, 200 people there. So the whole label saw me that night and I got a standing ovation and got a really good vibe from that. I could tell it wasn't going to just be great for a little bit and then, 'Is anyone paying attention?'"

After "Into the Wild's" title track was picked up for a Citibank ad campaign, LP says "Forever For Now" took a bit longer to make than she expected and changed course during that time.

"Yeah, I thought the record would be quicker but the EP got us rolling and then touring, so it kind of pushed things back, in a good way," she says. "It started out a bit more of an acoustic thing, but as I got into making the album I just started adding more and more things to the (songs), me and Rob Cavallo together. It just kind of became a bigger sounding record. It just grew as I was doing it, but I didn't have any preconceived notion for it. I just wanted it to sound big and good."

Irma Pany, better known as Irma, is a Cameroonian singer-songwriter living in France. https://www.facebook.com/Irmasongs

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Cover Song

Singer-songwriter Kate Earl Is making an EP of Soul Music and needs your help. I normally don't post these type of things, but I think she is worth it. You can Donate $7 for the MP3/Flac download. I went for the Vinyl myself which is $15. More info: http://www.pledgemusic.co...arlransom/

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[Edited 6/13/14 12:28pm]

Moccasin Creek feat. Bruce Kulick & Twan D ~ Friends Of All Kinds

Soaring to the top of the charts in Mexico and beyond, award-winning composer, singer and producer Mario Domm created the leading Latin pop-rock band Camila in 2005 with guitarist Pablo Hurtado. Their two metric hit albums, Todo Cambió and Diamond certified Dejarte de amar, turned the group into one of the most successful Latin American bands of all time selling more than two million copies. Songs such as “Abrázame,” “Mientes,” and “Alejate de mi,” among others, have made them big winners in the industry. The album’s popularity brought them to win three Latin Grammy Awards and three Latin Billboard Awards coining them as one of the most awarded groups from Latin America for the last decade.

Their third studio album ELYPSE marks a new chapter of success for Camila with the new hit single, “Decidiste dejarme.”

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Tom Meighan and Sergio Pizzorno of Kasabian. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

The first time I meet Sergio Pizzorno, the thin-as-a-rake, bearded-and-black-leathered guitarist from Kasabian, I tell him how terrible his band is. My memory of the occasion is hazy, but the following morning I wake up remembering one part of what was mostly a monologue.

Pizzorno: "No, man, it's good – I appreciate you being straight with us. I've never understood why the broadsheet press don't seem to like us."

Me: "In that case [feeling triumphant], I will tell you!"

Cue a long, finger-jabbing rant, in which I hold the band solely responsible for every failure of contemporary rock'n'roll. It's entirely plausible that the rumours already swirling that the band will headline this year's Glastonbury were also addressed but summarily scoffed at. So it is a credit to Pizzorno's good-naturedness that, six months later, I am sitting in the kitchen of his well-appointed house on the fringes of Leicester, responding to the question of how many sugars I'd like in my tea.

It's very much the sort of kitchen you'd expect the 33-year-old Pizzorno to have – flat-screen telly showing an old Doors documentary, Easter eggs (or rather Thorntons chocolate bunnies) for his two young children by the Aga – as is the large barn outside that he has had converted into a Boy's Own studio, which is where he largely wrote and made the band's new album.

Our first encounter took place after an Africa Express gig in Marseilles in October last year, at which Pizzorno had joined a cast including that enterprise's guiding light, Damon Albarn, ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate, Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, drummer Tony Allen and more. Typically of these chaotic shows, which encourage collaboration between African and western artists, it lasted several hours, and I'd drunk a lot of pastis. It's in this scenario and in Albarn's dressing room afterwards that I launched into a diatribe about how the sort of experimentation on show earlier – including a version of the Chemical Brothers' Galvanize on which Pizzorno featured alongside oud player Mehdi Haddab – felt anathema to so much rock music these days.

Even when I'd told him how boorish his band are, Pizzorno was at gentle pains to defend Kasabian's reputation, principally the way in which they were cast as Oasis knock-offs when they first emerged a decade ago. It wasn't just the lairy sound of singles such as Club Foot (although a more alert critic might have noticed its video was dedicated to Czech student Jan Palach, who killed himself by self-immolation in protest at the end of the Prague Spring) or the corresponding behaviour of the band's singer Tom Meighan (pithily, from Wikipedia: "He became well known for his insults, such as calling Julian Casablancas 'a posh fucking skier', Pete Doherty 'a fucking tramp' and Justin Timberlake 'a midget with whiskers'"). It was that they went the whole hog and became friends with the Gallaghers, gallivanting across London together just at the point at which critics' knives were drawn for Oasis.

Didn't this, I ask Pizzorno once we're seated in his studio, contribute to what I think of as Kasabian's image problem? "Totally. But we were 23. What could be more exciting than meeting your heroes – and them being sound – and staying up for days on end? You've got to do it!"

Twenty years on, the view that Britpop was a cultural abomination isn't one that Pizzorno shares, not least because "being 14 was the perfect age for it. And I love the honesty of that time, how bands would just say: 'We don't give a fuck, mate.' Everyone's worried about what people will say on Twitter now, everyone edits themselves.

"At school there was a divide," he continues. "There were the grunge kids and there were the rave kids, then later on everyone turned into Liam and Noel. It was that big."

Pizzorno counted himself in the rave camp, even if his experience thereof was largely restricted to venturing to Five HQ records in Leicester ("the most frightening place on earth") to filch fliers to plaster on his bedroom wall. Other key influences? "In/Flux by DJ Shadow. My mate who grew weed in his bedroom played it to me and nothing bigger than that has ever happened to me musically."

It also mattered that he was a keen footballer, more in thrall in his telling of it to George Best and Roberto Rivelino than the long-ball game, because something like that "helped when you were at school in Leicestershire with a funny name" (the product of his Genoan ancestry). In fact, if Kasabian had only ever made one record, Pizzorno would exist as a footnote on a Wiki page as the scorer of "one of the great Soccer Aid goals!", after memorably lobbing David Seaman in a charity match at Wembley in 2012.

By contrast, Meighan was "part of the graffiti crowd", a Cypress Hill fan who rode a BMX, when the pair first met as young teenagers at Countesthorpe community college. In his bandmate's recollection, he was "always the life and soul. He'd walk into the room and: bang! He was a nightmare, he'd drive the teachers insane, but he's always been very charming so he'd always get away with it."

Little has changed. Back in the kitchen, Meighan appears, armed with a bottle of prosecco which he insists we crack open. He bounces up and down to demonstrate the pain in his legs after a video shoot for new single Eez-eh the day before; chats about Leicester City's barnstorming run in the Championship; and insists repeatedly that he won't bite. It's not clear to me whether Pizzorno has mentioned our initial conversation in Marseilles – and I'm not sure Meighan would remember if he had, so much is he the hyperactive yin to his partner's ruminative and softly spoken yang; but nonetheless the singer prods me with the same question twice: "Are you for us or against us?"

The plan is that the pair will play me some of the new album, which they've titled 48:13, its running time, because, as Pizzorno says, sounding perfectly Spinal Tap: "It's a journey, not a collection of singles." But first it's important to understand the context of that claim, as well as the reasoning behind one of my sticking points with the band. Part of the appeal of Britpop for fans at the time was that it felt like the counterculture was taking over – but that illusion only lasted a very short time. That is hardly the fault of Kasabian, but could any band now gain that same traction on the public consciousness?

"Absolutely not," Pizzorno replies, "but I think it was a lot easier back then." In a world of limited media, he points out, when there were still only four readily accessible TV channels in the UK and a handful of music magazines, "bands could have a massive impact – but it's so splintered now. People don't give a fuck, they've got YouTube, and what do you care about anything when you've got access to anything you want at any time?

"You might hate a record you'd bought, but you'd go: 'This has cost me a fucking tenner – I've got to listen to it again,'" he continues. "And then it's: 'Actually, this is not as bad as I thought,' and then all of a sudden you go: 'This is the best album ever made!'"

Isn't it also, though, that all the battles that rock'n'roll fought have been won? The sex, drugs and rock'n'roll stuff used to stand for something, but now it's just a bit … boring, surely? "It's true we've not had anything to fight against, it's true," the guitarist says. "I agree, but I don't think it has to be as complicated as that. It can just be: 'I love this tune.'"

So there it is: an admission of an element of rock's lost potency, but, standing in Pizzorno's kitchen, it feels a hollow outcome to whatever argument it was we had those six months earlier. In this moment – cowardice? politeness? finally paying to attention to their music? – I seem to be agreeing with Meighan's judgment that 48:13 is "contemporary rock'n'roll of absolutely the highest calibre!" It's punchily anthemic but also indebted to the dynamics of hip-hop and dance music, and there are points at which it goes off on weird, experimental tangents. It probably helps that as the record comes blasting from the speakers, the singer is standing two feet in front of me and singing along to every word of Bumblebee, which seems guaranteed to be the band's opener at Glastonbury: "When we're together, I'm in ecstasy!"

Reading on mobile? Click ... the video
I ask Meighan about the point at which he is brought into the creative process and he replies: "It's pretty simple, Sergio is the Pete Townshend of the band – we're very much like the Who – and when we break up off tour, we go off to do our thing, and after a while I'll get a call to say: 'Thomas, I've got some demos,' and it's like, 'Yes! Jesus! Fuck! Someone's answered my prayers.' He gives me them to learn and I do my part and we go from there."

It's evident that the two could hardly be closer – frequently Meighan will pull the handbrake on his verbal flow to seek approbation from his bandmate ("the great thing about Kasabian was we never tried to be cool. That was the whole point of it. Wasn't that the whole point, Serge?") – but the famous strain of touring the US was felt the last time the band were on the road, prompting Pizzorno to write SPS, the final song on the new record, a thinly veiled message of support for his childhood friend.

"I'd gone though a bit of a bad stage, and I'd been a selfish bastard," Meighan says in a break between songs, "and after being together so many years, there's all that shit that was never supposed to happen. You want the truth? I'll tell you the truth. But when I saw that song, my missus said: 'Oh, you idiot, it's obvious, he loves you.'"

Pizzorno looks up with a quizzical grin: "This is news to me."

So far, so rock'n'roll, but complicating matters was the fact that Pizzorno had had his first child and Meighan had "freaked out. I was: 'How dare you? Don't grow up! Not at this stage, you bastard … Here we go … Now I should have kids.'" But now Meighan has a young daughter of his own, he says he feels more settled, even if she is "even more of a handful than me", which sounds terrifying.

Contrary to the Cyril Connolly dictum that the enemy of art is the pram in the hall, Pizzorno insists he enjoys the discipline of working from home. "It's so easy to float into that drink and drugs world where you think you don't have any responsibilities and you don't give a shit. That stuff, it's incredible, but there's always a fine line. There are the dark places, when you find yourself thinking: 'What are you doing? This is horrible.' They became too much, too often. So now I'm a steady roller. It's learning to pick your battles. I've got the intake and the bedtimes down to a fine art. Mate, I'm so pro!"

Staying rooted close to Leicester has surely also helped ensure the band's longevity, the early lost weekend in London aside: "So many people I met back then, it seemed like they were hanging around with each other just so they could keep famous." Pizzorno waxes lyrical about the local countryside and the "magnificent" people. And perhaps my favourite moment on 48:13 comes when the band insert a reference to Leicester into the track Treat, just at the point of a monumental drop, which, as Pizzorno says, "sounds so wrong that it has to be right".

Pizzorno hopes the album summons "the spirit of a Midlands rave played by a rock'n'roll group from 1968" – bands such as Silver Apples, whom he learned about from Oasis. That influence, you feel, is just as important as the swagger they took from the Gallaghers, as well as an appreciation that a band could offer 20,000 people standing in a field as much of a euphoric communal experience as any dance outfit.

"I suppose with this record, I'm trying to create a new language," he says wistfully. "Combining electronic music and hip-hop and late-60s rock and roll, this feels like the first step into something … it doesn't really sound like anyone else, you know?"

I just say I can't wait to see Kasabian at Glastonbury and leave it at that.

Reading on mobile? Click ... the video
Except I don't – because two weeks later I find myself on the fringes of the moshpit of the Bataclan in Paris as Kasabian launch into Eez-eh, less drunk than the last time I was in France, but in one sense equally intoxicated. It's fun, all right.

Back in Leicester, we'd finished up in Serge's local. There they'd said they'd be making their live comeback with this small club show, and why didn't I come and join the circus? "It shouldn't be about being cool, it should be about embracing people," they said. "Don't be frightened of being direct and saying: 'We're all here together, it's going to be the best night of your life.' That's seen as being cheesy or embarrassing, but it's actually not, it's the most amazing thing having someone on stage say that to you because you go: 'Yeah, that's exactly why I'm here.'"

Eez-eh is brilliantly stupid (key line: "Everyone's on bugle, now we're being watched by Google!") and as I manoeuvre to the fringes of the moshpit, I think back to the question that Meighan put to me in the kitchen in Leicester: am I for Kasabian? Let's put it this way: right now, I'd be a churl to be against them.

Kasabian on their first Glastonbury

"We first played Glastonbury in 2004 when we were first on the Other Stage on the Friday. We did a gig at Hammersmith Apollo the night before, playing before Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and we had a minibus waiting to take us down. We all jumped in and everyone was going: 'We can't do any gear, can we?', and everyone was saying, 'No, we'll save it, we'll save it,' and then suddenly, an hour in, it's like, 'Oh, go on then', bang, suitcase open, and everyone is filling their boots and before you know it you're watching Trisha at 10.30am, going: 'Fucking hell, I'm going to Glastonbury in a minute.'

"Because you're first on, you think no one's going to be there, so it's like: 'Well, what would Keef [Richards] do?' 'Yeah, carry on!' And then you get there, and you open the curtain and it's … full. That was the first indication we'd really had that we were connecting with people, so that will always remain one of my favourite gigs of all time.

"Were we nervous? I was just watching the clock, going: 'Come on, just fucking finish.' I was absolutely dying!"

• 48:13 is released on 9 June; Kasabian play Victoria Park in Leicester on 21 June and headline Glastonbury on 29 June.

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Lucky Peterson is an American musician who plays contemporary blues, fusing soul, R&B, gospel and rock and roll. He plays guitar and keyboards. As a teen, Peterson studied at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, where he played the French horn with the school symphony. Soon, he was playing backup guitar and keyboards for Etta James, Bobby "Blue" Bland, and Little Milton.

The UK soul singer returns with her new distinctly atmospheric track, " Tough Love".


jessieware.com

The Preatures are an Australian band from Sydney, New South Wales. The five-piece was formed in 2010 and features Isabella Manfredi on vocals/keyboards, Gideon Bensen (guitar/vocals), Jack Moffitt (guitar), Thomas Champion (bass) and Luke Davison (drums). In 2013, the band won the Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition with their song "Is This How You Feel?".

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Acoustic Version

Marsha Ambrosius Talks Visual Album, 'Detox,' & Kanye West.

Here is the self-directed video for My Type, the energetic new single from Los Angeles pop band Saint Motel.



saintmotel.com

Finding Her Future Looking to the Past

Lana Del Rey Still Stirs Things Up With ‘Ultraviolence’

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LOS ANGELES — In October, before starting an international theater tour, the songwriter Lana Del Rey consulted a clairvoyant. She was instructed to write down four questions in advance and sleep on them. The first question on the list, Ms. Del Rey said in an interview in May at her house here, was “Am I meant for this world?”

It’s probably not the kind of question most multimillion-selling pop singers would ask themselves with their careers clearly ascendant. This year, Ms. Del Rey was called on to sing a spooky remake of “Once Upon a Dream” for the Disney film “Maleficent,” and she sang at Versailles for the pre-wedding party of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

But doubt, regrets, obsessive longing and self-destructive impulses are often at the core of Ms. Del Rey’s songs and videos. “I wait for you babe, that’s all I do/You don’t come through babe, you never do,” she sings in “Pretty When You Cry” on her new album “Ultraviolence” (Polydor/Interscope), due for release Tuesday.

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“I have strong relationships with icons,” Lana Del Rey, says. Credit Kurt Iswarienko for The New York Times

Since her emergence on a major label with the single “Video Games” in 2011 and the album “Born to Die” in 2012, Ms. Del Rey has drawn passionately opposed responses. Her songs and video clips demurely step into cultural minefields, exploring eroticism, mortality, power, submission, glamour, faith, pop-culture iconography and the meaning(s) of the American dream. She has faced, in reviews and online discussions, shifting accusations of inauthenticity, amateurishness, anti-feminism and commercial calculation (although her only Top 10 single in the United States was unplanned: a dance remix by Cedric Gervais of her wistful ballad “Summertime Sadness”). But she has also, largely through YouTube, gathered an adoring worldwide audience that takes her every lyric to heart.

“Ultraviolence” will doubtless stir up more disputes. But one thing the album should immediately eliminate is the notion that Ms. Del Rey is only chasing hits. The album reaches deeper into her slow-motion sense of time, her blend of retro sophistication and seemingly guileless candor. It also moves gracefully between heartache and sly humor, sometimes within the same song.

The music on “Ultraviolence” sets her further outside whatever passes for current pop mainstream. While radio playlists are full of futuristic electronic dance beats and Auto-Tuned testimonials to self-esteem, Ms. Del Rey, 28, has taken a contrary path, melodic and melancholy. Much of her music has been lush and downtempo, invoking vintage movie scores and echoes of the 1950s and 1960s; it opens quiet spaces. Her voice sounds human and unguarded, offering sweetness and ache even when she sings four-letter words.

The tracks on “Born to Die” drew on hip-hop, with grunted samples and hefty beats, but now, she said, “I’m not crazy about some of that production.” The hip-hop influence was already receding on “Paradise,” the EP she released in 2012. And “Ultraviolence” is more languorous than ever. Its first single, “West Coast,” actually downshifts to a slower tempo for its chorus, where standard radio formula calls for a big buildup.

In a throwback to a less-computerized era, many of the tracks on “Ultraviolence” were built around Ms. Del Rey and a seven-piece band recording together and responding to one another. The songs often float in a psychedelic haze that she described as “narco-swing.” Dan Auerbach, the Black Keys’ guitarist, produced and performed on the album, and said, “She was watching us and swaying while we were playing.”

Mr. Auerbach was drawn to her songs because, he said, “They felt old and new at the same time.” Ms. Del Rey freely cites inspirations including Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Cat Power, Nirvana and Eminem, but none of them emerged in this century. “Think of what’s going on now,” she said. “Where am I going to get my inspiration? I couldn’t think of a thing today that I would really genuinely want to be a part of.”

In conversation, Ms. Del Rey isn’t the low-voiced chanteuse of songs like “Video Games” or “Blue Jeans”; her voice has a girlish, soprano lilt, punctuated with giggles. Wearing a blue mini-dress and clear sandals that revealed toenails painted a pearly peach, she sat on her couch here, sipping coffee and smoking through a pack of cigarettes, under a painting of cherubic angels. She showed off a recent tattoo on her right arm: “Whitman Nabokov,” two authors she has quoted in songs. She had just returned to Los Angeles to finish her North American tour, with a show at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall.

After living in London and touring the world, Ms. Del Rey bought her house here, an elegant English-style residence in need of repair, seven months ago. The walls are newly painted in the blues and greens that were also the palette of “Video Games,” the homemade video clip — she edited it on her laptop — that catapulted her career and has now been viewed more than 119 million times on her two YouTube sites alone. The paintings in her living room are of icons — the Virgin Mary, Elizabeth Taylor — and a book on the coffee table had Marilyn Monroe on the cover.

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Last month she performed at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles. Credit Oliver Walker/Goldenvoice

“I have strong relationships with icons,” she says. “They’re probably my most meaningful relationships. They feel personal to me, but maybe that’s what being an icon is. Maybe everyone feels like they have that special relationship that’s different from everybody else, like you love them and you think you understand them more than anyone else, or you get them for who they really are.”

It’s not a position she aspires to for herself. “I wouldn’t really know how to shape myself as an icon,” she said earnestly.

Many of the accusations that were leveled at her major-label debut were inaccurate. She wasn’t a pretty face serving someone else’s concept, or a dilettante. As Lizzy Grant — born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant — she had worked at being a songwriter since her teens, and playing in small clubs on the Lower East Side and in Williamsburg. She grew up in Lake Placid, N.Y., and came to New York City with, she said, “a Dylan-esque dream of a community of writers,” but never found it.

In 2007, she got her first recording contract when she was a senior at Fordham, studying metaphysics. She recorded a debut EP in 2008, and briefly released an album in 2010 — “Lizzy Grant a.k.a. Lana Del Ray” — before it was withdrawn while she renamed herself Lana Del Rey. The songs on that album were already exploring the tarnished innocence and dangerous compulsions that she would return to on “Born To Die.” The production would change with her collaborators, but her perspective did not.

As many songwriters do, she works with more trained musicians who supply foundations for her melodies and lyrics. Sometimes they offer chord progressions while she improvises; sometimes she brings finished words and tunes for them to harmonize. “She’s very clear about what she wants and doesn’t want,” said Rick Nowels, who wrote “Young and Beautiful” and “West Coast” with her, and who has collaborated with Madonna and Dido. “She is the captain of her own ship.”

Ms. Del Rey describes her songwriting simply. “I want one of two things,” she said. “I either want to tell it exactly like the way it was, or I want to envision the future the way I hope it will become. I’m either documenting something or I’m dreaming.”

On “Ultraviolence,” that means songs like “Cruel World,” in which she breaks away from a long failed relationship — “Shared my body and my mind with you/That’s all over now” — and “Sad Girl,” a bluesy reflection on “being a mistress on the side”; she also sings “The Other Woman,” a song recorded by Nina Simone.

Already braced for disapproval, she said: “If you really do want to analyze me, if that’s maybe something you’re interested in, let me tell you my story and you can look at that.”

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Being greeted by fans at the airport. Credit Vladimir Labissiere/Splash News, via Corbis

The recording of “Pretty When You Cry” is built around the original writing session: chords from her band’s guitarist, Blake Stranathan, a fluctuating tempo and words she was making up on the spot. “I’m stronger than all my men,” she sings, “except for you.” A more conventional approach would be to redo its shaky, scratchy lead vocal with something prettier. “I didn’t even think to go back and fix it,” she said, “because if you know the story behind it, then you can tell why it was sung that way.”

The angry responses to “Born to Die” left scars. “Carl Jung said that inevitably what other people think of you becomes a small facet of your psyche, whether you want it to or not,” she said. Her new album includes a retort: “Money, Power, Glory,” which claims, with deep sarcasm, that those are what she’s after.

“I learned that whatever I did elicited an opposite response, so I’m sure ‘Money, Power, Glory’ will actually resonate with people as being what I really do want,” she said with a shrug. “I already know what’s coming, so it’s O.K. to explore irony and bitterness.”

A recurring criticism was that her songs about being swept away by love were anti-feminist in their passivity; she contends that she was writing about private, immediate feelings, not setting out doctrine. “For me, a true feminist is someone who is a woman who does exactly what she wants,” she said. “If my choice is to, I don’t know, be with a lot of men, or if I enjoy a really physical relationship, I don’t think that’s necessarily being anti-feminist. For me the argument of feminism never really should have come into the picture. Because I don’t know too much about the history of feminism, and so I’m not really a relevant person to bring into the conversation. Everything I was writing was so autobiographical, it could really only be a personal analysis.”

She has also been denounced for video clips that culminate in her death: by drowning, by falling, by choking. The video for “Born To Die” ends with her in a boyfriend’s arms, inert and covered in blood. She agrees that her videos have often been “exploring ways to die,” she said, adding: “I love the idea that it’ll all be over. It’s just a relief, really. I’m scared to die, but I want to die.” The title song of “Ultraviolence” ventures into precarious territory. In an arrangement that melds Baroque dirge and wah-wah guitar, the singer describes herself as “filled with poison but blessed with beauty and rage,” and goes on to quote a fraught 1962 song from the Crystals, “He Hit Me (And It Felt... Kiss).”

The lyrics also mention a “cult leader,” and Ms. Del Rey said the song looked back to a time soon after she moved to New York City, when she considered following a guru who “believed in breaking you down to build you back up again.” “It sounds kind of weird,” she added, “but that is what it’s about, and having romantic feelings entwined with the idea of being led and letting go and surrendering. That’s always a concept to me, like I’m wavering between independence and falling into lifestyles and being led.”

There’s an underlying pattern to the songs throughout “Ultraviolence”; Ms. Del Rey’s voice appears alone and often fragile in the verses, then is swarmed by instruments and multiple backup vocals. “Each tune fully represents the ebbs and flows, the periods of normality mixed with this uncontrolled chaos that comes in through circumstances in my life,” she said. “It’s your story. If you’re the one writing it, you want to tell your story right.”

The next night Ms. Del Rey was at the Shrine’s Expo Hall before a packed, standing audience. There were high-pitched screams when she strolled onstage, and from the front to the back of the hangarlike hall, voices were raised to sing along. It wasn’t, like some concerts, a social occasion; this audience was devotional, sharing every word, sometimes close to drowning her out. Onstage, Ms. Del Rey just stood there and sang, swaying occasionally; when she did her one planned bit of choreography, a single hip flip in “Body Electric,” the whole room roared.

“The energy is so much higher in the pit than it is onstage,” she noted afterward. She strolled twice down into the photo pit, trailed by a video camera, as fans reached for her with offerings and hugs; one fervent embrace looked like a half-nelson. “I’ve lost a lot of hair on this tour,” she said later, backstage. “The audience has been an unexpected well of comfort that I’ve dipped into recently. It was never something I even thought to go to for strength or affirmation.”

But the adoration hasn’t quite broken through the solitude of her songs. “Yes, I’m in a different place today than I was four years ago,” she said. “But I’m some ways I’m still in the exact same place. I’m still on the periphery.”

Her new album sold out in my area, so I had to order it through Amazon. She's definitely one of a kind.