Music Thursday: TV on the Radio’s Dear Science,

Editor’s Note: Today we’re launching a new weekly music column by Assistant Editor Ryan Bradley and in collaboration with National Geographic Music. Nat Geo Music has some amazing artists and projects that we love and will share with you. We at ADVENTURE believe that one of the best parts about travel is discovery, and bringing your discoveries back home with you, and music travels a lot better than food. We also believe that there is no such thing as world music, only good music that is from all over the world.

Brooklyn’s Finest: TV on the Radio

TV on the Radio’s recently released third album, Dear Science, (comma included) is easily one of the best albums of the year and a pitch perfect record for troubling, chaotic times. Based out of Williamsburg, Brooklyn (aka Hipsville, U.S.A.), TV on the Radio are Tunde Adebimpe, Gerard Smith, Dave Sitek, Kyp Malone and Jaleel Bunton—artists, musicians, videographers—all creative types who are masters of sonic layering and triumphant vocal arrangements.

For Dear Science, their third studio recording, the group tapped another Brooklyn institution, Antibalas, an Afrobeat band whose horns manage to take TV on the Radio’s danceable anthems to untold heights. Probably the best example (or, at least, the most immediately awesome track) is the song “Crying” (its chorus: Cryyy-ya-ya-ya-ingg, cryyy-ya-ya-ya-ing), which is about death and culture devoid of meaning and various other social maladies. It’s also so funky and fun that you might forget what they’re singing about altogether. Which is fine. This is also a perfect reason why the album is worth listening to, dancing to, and listening to, again and again and again.