Nightwish is a Finnish symphonic metal band from Kitee. The band was formed in 1996 by lead songwriter and keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen, and former lead singer Tarja Turunen. The band soon picked up drummer Jukka Nevalainen, and then bassist Sami Vänskä after the release of their debut album, Angels Fall First (1997). In 2001, Vänskä was replaced by Marko Hietala, who also took over the male vocalist role previously filled by Holopainen or guest singers.

Antestor (Norwegian: [ˈɑ̀ntəstuːɽ]) is a Norwegian unblack metal band formed in 1990 in Jessheim. Credited for starting the northern European Christian black metal scene, Antestor is the only Christian band to have an album released by Cacophonous Records, which has also released records by bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Sigh, and Cradle of Filth. The band's only release on Cacophonous, The Return of the Black Death, proved influential for the Christian black metal movement, and has sold over 10,000 copies.

In the late 1990s they dubbed their musical style as "sorrow metal" rather than black metal because the black metal movement was publicly affiliated with Satanism in Norway. According to HM magazine, the progressive elements on the debut album, Martyrium, were possibly ahead of their time in the Norwegian extreme metal scene.

Baroness is an American heavy metal band from Savannah, Georgia, whose original members grew up together in Lexington, Virginia.

Baroness formed in mid-2003, founded by former members of the punk/metal band Johnny Welfare and the Paychecks. Singer John Dyer Baizley creates the artwork for all Baroness albums, and has done artwork for other bands. Much of their early material was written by John Dyer Baizley and Pete Adams at a music store in Savannah and then later in a small apartment. They recorded 14 hours of two guitars, and Baizley later repurposed this material for Baroness's earliest EP.

From 2004 to 2007, Baroness recorded and released three EPs, named First, Second and A Grey Sigh in a Flower Husk (aka Third), with the third one being a split album with Unpersons.

Modest Mouse is an American rock band formed in 1992 in Issaquah, Washington, and currently based in Portland, Oregon. The founding members are lead singer/guitarist Isaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green, and bassist Eric Judy. Strongly influenced by Pavement, Pixies, XTC, and Talking Heads, they rehearsed, rearranged, and recorded demos for almost two years before finally signing with small-town indie label K Records and releasing numerous singles.

Since their 1996 debut album, This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About, the band's lineup has mostly centered on Brock and Green, undergoing multiple changes. The band achieved mainstream success with their fourth album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004), and its singles "Float On" and "Ocean Breathes Salty". Judy performed on every Modest Mouse album until his departure in 2012. Guitarist Johnny Marr (formerly of the Smiths) joined the band in 2006, shortly following percussionist Joe Plummer (formerly of the Black Heart Procession) and multi-instrumentalist Tom Peloso, to work on the album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (2007). Guitarist Jim Fairchild joined the band in 2009. The band's sixth album, Strangers to Ourselves, was released on March 17, 2015. Their seventh album, The Golden Casket, released on June 25, 2021.

Boards of Canada are a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin, formed initially as a group in 1986 before becoming a duo in the 1990s. Signing first to Skam followed by Warp Records in the 1990s, the duo subsequently received recognition following the release of their debut album Music Has the Right to Children on Warp in 1998. They followed with the critically acclaimed albums Geogaddi (2002), The Campfire Headphase (2005) and Tomorrow's Harvest (2013), but have remained reclusive and continue to rarely appear live.

MewithoutYou, usually styled as mewithoutYou, was an American rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The band consisted of Aaron Weiss (vocals), Michael Weiss and Brandon Beaver (guitars), Greg Jehanian, and Rickie Mazzotta (drums). The band's music is generally dominated by spoken-word vocals and free-ranging drums, bass, and guitar.

Phantogram is an American music duo from Greenwich, New York, formed in 2007 and consisting of multi-instrumentalists and vocalists Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter.

The band define their music as electronic rock, dream pop, electronica and trip hop, and have described their sound as "street beat, psych pop". According to Carter, their music has "lots of rhythms, swirling guitars, spacey keyboards, echoes, airy vocals". Carter and Barthel were inspired by numerous artists including the Beatles, David Bowie, Cocteau Twins, J Dilla, the Flaming Lips, John Frusciante, Serge Gainsbourg, Madlib, Sonic Youth, Yes, Kevin Shields, and Prince.

They write and record in a remote barn in Upstate New York called Harmonie Lodge. The band has released four studio albums (Eyelid Movies in 2010, Voices in 2014, Three in 2016 and Ceremony in 2020), four EPs (Phantogram and Running From the Cops in 2009, Nightlife in 2011, Phantogram in 2013) and 10 singles.

Alcest is a French post-black metal band from Bagnols-sur-Cèze, founded and led by Neige (Stéphane Paut). It began in 2000 as a black metal solo project by Neige, soon a trio, but following the release of their first demo in 2001, band members Aegnor and Argoth left the band, leaving Neige as the sole member. In 2009 drummer Winterhalter from Les Discrets joined Alcest's line-up, after eight years with Neige as the sole full-time member. Since its creation, Alcest has released six studio albums and a number of EPs and split releases. Their fourth album, 2014's Shelter, marked a dramatic shift towards a distinctly shoegaze sound, however their subsequent album Kodama marked a return to their earlier blackgaze sound. The band are widely credited with pioneering the blackgaze/post-black metal genre, particularly through their EP Le Secret released in 2005.

Earth is an American experimental rock band based in Olympia, Washington, formed in 1989 and led by the guitarist Dylan Carlson. Earth's music is nearly all instrumental, and can be divided into two distinct stages. Their early work is characterized by distortion, droning, minimalism, and lengthy, repetitive song structures. Owing to their 1993 debut album Earth 2, Earth is recognized as a pioneer of drone metal. The band resurfaced in the early 2000s, with their later output reducing the distortion and incorporating elements of country, jazz rock, and folk.

Daniel Lopatin (born July 25, 1982), known by his recording alias Oneohtrix Point Never or OPN, is an American experimental electronic music producer, composer, singer and songwriter. His music has explored experimentation with tropes from various music genres and eras, sample-based song structures and highly detailed MIDI production.

He began releasing synth-based recordings in the mid-2000s and received initial acclaim for the 2009 compilation Rifts, as well as the influential vaporwave release Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1 (2010). He signed to British label Warp in 2013, and has released solo albums on the label since. He has also composed scores for films such as Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019); the former won him the Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. He has collaborated with artists such as the Weeknd, FKA Twigs, Rosalía, Anohni and Tim Hecker.

Austin Wintory is an American composer for film and video games. He is known for scoring the video games Flow and Journey, which made history as the only video game soundtrack to be nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.

Watter is an American experimental music ensemble from Louisville, Kentucky.

Watter member Zak Riles is a member of Grails, and Britt Walford formerly drummed in the band Slint. Their debut, This World, features appearances from Rachel Grimes of Rachel's, Todd Cook of The For Carnation and The Shipping News, and Tony Levin of King Crimson.

Keitaro Ujiie (Japanese: 氏家 慶太郎, Hepburn: Ujiie Keitarō, born February 23, 1997), also known as Snail's House or Ujico*, is a Japanese electronic musician. He currently resides in Saitama, Japan.

He started publishing music on SoundCloud in 2012 under the name Ujico* (which he stated was a childhood nickname given to him by a friend). In 2013, Ujiie created his own record label, Youth Composer Association, a Tokyo-based label specifically geared towards young musicians. In 2014, after listening to performances by Hiromi Uehara and various jazz fusion music, Ujiie was inspired to start playing the piano.

From that point, his music career began to grow and he created a separate Snail's House outfit for his "kawaii" music, which officially began on August 30, 2014, with the release of "Nyan Nyan Angel!". His first two EPs as Snail's House, Kirara and Kawaii Collective, were released in mid-2015, containing high-pitched vocal chops, vibrant synthesizer sounds, and happy-sounding melodies.

Welcome to the N.H.K. is a Japanese novel written by Tatsuhiko Takimoto. It was published by Kadokawa Shoten in Japan in January 2002, and in English by Tokyopop in October 2007. The story revolves around a 22-year-old hikikomori, an asocial recluse, who gets aid from a strange girl who seems to know a lot about him, despite never having met him before. Common themes throughout the story deal with depression, anxiety, isolation, existential dread, the hardships of life and how people must deal with them in their own way. The novel profusely analyzes the hikikomori phenomenon, which is relatively widespread in Japan.

Adventure Time is an American fantasy animated television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake (John DiMaggio)—a dog with the magical power to change size and shape at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with Princess Bubblegum (Hynden Walch), the Ice King (Tom Kenny), Marceline (Olivia Olson), BMO (Niki Yang), and others. The series is based on a 2007 short film that aired on Nicktoons. After the short became a viral hit on the Internet, Nickelodeon's executives passed on its option before Cartoon Network commissioned a full-length series from Fred Seibert and Ward, which was previewed on March 11, 2010. The same year, the series premiered on Cartoon Network on April 5, and ended its eight-year run on September 3, 2018.

The Worm Ouroboros is a heroic high fantasy novel by English writer E. R. Eddison, first published in 1922. The book describes the protracted war between the domineering King Gorice of Witchland and the Lords of Demonland in an imaginary world that appears mainly medieval and partly reminiscent of Norse sagas. The work is slightly related to Eddison's later Zimiamvian Trilogy, and collectively they are sometimes referred to as the Zimiamvian series.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an anthology of weird fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

Published on 8 May 2012, it contains 110 short stories, novellas and short novels. At 1,152 pages in the hardcover edition, it is probably the largest single volume of fantastic fiction ever published, according to Locus.

The editors' object in publishing The Weird was to provide, through its contents, a comprehensive definition of "the Weird", a type of fiction that their introduction describes as "as much a sensation"—one of terror and wonder—"as (...) a mode of writing", and as a type of fiction that entertains while also expressing readers' dissatisfaction with, and uncertainty about, reality. To that end, The Weird includes works that range from fantasy, science fiction and mainstream literature "with a slight twist of strange", but it also amounts, according to The Guardian, to "a history of the horror story".

99% Invisible is a radio show and podcast produced and created by Roman Mars that focuses on design. It began as a collaborative project between San Francisco public radio station KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. The show has been distributed by PRX for broadcasting on a number of radio stations and as a podcast on the Radiotopia network. On April 28, 2021, Roman Mars announced in an introduction of a re-released episode that 99% Invisible had been purchased by Sirius XM and marketed as part of its Stitcher Radio brand.

The name of the show was derived from a quote by Buckminster Fuller that, "Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable." The goal of the show is to expose the unseen and overlooked aspects of design, architecture, and activity in the world. Each episode generally focuses on a single topic or specific example of design, often including interviews with architects, experts, or people who have influenced or been influenced by a given urban, industrial, graphic or other design.

Reply All is an American podcast from Gimlet Media that ran from 2014 to 2022, featuring stories about how people shape the internet, and how the internet shapes people. It was created by P. J. Vogt and Alex Goldman, who were the show's original hosts; they had previously hosted the technology and culture podcast TLDR for WNYC. Emmanuel Dzotsi became a third cohost in 2020.

The podcast received critical acclaim, winning several awards. In 2021, Vogt and a producer left the show following backlash critical of the work environment. Both Goldman and Dzotsi left the show in 2022; the final episode was released on June 23.

Reply All was an American podcast from Gimlet Media, hosted by Alex Goldman and Emmanuel Dzotsi in its final year. Producer P. J. Vogt was Goldman’s original cohost. Before joining Gimlet, Vogt and Goldman hosted a technology and culture podcast called TLDR for WNYC. Reply All premiered November 24, 2014, the second podcast to be developed by Gimlet Media. The Atlantic included the episode "Shine on, You Crazy Goldman" on their list of "The 50 Best Podcast Episodes of 2015".

Headgum is an American podcasting network founded in 2015 by Marty Michael, Amir Blumenfeld, and Jake Hurwitz. The latter two – known collectively as comedy duo Jake and Amir – built upon the success of their podcast If I Were You to launch the network, with the show serving as its flagship program. Before founding Headgum, Michael sold advertising space and branded content for CollegeHumor. Headgum has studios in Los Angeles and New York and, as of March 2019, hosts 57 shows, 34 of which are ongoing. Headgum also features an active YouTube channel and presents Headgum Live!, a series of live shows featuring podcast hosts from the network.

Comedians and supernatural enthusiasts Betsy Sodaro and Marcy Jarreau discuss paranormal experiences with their comedian friends and celebrity guests. Past guests include Aubrey Plaza and Sasheer Zamata. The show debuted on September 29, 2017.