Nazgul Toktakunova (Назгуль Токтакунова) is a Kyrgyz pop singer. Some of her music—she sings in both Kyrgyz and Russian—is influenced by rap and hip-hop stylings, though most of her music is more generally pop-y. Toktakunova was born in 1987 in Bishkek. She always wanted to become a singer—and in 2015 she said she thought that […]

Murakami (Мураками) is a Russian alternative rock band named after the iconic Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. Since their first hit single in 2010, the band has achieved widespread popularity in Russia and the former Soviet Republics, frequently making their way onto Hit Parade and other music charts. Murakami originally formed in the fall of 2004 […]

Angel NeBes (Ангел НеБес) is one of the most popular Russian rock bands that has come out of Saint Petersburg. The band is known for their combination of psychedelic, philosophical, and experimental elements in their music. The group was founded in the city of Novomoskosvsk, in the Tula region, in 2006. Within the first two years […]

Slot (Слот) is a wildly popular Russian metal band. The band hails from Moscow, and was originally formed by male vocalist and main songwriter Igor Lobanov (Игорь Лобанов, nickname Cache) and Sergei Bogolyubskiy (Сергей Боголюбский, nickname ID) in 2002. Vocalist Teona Dolnikova (Теона Долникова) joined the band shortly thereafter, and she sang on the group’s […]

Pyotr Nalich (Пётр Андреевич Налич) is a Russian singer-songwriter who sings in Russian, English, Italian, French and Babury (Бабури), an invented language. Nalich’s songs are often funny, at times comparable to children’s songs. All of Nalitch’s songs are available for free or “pay what you want” download on his website and, as he declared in an […]

Pelageya (the stage name of Pelageya Khanova, Пелагея Сергеевна Ханова) is a Russian singer known for her versions of folk songs of various nations, romances, and other compositions performed in rock arrangement. Pelageya was born into a musical family and showed herself as a talented singer from a very young age. Her mother, Svetlana Khanova […]

Paperny T.A..M… (Паперный Т.А..М…) is a Russian music group that was founded in Moscow shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its leader is Aleksey Mikhailovich Paperniy (Алексей Михайлович Паперный; the T.A..M… stands for “fellowship of actors and musicians” (товарищество актёров и музыкантов), though information about the strange system of periods/ellipses is not forthcoming. […]

Nervy (Нервы; “nerves”) is a Ukrainian alternative-rock band led by singer and pianist Zhenya Milkovskiy (Женя Мильковский). He formed the band in 2010 after his solo career, which he had begun several years earlier, didn’t yield the results he wanted. The original members of the band were Milkovskiy (vocals, guitar), Dmitry Dudka (Дмитрий Дудка; bass guitar), […]

Louna (in Russian Луна, though they actually go by the Roman spelling—it means “moon”) is a pretty recently established Russian rock group. The name comes from the nickname of one of the founders, Lu (Лу; actually Lusine Gevorkyan, Лусинэ Геворкян), an ethnic Armenian. The group was founded in 2009 by two of the members of […]