Probably best known for generating the gentle pulses and ambling beats for contemplative indie-rock greats Galaxie 500 and Damon & Naomi, Damon Krukowski has gained notoriety this decade as an incisive essayist who’s scrutinized how streaming services shaft musicians with pitiful royalty rates. Beyond that important topic, he’s written the books The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (2017) and this year’s Ways of Hearing, the latter of which is a deep dive into how transitioning from analog to digital audio has transformed people’s “perceptions of time, space, love, money, and power.” Spoiler alert: Krukowski favors human rhythms over algorithms. by Dave Segal