I went to a little community college in Pennsylvania (Luzerne County Community College), where I earned a degree in Music Recording Technology. While I was there I made it a point to spend as much time in their studio as I could. The faculty was incredibly supportive and seemed to appreciate my enthusiasm, and I graduated with three albums' worth of engineering credits and several internship offers. I took every internship I could and used them to get to where I am now: working for a large music retailer, where I get to chat with my musical heroes on a daily basis (and make really, really good money for it).

I loved every minute I spent there.

I really like Kitten. They're a dance-rock kind of band (so not very progressive or experimental), but the lead vocalist's voice is beautiful to me and her lyricism definitely stands out. Definitely check them out if you're into dark-wave in any way.

• G# • Cut It Out

I am a really big fan of We Are Hunted. They have an "emerging" chart that introduces me to a lot of new stuff, and their instant playlist feature has shown me a lot of great tunes, as well.

Also, Spotify. If you're willing to go down the "related artists" rabbit hole on there, you can discover some really great music. I never would have heard some of my favorite music from the past year if not for that. It won't all necessarily be new music, mind you, but a large portion of it should be new to you.

What I truly have a hard time understanding is what good it does anyone to cast such a broad intelligence-gathering net. Surely, even the resources of the government have their limits, and in constantly expanding the amount of data being intercepted and analyzed, otherwise useful pieces of information get lost in the noise or only given a cursory analysis. The bigger the haystack is, the more difficult it is to find the needle.

I know my previous statement doesn't mention the fact that openly debating (or even discussing) the law the article is about is forbidden, but even such draconian measures seem more grounded in logic to me than a government that seems to have said "Eff it, we're going to try to surveil everyone, all the time, in every place."