Sheri

@Mary Ka Lae would be in Hawai'i, which is further south than Florida. Key West is the southernmost point in the contiguous US.

@Warren On a wind instrument, it's playing two different pitches without tonguing (re-articulating) or taking a breath in between, and this is true for both woodwind and brass instruments.

@Jess Also could be a powerful server in volleyball as well.

@Nancy Slaps and "spits bars" have been around since at least the 90s, if not earlier. Just because it comes from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) does not mean won't last, because AAVE will still be around even after those terms fall out of popular (non-AAVE-speaker) use. Including AAVE terms in a puzzle is linguistically no different from the occasional answers in Spanish, French, or some other language.

@Convoid-04 From my (potentially flawed) remembering, it goes Olmec -> Maya -> Inca/Aztec. The Olmecs are known mostly from their giant stone heads and existed before the birth of Jesus; the Maya were between them and ~1300 AD; the Inca and Aztec were around at overlapping times between 1350-1600AD, but the Aztec were in Mexico and the Inca were in the Andes.

@Momerlyn Another clue could be "site of 2011 weather disaster" because 2011 had quite a few of them in the span of a month.

@Jules A slur is a notation in music that tells the musician that two different notes are to be played without rearticulating them. Rearticulation could be plucking/bowing strings or tonguing/taking a breath between notes. A similar thing exists for playing two of the same note, but it's called a tie instead of a slur. If you want an auditory example, listen to the beginning of Pilot's "Magic" (the one they use in the Ozempic commercials): the first 'ohs' are all distinct notes, but when they sing the word 'know' they connect the pitches together.

@Xword Junkie It is! "slapped" is a weensy bit dated - you'd hear it more often before and during the pandemic - but anyone familiar with the slang would be able to interpret your sentence correctly.

@Andrew In context, it has to do with psychological operations (psy-ops), but if you're referring to the South Korean rapper who's known for Gangnam Style, his birth name (per Wikipedia) is Park Jae-sang.

@HeathieJ Nice day but that's bad news for tonight - more energy for severe weather to feed from.

@Barry Ancona the midi.

@Steve L Katseye is a K-Pop group that is known for being multiethnic. They were one of the contenders for "Best New Artist" at this year's Grammys. I would guess that their style of music appeal to an audience that is largely under the age of 35, whereas the majority of NYT Crossword participants are over 35 and generally don't listen to K-Pop, so I can see where they would be less-well-known -- there just isn't much overlap in the demographics.