Month: January 2025

It’s a new year, but some things remain as they ever were; basketball players still want to rap, and nostalgia still dominates discussion of both art forms. That’s why “Tweaker,” the new single from G3 — better known as LiAngelo Ball, the middle sibling of the athletic trio — has arrived at the perfect time to set the tone for the year ahead.

The song, which takes stylistic cues from turn-of-the-millennium Cash Money Records, has become a fan favorite over the weekend. Memesters have incorporated into cheeky music videos mimicking the aesthetics of the early aughts — ultra baggy jeans, tall white tees, and color-coordination from the fitted caps to the sneakers — and social media users have joked that the dissident sibling may have found his niche despite not joining Lonzo and LaMelo in the NBA.

It doesn’t hurt that he sounds confident and personable on the track, something a lot of his athletic peers have struggled with in their forays into the studio. Maybe he got that from his dad, who somehow charmed his way into stardom as the driving force behind his sons’ respective hustles into the NBA.

So, why has this song resonated with rap fans, NBA fans, and everyone in between — especially considering that the former two groups can’t even seem to agree on anything going on within their own cohorts? This is how I see it:

Firstly, trends come and go in cycles. It was only a matter of time until the musical trends in rap eventually circled back around to recapture the glory days of spinning rims and Motif synths. After all, as evidenced by the hype rushes for 2024 standouts like Megan Thee Stallion’s Megan, Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal, and particularly, Ice Spice’s Y2K!, millennial nostalgia is very in right now — especially for those who may only have caught its tail end in the first place. Heck, there were no fewer than four major feature films about the era, one of which went extremely viral for how wrong it got all the details.

Likewise, big hits of recent years, like Latto’s “Big Energy,” Jack Harlow’s “First Class,” and The Weeknd’s “Creepin’” had made use of prominent samples from the late ’90s and 2000s, priming pop culture for a big resurgence of such sounds (I called this back in my review of Harlow’s second album That’s What They All Say back in 2020). As the samples became more prominent, so too did demands that artists get back to original sounds. What better way to recapture the magic from those singles than duplicating the production styles and flows from noughties hits like Big Tymers’ “Still Fly” or T.I.’s “Motivation?”

At the same time, hip-hop has reached a bit of an impasse; the trap sounds that have dominated the past decade don’t hit like they used to — just see the lukewarm or divided receptions of nominal chart-toppers like Lil Baby, or the way basically everybody turned on Drake last year. Folks are looking for something fresh — and in all forms of art and entertainment, inspiration is often gleaned by taking note of past trends and reinterpreting them for modern audiences (Nosferatu and Wicked, anyone?).

Heck, even basketball fans are yearning for a more “back to basics” approach to the game — which is really just a nostalgic grasp for cultural relevancy and a second childhood to appreciate youth. The main cohort of commentators with the loudest platforms complaining about the number of threes being taken in a game is made up mostly of people entering middle age — LeBron James turned 40 last month, remember — who are rapidly realizing that their best days (or at least, the least painful ones) might be behind them.

Combine that with a younger generation just entering the stage in which they finally yearn to be taken seriously by their elders — think Meg hitting 30 next month — means that the time is absolutely ripe for a cohort of artists seeing 30 on the horizon to finally start making appeals to their forebears as they realize they’re closer to us than they are the next group of kids who will break the paradigm in the decade ahead.

The fact that it’s LiAngelo Ball, a product of both hip-hop and the sports world, who cracked the code is one of those funny quirks of fate that looks inevitable in hindsight. Like a bunch of NBA players, he wants to make music as much as he wants to hoop; unlike Damian Lillard or Bones Hyland, he isn’t currently on an active roster, which means fans can perceive him as a rapper who used to hoop. Maybe that’s made them more receptive. Maybe it really was fate.

But either way, he’s given us a glimpse of the future of hip-hop, which sounds a lot like its past. So, dust off that throwback — which is now a throwback squared — and get ready for a nostalgic revival of the Y2K sound.

The 2025 edition of Rolling Loud California is going to be a little different: Previously, it’s been a three-day festival, but this year, it’s shifting to become a tighter two-day affair. That doesn’t mean fewer headliners, though, as the fest is still going with three and organizers just announced them today (January 7): ASAP Rocky, Playboi Carti, and Peso Pluma.

Beyond that, also performing at Hollywood Park (by SoFi Stadium in Inglewood) from March 15 to 16 are Quavo, BossMan Dlow, Sexyy Red, Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely, YG, and others. Aside from music, the event will also feature carnival rides, immersive experiences, and art installations.

Passes for the two-day event start at $179 with no hidden fees (not a bad value considering a single-day ticket to last year’s event was $179). Passes go on sale starting January 10 at noon PT. More information is available on the Rolling Loud website.

In a statement, Matt Zingler and Tariq Cherif, co-founders and co-CEOs of Rolling Loud, say, “We’re excited to switch things up with a two-day format that keeps all the energy of Rolling Loud but makes it more affordable for our fans. By cutting down a day, we can offer the same epic lineup, dope activations, and unforgettable vibes at a price that’s easier on the wallet. At the end of the day, it’s all about making sure everyone can come together to celebrate hip-hop without breaking the bank.”

Check out the full list of artists on the lineup below.

Rolling Loud California 2025 Lineup

03 Greedo
1900Rugrat
310Babii
Ab-Soul
ASAP Rocky
Azchike
Babychiefdoit
Bad Neighbors
Bas
Blxst
Bossman Dlow
Cash Cobain
Che
Chow Lee
Clip
Danny Towers
Dave Blunts
DC The Don
DDG
Destroy Lonely
Devour
Dom Kennedy
DrexTheJoint
Drownmili
EBK Jaaybo
Eddy Baker
F1Lthy
Gelo
Glokk40Spaz
Homixide Gang
Hoosh
Hotboii
Hurricane Wisdom
Ian
Joeyy
Jordan Adetunji
Kamaiyah
Ken Carson
King Lil G
La Santa Grifa
Larry June
Lay Bankz
Lazer Dim 700
Lefty Gunplay
Lil Birdie
Loe Shimmy
Luh Tyler
Miles Minnick
Molly Santana
Nettspend
Osamason
Peso Pluma
Peyoh
Playboi Carti
Quavo
Ray Emmanuel
Real Boston Richey
Redveil
Robb Banks
Sematary
Sexyy Red
Skaiwater
Ski Mask The Slump God
Slimesito
Stunna Girl
Tee Grizzley
Thxsomuch
TiaCorine
Untiljapan
Xavier Wulf
Xaviersobased
YG
Yo Trane
Yuno Miles

Jeremy Strong’s crazy Golden Globes look, in which he wore a mint suit, matching bucket hat, and sunglasses over a white turtleneck, was absolutely ridiculous. Dude made every wide shot at the ceremony a real-life Where’s Waldo?. We couldn’t watch without the urge to see if we could spot him somewhere in the background.

As soon as images from the Golden Globes red carpet started to make the rounds on the internet, we’ve all been collectively obsessed with talking about it. And you know what? The more we see the fit, the more we think it’s kind of sick. It’s like “Dandy Run DMC.”

Ridiculous, yes, but definitely a serve. Nobody is talking about the way anybody was dressed as much as Strong. He won the night by taking the biggest risk, proving that great fashion isn’t about following trends, but rather inspiring conversation.

Put Strong’s mint madness on a Mount Rushmore of conversation-starting award show fits alongside Bjork’s swan dress, and Lady Gaga’s meat dress.

This doesn’t surprise us too much because while Strong is known for wearing brown suits almost always, which many interpret as boring (we don’t for the record) he actually has pretty impeccable taste, and this fit is no different.

The velvet teal suit and matching bucket hat, which many have said serves as a symbol of Strong stepping out of the shadow of Kendall Roy, was designed by the Milan, Italy-based luxury brand Loro Piana. We can’t find an exact match in Loro Piana’s current collection, but the brand has all sorts of similar suits, and this shearling Lys Bucket Hat, if you’re into the idea of wearing an elevated, luxury bucket hat.

Ironically, Loro Piana was the brand most often worn by Kendall Roy throughout Succession‘s run, and we push back on the idea that this fit is a million miles from Kendall Roy. Did people just forget the “L to the OG” rap? This fit looks like a risk Kendall would take only for his dad to say something like “f*ck off with your clown clothes.”

Under the suit, Strong rocked a white turtleneck sweater which we can’t identify, and rounded out the look with Jacques Marie Mage aviators with teal frames and yellow lenses. You’re never going to be able to find Strong’s exact colorway, as it was probably a special order, but it looks to us like the frame design is the Leonard, an 80s-inspired shape with a double-bridge design.

If you’re still scratching your head about Strong’s choices, there is a method to the madness. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight on the red carpet, Strong explained his motivation behind the look

“I’ve been accused of only wearing brown, so I just thought, you know, I’ll turn that on its head a bit.”

As for the bucket hat, Page Six reports that the decision was to cover up Strong’s hair, as the actor is in the midst of filming the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, where he is playing longtime Springsteen manager Jon Landau, who rocks a massively receded hairline.

Men’s fashion is often boring, and incredibly conformist, so we fully celebrate Strong’s choices. We’re particularly interested in how he’s going to follow this one up.

Last month, The Weeknd celebrated his Spotify streaming success with a special Billions Club Live performance in Los Angeles, where he played some of his biggest hits to reach a billion streams on the platform, including “Blinding Lights,” “Die For You,” and “Save Your Tears,” among others. Starting today, you can stream Billions Club Live with The Weeknd: A Concert Film on Spotify. The film is produced by OBB Media, which also recently produced A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter for Netflix.

The concert film is just one of many projects The Weeknd has coming up this year. He promised, “New album, new tour, new movie, new everything,” ahead of the new year, and will begin delivering on those promises later this month with the release of the album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, on January 24. Meanwhile, his “musically driven” film debut of the same name is scheduled to hit theaters on May 16. It co-stars Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan, and has been described as a “musically driven psychological thriller.”

Billions Club Live with The Weeknd: A Concert Film is now streaming on Spotify. You can see the list of The Weeknd songs with at least one billion streams below.

The Weeknd Songs With Over A Billion Streams On Spotify

“After Hours”
“Blinding Lights”
“Call Out My Name”
“Can’t Feel My Face”
“Creepin’” by Metro Boomin with 21 Savage
“Die For You”
“Die For You (Remix)” Feat. Ariana Grande
“Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)”
“Heartless”
“I Feel It Coming”
“I Was Never There” Feat. Gesaffelstein
“Lost in the Fire” by Gesaffelstein Feat. The Weeknd
“Love Me Harder” by Ariana Grande Feat. The Weeknd
“Moth To A Flame” by Swedish House Mafia Feat. The Weeknd
“Often”
“One Of The Girls” Feat. JENNIE & Lily-Rose Depp
“Or Nah” by Ty Dolla $ign with Wiz Khalifa & DJ Mustard (Remix)
“Popular” Feat. Playboi Carti & Madonna
“Reminder”
“Save Your Tears”
“Save Your Tears (Remix)” Feat. Ariana Grande
“Starboy” Feat. Daft Punk
“Stargirl Interlude” Feat. Lana Del Rey
“The Hills”

A Jimmy Butler trade demand is unlike any other. When the star wing is done with a place, he makes that known emphatically, and is not afraid to make things as uncomfortable as possible. In Miami, he is going up against someone equally headstrong in Heat president Pat Riley, which is making for an even more fascinating standoff.

Butler missed time with an illness when trade rumors began swirling that he had a few preferred destinations, Pat Riley issued a public statement saying they wouldn’t trade him, and then Butler came back to play in two games where he was totally disinterested in trying to score and had the worst +/- on the team by a healthy margin. After those performances, Butler said he didn’t think he could find his joy playing basketball again in Miami and officially requested a trade, resulting in the Heat slapping him with a 7-game suspension for “conduct detrimental” to the team. In his official trade request, Butler reportedly did not furnish the Heat with a list of preferred teams, with ESPN’s Shams Charania and Brian Windhorst noting last week that he was “open to playing anywhere.”

That seemed to open the door for teams outside of Phoenix, Golden State, Houston, and Dallas to get involved, and the Memphis Grizzlies quickly became known as an interested suitor. Memphis is currently the 2-seed in the West and has plenty of incentive to try and add Butler for a championship chase this season, even with the understanding it might just be a one-year rental. It’s worth chasing a Toronto/Kawhi style title push, but there’s one hiccup. In a less than shocking turn of events, Butler didn’t really mean it when he said he’d take a trade anywhere, and according to Chris Haynes, the Grizzlies (and other teams) have been told not to trade for the star.

“The Memphis Grizzlies along with a few other teams have received word that Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler has no interest in being traded there,” Haynes said. “So the message is being delivered that a trade should not be attempted to acquire the All-Star forward.”

This is, honestly, eerily similar to the Kawhi Leonard trade situation, as he also made it clear he did not want to go to Toronto, but the Raptors traded for him anyways, convinced him to play out the season, won a championship, and then he left for his preferred destination of Los Angeles. As such, the Grizzlies certainly don’t have to heed Butler’s warning not to trade for him and might be perfectly alright making a move for him as a one-year rental, as they wouldn’t be giving up any of their core players to acquire him. The Grizzlies calling Butler’s bluff would be fascinating. Butler is a very different personality than Leonard so it’s not a lock they could get him to buy in for the rest of 2025, but tanking a season for a legit contender that traded for him when he proclaims himself to be one of the NBA’s elite competitors that cares most about winning would be much more detrimental to his image than what he’s doing in Miami.

This saga figures to drag on for the next month and impact numerous teams, particularly the Suns as they try to turn up the heat (no pun intended) on Bradley Beal to waive his no-trade clause by bumping him to the bench. The wild card in all of this is Pat Riley, who might hear these reports of Butler not wanting to go to certain teams and be even more determined to ship him to one of those places.

On Friday, Lil Baby asked — and answered — the question Who Hard As Me with his new album, WHAM. The album featured the Atlanta rapper’s long-awaited reunion with mentors Young Thug and Future on “Dum, Dumb And Dumber,” and saw him get back to his roots on focus track “F U 2X,” but as it clocked in at just 15 tracks, some fans understandably wanted more.

As it turns out, Baby was more than happy to oblige — but there’s a catch. The digital deluxe version of the album includes four additional tracks, including another feature from Future. As of now, the extended edition of the album is only available for purchase on Lil Baby’s Motown Records shop, which you can access here for $4.99.

If that still isn’t enough to satisfy your Lil Baby fix, the Atlanta rapper has even more good news on that front. Last month, as he prepared to release WHAM, Baby paid a visit to Lil Yachty’s podcast, A Safe Place, where he revealed his plans to release not just one, but two albums in 2025. “At first, I was telling people I was going to drop a double album,” he said. “Now, I’m dropping the WHAM album and Dominique album.” He explained the conceptual differences between the two projects as such: “WHAM is more me on some young n**** sh*t — fast cars, girls, jewelry, money. And Dominique is more the serious me, more personal. That’s a part of the new journey I’m on. I hate the word vulnerable, but I’m gonna be more open to my fans and my audience.”

The extended edition of WHAM (Who Hard As Me) is out now via Quality Control / Motown. You can get it here.

In less than two weeks, the newest professional women’s basketball league will tipoff, as Unrivaled will begin its inaugural season on January 17. The 3-on-3 league is the brainchild of Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, and they nabbed some of the biggest stars in the WNBA to join them in Miami.

The games will all be broadcast on TNT and truTV, with streaming for all games available on Max, and Warner Bros. Discovery Sports announced their broadcast teams for the first season of Unrivaled on Tuesday. The studio team in Atlanta will be Candace Parker, Renee Montgomery, and host Lauren Jbara, with Lisa Leslie guesting from on-site in Miami. Leslie will be part of the game broadcast team, serving as an analyst alongside Sarah Kustok and play-by-play man Brendan Glasheen calling the action. TNT will have a rotation of reporters joining the broadcast, with Taylor Rooks, Allie LaForce, Stephanie Ready, and Ros Gold-Onwude all spending some time in Miami.

It’s fitting that TNT brought in two legends of the women’s game in Parker and Leslie to headline their Unrivaled broadcast crew. That group will make their debut on the opening night of the season on Friday, January 17, which will feature Collier’s Lunar Owls taking on Stewart’s Mist in the first game of a double-header.

In one of her earliest songs, “Teardrops On My Guitar,” Taylor Swift sings, “Drew looks at me, I fake a smile so he won’t see.” But there was no fake smile from a different Drew on Monday’s episode of Jeopardy!. It was the real thing after he redeemed himself to the Swifties.

Back in September 2024, Drew Goins, a journalist from Honolulu, Hawaii, whiffed on the following clue: “The first of Taylor Swift’s record 4 AOTY Grammys was for this record in 2010.” The correct answer was “what is Fearless?” but Drew could only shake his head and smile. He returned to the game show this week for the Second Chance Tournament, and during the interview portion of the episode with host Ken Jennings, he discussed how he let all Taylor Swift fans — but especially his brother — down.

“I got a Taylor Swift question wrong, and went home worried that the Swifties would come rip me out of my bed one night, but it turns out the angriest Swiftie was my brother, who’s here today,” he shared. “The night before taping, he had prepared an entire practice board for me… and it was entirely Taylor Swift.”

All that practice paid off when Drew had control of the board during last night’s episode, and there was only one clue in the first round left unturned. “In 2014, Taylor Swift gave us this album named for a different year,” it read. Luckily, Drew buzzed in first and, well, you can watch what happens here.

Taylor Swift knows places. Drew knows Taylor Swift albums.

By popular demand, Taylor Sheridan decided to bring back 1923 for a second and final season. That ending to Jacob and Cara Dutton’s story will surface next month, not too long after Yellowstone galloped into the ego-stroking sunset (via Sheridan’s Travis) with a Beth and Rip spin off (starring Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser) still in the works. The Madison will also pick up the Yellowstone baton, and hope remains that the Four Sixes-ranch will eventually receive the spotlight in a 6666 spin off. In other words, no final rodeo actually exists to this franchise, but it’s time to dive back into Dutton history.

John Dutton might not have received the sign-off that Kevin Costner expected when Yellowstone first debuted, but Sheridan will surely bestow a more harmonious goodbye to Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren’s characters. Let’s follow the breadcrumbs on what we can expect from 1923‘s sunset swagger:

Cast

Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford initially only signed on for one season, but they couldn’t resist coming back to finish Jacob and Cara’s run. They will be joined by Timothy Dalton as the big bad who undoubtedly wants take the farm (some things never change in Yellowstone territory). Brandon Sklenar will also be back as Spencer Dutton along with Aminah Nieves as Teonna Rainwater, and Landman star (and utterer of ultra-raunchy Sheridan dialogue) Michelle Randolph will return as Elizabeth Strafford (looking very armed this season).

Three new cast members will also join the fold. As reported by Deadline, they include Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter, Dexter: New Blood, and maybe Dexter: Resurrection) as Mamie Fossett, a Deputy U.S. Marshall; Augustus Prew (Players, The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power) as Paul, “a dapper, bookish, well-to-do young British man on a passenger ship”; and Janet Montgomery (This Is Us, New Amsterdam) as Hillary, “a thoughtful woman who does not want to see injustice go unpunished.”

Plot

Paramount+ recently went into high gear with loads of new images and teasers. The first teaser reveals John Dutton’s declaration of the ranch being under siege and, ultimately, that “Our way of life is under attack.”

An updated synopsis also materialized and answered to speculation that Brandon Sklenar’s Spencer would be journeying towards his fam:

In the second season of ‘1923,’ a cruel winter brings new challenges and unfinished business to Jacob (Ford) and Cara (Mirren) back at Dutton ranch. With harsh conditions and adversaries threatening to end the Dutton legacy, Spencer (Sklenar) embarks on an arduous journey home, racing against time to save his family in Montana. Meanwhile, Alexandra (Schlaepfer) sets off on her own harrowing trans-Atlantic journey to find Spencer and reclaim their love.

Sklenar has expressed high confidence in his character’s second-season arc. He revealed that this season’s tone is “darker” but “very beautiful,” and “the finale of the series is probably one of the best things I’ve read in my life.” Can we guess that this bodes well for Spencer and Alexandra both heading to the ranch, perhaps to help launch future spinoff 1944? Additionally Spencer’s place in the branch of the Dutton family tree (as the son of 1883‘s James and Margaret) could gain more clarity. On the family-tree note as well, previous speculation that Elizabeth is Jack Dutton III’s grandmother might be dead in the water following her miscarriage, but never say never.

Teonna Rainwater actress Aminah Nieves has disclosed to Deadline that she is both “excited and scared” for her character’s continued flight after exacting revenge upon abusive nuns, among other harrowing experiences. Nieves also revealed that Sheridan encouraged her to “don’t stop, keep going” through her character’s unfathomable circumstances. When Nieves asked him, “OK, you’ll tell me if it’s not good though, right?” then he responded, “I’m never gonna have to tell that to you.”

Filming for this season took place throughout the U.S., from Butte, Montana all the way through Texas, including San Antonio.

Release Date

After months of speculation, Paramount+ announced a release date of Feb. 23, 2025. This will follow Paramount Network’s plans to air the first 1923 season following the new Yellowstone episode that airs on December 8.

Trailer

The second new second teaser focuses on Spencer as mentioned above. More images can be found below, along with a teaser trailer that ties the previous teasers together. So much teasing.

I’m accustomed to mainstream year-end lists providing a distorted reflection of my own experience. But, in a fitting coda to a frankly hallucinatory 2024, it feels like my own year-end list was lying to me.

The top three spots are occupied by audacious, ambitious albums from bands that, for either the majority or entirety of their career, have been described as emo. I don’t think that was even happening in recent peak years like 2014 and 2016. Yet, Foxing’s self-titled, Los Campesinos!’ All Hell, and Glass Beach’s Plastic Death are true one-of-one affairs. Each are a testament to the unique talents and vision of their creators, all of whom are completely severed from any greater scene or trend within a genre that largely chose revanchism in 2024.

I don’t know if the fifth wave of emo is officially over or if a new wave has taken shape yet. But, all of the latter’s defining characteristics — cross-genre pollination, progressive politics and a contrarian relationship with the preceding Revival — has given way to what appears to be a new generation raised on Mom Jeans and Modern Baseball. Meanwhile, based on the live clips I typically see posted on X, the closest thing we have to actively recording living legends is Origami Angel.

In short, 2024 felt like a “revival revival” — there were a lot of enjoyable records, a lot of promising bands, and from what I gathered from the message boards and TikToks and such that still actively cover emo, a lot of organic excitement about said records and bands. But, things also felt more insular and small-ball throughout the year, lacking any obvious Best In Class candidates that broke through into the greater conversation. Maybe this was just a year of Sports and Grow Up, Dude! rather than You’re Gonna Miss It All and Keep Doing What You’re Doing, a prelude to greater artistic achievements and crossover success. Then it’ll really be a “revival revival.”

Anyways, no “top ten” or even rankings this year — just me listing off a bunch of emo releases I enjoyed until I run out of space.

Bedbug — Pack Your Bags The Sun Is Growing

Though I wasn’t a huge booster of either in their time, seeing 10-year anniversary pieces for Frankie Cosmos’ Zentropy and the Forth Wanderers’ self-titled debut filled me with a certain longing that didn’t accompany celebrations for, say, Never Hungover Again or Home, Like Noplace Is There. Those were some certainly good times for emo, in part because the boundaries between the genre and more traditional indie labels and scenes felt more porous. Exciting as it is to see the Wax Bodega package deals and such, I do miss seeing The Hotelier tour with Told Slant, or Joyce Manor and Mitski exchanging pleasantries.

For whatever reason — probably the name — I thought that Bedbug was one of those 2014-era bands on Double Double Whammy or Orchid Tapes. But instead, they’re a Los Angeles-based bedroom pop project that’s been kicking around for nearly a decade and reached their zenith on Pack Your Bags The Sun Is Growing, an album very much in the spirit of that era. It’s a real “truth in advertising” title, promising a sprawling, exploratory style of emo that draws on twee, Pacific Northwest, and New England-style indie for one of the best “road trip” albums of 2024.

Ben Quad — Ephemera

After touring with Cursive and the Menzingers, playing Fest and, most shockingly, signing to Pure Noise Records, Cloud Nothings could no longer deny the obvious — they’re a legacy band in the greater emosphere now. And as the 10-year anniversary pieces on Attack on Memory and Here and Nowhere Else made clear, Cloud Nothings brought that about by being one of the few bands that actually got louder, rawer and meaner after their initial indie breakthrough.

Coincidentally, the most promising band I’ve seen following a similar trajectory happen to be their new labelmates, Ben Quad. The Oklahoma quartet topped my 2022 list, a tuneful, tappity-tap brand of nü-Midwest emo that positioned them to take the baton from Dogleg as The Most Likely Indie Crossover. Yet, later that year, they pivoted hard on “You’re Part Of It” — a Piebald-quoting song that sounds absolutely nothing like Piebald and yet became their biggest hit. Their bracing EP Ephemera went even further into the abyss, drawing on skramz and Fall Of Troy-style metalcore while maintaining the melodic dynamism of their earlier work, stoking the hype even more for LP2. Maybe Cloud Nothings aren’t the Pure Noise band that Ben Quad most resembles as it is Knocked Loose.

Carly Cosgrove — The Cleanest Of Houses Are Empty

Skim through any given emo album’s PR one-sheet and the frontperson will probably pay some lip service to how the songs with the jokey titles and SpongeBob SquarePants samples are actually about depression and trauma and therapy, the genre’s answer to “bodies and spaces.” To the outsider, Carly Cosgrove might be viewed as that kind of band, still making iCarly references on their second album, which Lucas Naylor described as being inspired by “habit, familiarity, unfamiliarity, depression, lethargy, and self-reflection.” But beyond The Cleanest Of Houses Are Empty being one of the few albums in this scene where depression isn’t handled in a way that feels performative or glib, it’s an album of pure artistic confidence, with Carly Cosgrove finding their voice as a band that updates the spring-loaded tension and unorthodox song structures of original Midwest emo into a present where folk-punk bands from New Jersey are Midwest emo. After seeing what Holy Ghost did to them, even the most hardcore Modern Baseball fans aren’t clamoring for LP4… but The Cleanest Of Houses Are Empty feels like the next best thing.

Ceres — Magic Mountain (1996-2022)

Though All Hell gave us plenty to celebrate on its own, the unprecedented, overwhelming critical praise felt like a lifetime achievement award for Los Campesinos!. Or, at least a make-up call for years of under-appreciation. Within that story is Los Campesinos! achieving their remarkable longevity by bucking nearly 40 years of emo history and embracing their beknighted status as emo elder statesmen during the 2010s, rather than distancing themselves from it. Ironically, their current influence feels nowhere near as strong as it did during the years between No Blues and Sick Scenes, evidenced by how its most obvious progeny sounds completely out of step with the genre’s dominant trends in 2024.

As with their previous two albums, Ceres’ Magic Mountain (1996-2022) was produced by Tom Bromley (aka Tom Campesinos!) and primarily works at the intersection of Frightened Rabbit’s scrappy miserablism and Gang Of Youths’ earnest rafter-reaching. Not every song on Magic Mountain sounds like that, because there are 26 of them; there are scratchy voice-memo demos, interstitial plot-movers, a song called “Britney Spears” which isn’t really about Britney Spears, and a brazen rip of “All My Friends” that’s titled “LCD.” But these help balance out Magic Mountain‘s otherwise ironclad dedication to Ceres’ strengths, resulting in their own All Hell — a comprehensive, self-referential look back on an under-appreciated band that has to treat every album like it might be their last.

Combat — Stay Golden

When Holden Wolf was in 5th grade, his favorite artists were hometown heroes Animal Collective and Dan Deacon. A decade later, his bombastically ambitious, Baltimore-based emo band Combat sounds nothing like them. But his pre-teen tastes are still an important biographical detail because it proves that dude has been a hopelessly online music dork for his entire life. And that’s really what Stay Golden is all about — as much as it honors the lineage of theatrical emo spanning Three Cheers To Sweet Revenge to The Monitor to Cosmic Thrill Seekers, Combat’s second LP is an unequivocally 2024 “how it feels to be something online” affair, inspired as much by bands as the experience of spending every waking hour on Discogs and Rate Your Music and realizing, as Wolf memorably put it, “I don’t know how to be normal.”

Drunk Uncle — O, Brittle Weather!

Drunk Uncle absolutely nailed the classic Count Your Lucky Stars sound on their second album and also became the greatest emo band to have its drummer repeatedly featured on Chapo Trap House. Between Drunk Uncle and Pendejo Time, shout to Jake Rhodes: legend in two games.

The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick — The Iliad And The Odyssey And The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick

There was zero possibility of TGAATPK being anything other than a cult favorite — the Philadelphia collective merged plodding slowcore, ornate emo, and arcane political tracts into something fascinating and unwieldy, heartfelt, and obtuse on their 2020 debut. Also, their name is The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick, which could’ve been taken as a TWIABP-style parody of post-rock if it wasn’t a reference to a 1972 Wim Wenders film. Four years later, The Iliad And The Odyssey And The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick proves that TGAATPK has sharpened their craft without abandoning their egghead ambition — the vocal interplay is more coherent, the lyrics more direct, the dynamics more unpredictable. Yet it’s a bittersweet triumph as TGAATPK confirmed their future as cult favorites rather than scene leaders by breaking up months after its release.

Gulfer — Third Wind

A lot of this list pays tribute to the up-and-comers whose craft has yet to catch up with their chops and energy. This is where Gulfer were at on their 2015 debut What Gives, but fast forward nearly a decade, three albums and one Forbes 30 Under 30 later, and the Montreal quartet’s math-y, melodic emo sounds downright effortless. Indeed, while Third Wind is perhaps the most pleasurable and warm listen on this list, it felt like it… sorta breezed by, subject to the a few positive reviews, but occupying that “not novel enough for the younger emo heads, too emo for indie” space that awaits too many bands in this sphere who make it to album four. Sadly, Third Wind was the final one for Gulfer, who called it quits as one of their era’s most under-appreciated bands.

Ogbert The Nerd — What You Want

Oolong — Oolong

Both of these bands were at the forefront of a mini “early revival revival” that flowered during the darkest parts of early COVID, a time when people would take anything that carried a whiff of communal, ca. 2009 Philly basement show energy… even if it was a Quarantine Emo DJ Night on Zoom. Neither Oolong nor Ogbert The Nerd had released an album in the next four years, leading me to believe that they wholly absorbed the lessons of OGs like Algernon Cadwallader and Glocca Morra and broke up before they could reckon with a time when their newfound inspirations were out of alignment with emo. Both returned in 2024 with albums that were, in some quantifiable ways, more “ambitious” — Ogbert The Nerd integrated horns and acoustic guitars, Oolong damn near made an hour-long record in a subgenre where 35 minutes is “epic.” But the latter also strategically released their self-titled second album on 4/20, with song titles like “Flop Dawg Attitude” and “F*ck It, Leg Hands.” Both Oolong and What You Want might as well be named In Defense Of The Genre, bypassing any sort of preconceived notions of maturing to prove that you can grow up with the same scraping hooks, noodly guitars and meme-poisoned lyrics that felt revelatory at 18, rather than growing out of them.

Pomfret — You’ll Be Back When Things Fall Apart

At the 2:17 mark of “$400 ‘Everyone Get Out’ (Waltz 2),” Pomfret throw in a sonic reference that confirms their primary artistic influence. Despite the song’s title, it’s not Elliott Smith. Rather, a riff enters that’s strikingly similar to The Hotelier’s “Your Deep Rest.” It may not have been intentional, but here’s an upstart band describing themselves as “Ozark mountain emo” evoking the most popular song on the greatest emo album of its era. These things happen when albums enter the canon and, thus, the public domain and if that sounds too soon for Home, Like Noplace Is There, here’s some perspective: the members of Pomfret were nine years old in 2014. If “$400” is inspired by The Hotelier, that was the point, but if it sounds a little too much like The Hotelier, that’s just them “flying too close to the sun.” Look at the band name, the album title, the album cover — it sounds exactly like you think it would, setting raw-throated anthemics to tappity-tap guitars and endlessly obsessing over awkward social interactions that occur in an unheralded college town in the Midwest (in this case, Springfield, Missouri). It also happens to be great at this sound.

Rain Recordings — Terns In Idle

A sample of Bandcamp tags from the Stockholm-based band: “big heart,” “whimsy rock,” “chamber pop.” Maybe I’m reading too much into the Swedish connection, but this is basically meeting my decades-long ISO: “emo with 10 percent more Peter, Bjorn And John and The Radio Dept.”

Red Sun / bonus — Unnecessary Riffage

Even if the emo cognoscenti spent most of the 2010s clowning the f*ck out of them, it was only a matter of time before “RIYL: Mom Jeans” became accepted currency. I mean, those crowds were huge and some of those kids were going to start forming bands that did their whole “Midwest emo plus pop-punk” thing, minus the cringe. Oklahoma City’s Red Sun weren’t even subtle about it on Best Buds 🙂, a word-of-mouth sensation that led to them signing with Wax Bodega, the place where emo word-of-mouth sensations tend to end up these days. The progression they’ve shown already on Unnecessary Riffage — a split with bonus, yet another 2024 word-of-mouth sensation — is enough to make “Red Sun: 2025 emo AOTY contender?” seem like a foregone conclusion… even if it won’t make me change my mind about Mom Jeans.

SeeYouSpaceCowboy — Coup de Grace

Breathless profiles in general interest music publications, Grammy nominations, an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! — if I had to pick the highly anticipated Pure Noise album that would’ve achieved those goals in 2024… I’d probably still go with You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To; After their appearances at Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza, no one could say they were unprepared for Knocked Loose going supernova.

Still, I can’t help but feel like SeeYouSpaceCowboy’s flagrant and flamboyant third album Coup de Grace deserved just as much mainstream notice, especially in a year where The Blood Brothers embarked on a wildly successful reunion tour. Yes, there’s enough sasscore abrasion to reinforce SYSC’s rep as defenders of San Diego’s white belt legacy, but befitting their more accessible bent, one of the riffs sounds exactly like “Party Hard.” Another sounds a lot like Bloc Party’s “Banquet.” It definitely sounds like it was produced by the guy who did the first Panic! At The Disco album. While all of those sounds were once siloed from each other by critics and industry heads alike, there were plenty of young fans who piled them onto the same playlists and are rewriting history decades later. A true exemplar of indie sleaze and the best 2004 album of 2024.

Southtowne Lanes — Take Care

Emo’s fifth wave was predicated on re-calibrating the sonic and philosophical underpinnings of a scene that had gotten a little too serious and striving towards the end of the revival. And that’s all well and good, but don’t you miss those searing and soaring concept albums that made its subject matter feel like a literal matter of life and death… because that’s what it was often literally about? Rick Pitino voice: Stage Four or Wildlife or The Lack Long After or Home, Like Noplace Is There wasn’t walking through that door! Well, not from any band that formed after 2014 for the time being.

Instead, it was Southtowne Lanes, an unheralded band from Eugene, Oregon eight years removed from their previous album and planning to go in a Weatherbox or All Get Out-type heartland emo direction on their next one. That is, until Matt Kupka’s father unexpectedly passed away and Take Care evolved into an album that not only went through all five stages of grief (sometimes within the span of three minutes), but sent him back to rediscover why My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” made him want to be a musician in the first place. In short, imagine if “Helena” sounded more like “An Introduction To The Album” and this is the baseline for the level of intensity Take Care occupies for the most unfashionably extra and awesome emo album of 2024.

Yon Loader — Yon Loader

I’ve become mildly fascinated with Apple Music’s increasing reliance upon one-line, possibly AI-generated album descriptors, and Yon Loader’s self-titled debut does not disappoint: “his self-titled album holds plenty of mathy emo rock twists.” Then again, I’m no better, since my pitch is even more succinct — “do you like Rainer Maria? It sounds like Rainer Maria.”

Your Arms Are My Cocoon — Death Of A Rabbit

While I was intrigued by Your Arms Are My Cocoon’s 2020 debut, I assumed its no-fi bedroom electro-skramz thing was a purely internet phenomenon — if live music ever did return, I wasn’t sure how this stuff would translate outside of Rate Your Music discussion boards. I caught Tyler Odom’s two-piece setup open for Home Is Where and awakebutstillinbed in 2023 and YAAMC more than held its own amidst two of the past decade’s most celebrated (albeit relatively conventional) guitars-and-drums-and-screams indie-emo bands. The kids were going nuts over them, and I had to wonder whether YAAMC had the potential to make a true mainstream breakthrough on LP2.

Death Of A Rabbit is a much more expansive affair than its predecessor — for one thing, it has mastering credits (courtesy of Will Killingsworth) and the 10:41 of “Rubber Duck” is almost as long as Your Arms Are My Cocoon. Still, it’s as immediate and immersive as one would expect from songs written and recorded in “bedrooms and kitchens and cars,” every emotion and wild idea coming through unfiltered. I’d say that Death Is A Rabbit is still a largely internet phenomenon, but that’s where emo’s sixth wave is probably taking shape. Don’t be surprised if this is one of its formative documents.