Category: News

Jack Harlow’s star continues to rise. After performing at and co-hosting the MTV VMAs, the Louisville native is stepping into another new role: Late-night host. Harlow will co-host next Thursday night’s (October 6) episode of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon when his Come Home The Kids Miss You tour hits New York City. According to a press release, he’ll help Jimmy deliver the episode’s monologue, introduce musical guests Quavo & Takeoff, and interview the night’s guest Dwyane Wade.

Harlow kept flying high in 2022 as he released his sophomore album, Come Home The Kids Miss You, after racking up his first-ever career No. 1 alongside Lil Nas X for “Industry Baby.” Harlow’s follow-up single, “First Class,” repeated the feat, giving him his first-ever No. 1 as a lead artist, and achieved the impressive accomplishment of returning to No. 1 a few weeks later, making three weeks in total. He also secured his first lead acting role in the remake of White Men Can’t Jump and got his own meal at KFC.

Even the bumps in the road have turned into victories for Jack. After accidentally insulting scores of R&B fans with his surprise at Brandy and Ray J’s relation, he recruited the elder Norwood to perform her fiery freestyle over “First Class” with him at the BET Awards.

Catch Jack Harlow as co-host of The Tonight Show on 10/6.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Damon Albarn is a master collaborator. Heck, the first two singles off of the Gorillaz’s upcoming Cracker Island album feature Thundercat and Tame Impala. Albarn has corralled talent in the past from Snoop Dogg and Little Dragon to De La Soul, Lou Reed and Paul Simonon of The Clash. You get the idea. But Albarn’s thirst for high profile collaborations is seemingly insatiable and could Billie Eilish be next up? Albarn says it could be happening soon.

“Yeah, it will. Yeah,” Albarn told Apple Music 1’s Matt Wilkinson this morning. “I think we keep trying to do it. It’s just a case of schedules.” He heaped praise on Eilish, saying,”Oh, she’s wonderful… I love her.” And then pontificated on what a Damon Albarn and Billie Eilish track would sound like. “Who knows? Could be kind of babbling brook folk or dark satanic metal.”

Sounds good to us. For her part, Eilish brought out Albarn on stage during her Coachella performance earlier this year. The pair did a duet of Eilish’s “Getting Older,” before Albarn performed Gorillaz classic “Feel Good Inc.” The smitten Eilish told the crowd that, “This man changed my life in a lot of ways and changed my complete view of what music could be, and what art could be, and what creation could be.”

Gorillaz is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

With Blonde hitting Netflix this week, it’s hard to believe that it’s been almost ten years since the release of director Andrew Dominik’s last (non-doc) feature, Killing Them Softly. Dominik’s nasty little f*ck you of a crime movie, starring Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini, opened November 30th, and almost instantly joined some rarified company: it’s one of only 21 movies ever to get an “F” grade from the audience polling company Cinemascore. (Even Olivia Wilde’s anti-crowdpleaser, Don’t Worry Darling, received a comparatively modest B-).

I admit, the idea of a movie being hated by the hordes of soda-fattened mall people that presumably make up most of Cinemascore’s polling base only really serves to make it more appealing to me. Even if I must admit that most of those other 21 movies weren’t ahead of their time, artistically challenging, or transgressive, they were mostly just plain ill-conceived and bad (Fear Dot Com, Seltzer and Friedberg’s Disaster Movie, Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me, etc.).

Yet Killing Them Softly is the kind of movie seemingly designed to piss off squares, and did. It was contrarian, transgressive, and yes, ahead of its time. It was cynical, certainly, but also prescient, and maybe with the benefit of hindsight, the miracle that it ever got greenlit, produced, and released when it did only becomes more clear. It doesn’t feel like it should be ten years old. Consider some of the other movies released that year: The Avengers (the first one), Men In Black 3, Flight. They all feel distinctly like time capsules from a bygone era. Killing Them Softly doesn’t, perhaps partly because it felt like it came from another time in its own time.

Released barely three weeks after Obama’s fairly decisive reelection, this was a movie that had the audacity to conclude with its lead character openly sneering at Obama’s first inauguration speech, this before he’d even made his second.

“This guy wants to tell me we’re living in a community? Don’t make me laugh,” Brad Pitt’s Jackie practically spits at syndicate functionary Richard Jenkins, while Obama’s speech drones from the TV above the bar. “I’m living in America. And in America, you’re on your own. America’s not a country. It’s just a business.”

That’s the final shot of the movie, cutting to black with a needle drop to the original version of “Money (That’s What I Want)” by Barrett Strong.

Coming as it did in the wake of the financial crisis and an escalating drone war, 2012 may not exactly have been an era of good feelings, certainly as compared to 2008, when many of us thought this suave eloquent coolguy was going to end the wars, shutter Guantanamo, cancel the Patriot Act and generally bring about a golden age of reasoned meritocracy. We were mostly disabused of these notions by 2012, but it takes a long time to get a movie made, and not many people had soured on the Obama era quickly enough to get something as disdainful of it as Killing Them Softly into theaters less than four years later.

Killing Them Softly is a movie as much about the financial crisis as Too Big To Fail, the latter a classic of the “smart guys in a room making tough decisions” variety, in which Billy Crudup played Tim Geithner. Killing Them Softly is sort of the anti-Too Big To Fail, a movie about individuals — petty, confused, scared — being crushed by a crisis of their own.

It all starts when small-time gangster “The Squirrel,” played by wildly underrated Sopranos alum Vincent Curatola (aka Johnny Sack) decides he wants to rob a mob-controlled card game. He thinks he can get away with it because the guy who runs the card game, Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta), recently admitted to having set up the robbery of his own game once before. If it happens again, The Squirrel figures, everyone will naturally blame Markie, and he needs to get it done before someone else gets the same idea. To pull it off, The Squirrel hires a flea-bitten ex-con named Frankie, played by Scoot McNairy, who in turn pulls in an even more flea-bitten sweaty Australian junkie named Russell. Russell is played by Ben Mendelsohn, in a masterpiece of scumminess that in a just world would’ve won him an Oscar. Even the name, “Russell,” feels like it was perfectly designed to be slurred through by Ben Mendelsohn with his signature mushy consonants.

Frankie and Russell pulling the heist is somehow both terrifying and hilarious, executed with nylon masks, yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, and a shotgun sawed off so short you can see the ends of the shells in it. A lesser director probably would’ve made the scene a classic comedy of errors, playing up the bickering and wisecracking, but Dominik doesn’t let you forget the life-and-death stakes. When Ray Liotta’s character tries to talk Ben Mendelsohn’s character out of taking the money, telling him he can still walk away from this, you can tell Russell is actually considering it.

He doesn’t though, and in the aftermath of the robbery, “The Syndicate,” represented by a deliberately boring middle manager played by Richard Jenkins, has to do something to restore the public confidence and get the card games going again. Metaphor alert!

To do this, they bring in Jackie, a smooth but ruthless killer who seems to know humans better than anyone else, because he sees them through unromantic eyes. Played by Brad Pitt with pompadour and a circle beard, Jackie is a bit like The Wolf from Pulp Fiction meets Johnny Cash (one of Jackie’s musical cues is Cash’s 2002 song “When The Man Comes Around”). As Andrew Dominik told Collider of Pitt’s casting, “You obviously can’t cast Brad as an everyman because he brings too much baggage to something like that. But if he’s playing a mythological character or somebody exceptional, then that baggage is a good thing.”

Pitt’s character, this part human, part mythological force, naturally gets to deliver the film’s title line: You ever killed anyone? It can get… touchy-feely. Emotional, not fun, a lot of fuss. They cry, they plead, they beg. They piss themselves, they call for their mothers. It gets embarrassing. I like to kill them softly, from a distance. Not close enough for feelings. I don’t like feelings.

We always claim we don’t want films that glorify violence, films that make being a gangster seem like a lot of fun, which so many do, intentionally or not. Killing Them Softly is the rare film about the underworld where the message, that criminality and violence are almost or equally as unfun as a square job, really lands. The unpleasantness was fully intended.

As Andrew Dominik told Collider at the time, “There was a real work-a-day aspect to it, with this idea that crime is a drag. …Everything is a drag for these characters. One of the key things going on in the movie is this idea that people are doing everything they can to avoid violence or avoid getting their hands dirty, and I wanted you to be able to really understand why. Obviously, the way to do that is to make violence really unappealing. It always surprises me in films that killers seem so gleeful about killing people. I imagine that in a closed, hermetic society like the mob, where everybody knows each other, it must be really, really unpleasant to have to kill people.”

Like Blonde — based on a 2000 Joyce Carol Oates novel; not a traditional biopic — Killing Them Softly was an attempt to create a timely film out of relatively obscure source material. Dominik was adapting Cogan’s Trade (1974), by Boston crime novelist George V. Higgins, whose only other book to be adapted into a movie was Friends Of Eddie Coyle (1973) (which, incidentally, Anthony Bourdain once listed as his favorite movie). The idea for the movie was to use the underworld plot of the seventies book as a metaphor for the 2008 financial crisis — which Dominik turned into a backdrop mostly by having a lot of TVs and radios blare the news of late 2008. It certainly wasn’t the most subtle device.

“I’ve gotten a lot of shit for all the political stuff in the background of this film,” Dominik told Indiewire in 2012. “But as I remember that time, you couldn’t turn on the TV or turn on the radio and not hear about the bailout.”

Where the book was set in Boston, Killing Them Softly takes place in a sort of composite symbol of crumbling empire, combining Boston, where it was originally set (Scoot McNairy’s character has a Boston accent and references Boston suburbs like Somerville), Detroit, the go-to poster child for a decimated manufacturing sector, where Dominik initially wanted to shoot, and New Orleans, where it was actually shot, on account of Detroit being too cold. The effect is a bit jarring, with Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn walking through a parched landscape of dusty tumbleweeds in one scene, and most of the rest of the movie taking place in the pouring rain.

Though it was initially considered a flop (“bombs,” “flops,” “flunks,” “gets slaughtered,” “…lands with a thud,” went some of the headlines that Sunday and Monday morning), Killing Them Softly eventually did earn back its production budget. And critics rated it a little better than audience polls. To say that its dark tone and overwhelming cynicism were the reason it wasn’t more well-liked might be a little reductive, given that most critics, both haters and admirers alike, knocked Killing Them Softly less for its cynicism than for its simplicity. They generally thought it was a little heavy-handed, a little too on the nose. Richard Roeper wrote that it “collapses under the weight of the director’s crushing narcissism.”

Virtually none of them missed the central idea, that Killing Them Softly was an allegory for the financial crisis. Because you really couldn’t. Likewise, Brad Pitt’s character in Killing Them Softly surely wasn’t the first person ever to point out, as he does just before the “America is a business” kicker, that slave owner Thomas Jefferson might’ve been a little hypocritical with that whole “all men are created equal” deal.

I can’t argue that Killing Them Softly isn’t about as subtle as a sledgehammer (“the anvils of obviousness rain down,” as Cary Darling wrote in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) but there’s a kind of conceptual purity that comes from an artist being straightforward, from meticulously telegraphing everything they’re doing. For his part, Dominik calls Killing Them Softly “almost like a political cartoon.” Ben Mendelsohn walking a tiny dog through a neighborhood of abandoned houses while he and Scoot McNairy argue about doing crimes especially feels like it could be a New Yorker cartoon.

Dominik also took the step of largely ignoring the old “show don’t tell” adage, letting the actors talk and shooting them in relatively long takes. “What attracted me to it was, essentially, the dialogue,” Dominik said. “These were a bunch of really verbose people that had a lot to say about their lives and about the world that they lived in, and I really liked all that stuff.”

The effect is that a cast of incredible actors all really got to act. Aside from Mendelsohn’s sweatiest, and arguably greatest performance, there’s Ray Liotta’s nuanced turn as the small-time gangster who knows he’s doomed from the moment the two idiots in nylon masks walk into his card game and spends the rest of the movie trying to talk his way out of it. Released just a year before his death, James Gandolfini shows up as a hitman brought in by Brad Pitt’s character (who was himself brought in by Dillon, played by Sam Shepard in a brief flashback). Gandolfini’s character, Mickey, is a haunted alcoholic hitman, seemingly on a suicide mission.

If Ben Mendelsohn’s character was gross, Mickey manages to be even grosser, holing himself up in a hotel room, abusing waiters and hookers alike, and reminiscing about hookers past. He eventually reveals that he can’t even perform the seemingly simple task for which he’s been hired, essentially crumbling before our very eyes. In a scene where his character is uncontrollably rambling, Gandolfini does most of the acting with his eyes. If Mendelsohn is a scumbag played for comic relief, Gandolfini is a scumbag played for pathos, and his final scene hits like a freight train. It stands out as some of the best acting Gandolfini ever did, even with some stiff competition.

Killing Them Softly is a little hard to love for good reason; it doesn’t let you leave the theater feeling good. We’re conditioned, to a certain extent, to expect the old Aaron Sorkin model, of movies about smart, courageous adults who solve complicated problems while delivering soaring speeches. In Killing Them Softly, no one solves problems. They just deal, jockey for position, and adapt.

Even Brad Pitt’s character, the partly mythological Man in Black, who so often functions as the voice of reason (counseling Richard Jenkins to just kill Trattman and save him the pain and indignity of all the beatings, for instance) in the end gets things just as wrong as everybody else. Bringing Mickey into town turns out to be a total bust (“I needed the Mickey of a few years ago, not this guy,”), and when he eventually cleans up everyone’s mess, all he gets for his troubles is to be second-guessed by a mealy-mouthed bureaucrat and forced to take a lower price. Pitt’s last line of the film, to Richard Jenkins’ character, is “fuck you, pay me.”

The film leaves it ambiguous as to whether Jackie actually did get paid. My theory is that he didn’t. He left unfulfilled, like everyone else, and his tough guy words were essentially wind, just like Obama’s, the impotent rationalizations of a man who had just lost his leverage, the only thing that matters. And that’s the end of the movie; no hugging, no learning. Cut to black, cue the credits song.

Is it too simplistic? Painfully unsubtle? Sure. But there’s power in a certain kind of obviousness, expressing basic emotional truths without weighing them down with qualifiers and caveats. I remember Rage Against The Machine seeming simplistic once, what with that band name and Zack De La Rocha screaming “some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.”

But the more time that passes and the more times the basic truth of it is proven true, the happier I am that he didn’t equivocate.

‘Killing The Softly’ streams for free for Starz subscribers and can be rented for $3.99 via Prime and Apple.

Animals can be just as cheeky as toddlers and their cheeky actions usually result in unexpected sass and raised eyebrows. A town in Massachusetts became the temporary home to a grey seal that the citizens nicknamed “Shoebert” after he was found in Shoe Pond in Beverly. If you’re wondering how a seal wound up in the pond, you’re not the only one. No one knows exactly how the savvy seal made his way to the pond but he hung out there for a few days somehow evading efforts to catch him so he could be relocated.

Seals don’t really belong in freshwater and the little guy had been out of the ocean long enough as it was. But to everyone’s surprise, Shoebert was ready to go back to the type of water he belongs in so he turned to the people you call when you’re in trouble: the police. The seal flopped and waddled his way to the Beverly Police Department before changing his mind once he saw the fuzz. When the 4-year-old seal was spotted by a police officer, he turned around and attempted to run away for a second time, quickly scooting and hopping on his flippers.

The sight of Shoebert realizing the police were onto him was quite hilarious. You’d think the seal had a warrant out for his arrest, but where would they put the handcuffs? Thankfully, the seal was caught after the officer called for backup. It took lots of teamwork from the Beverly Police Department, Fire Department, Animal Control, NOAA and International Fund for Animal Welfare, but eventually they got Shoebert safely relocated. Check out the video below.

In 2013, while in her final semester at Harvard University, Amanda Nguyen was raped on campus. Like far too many sexual assault survivors, she found herself wrapped up in a criminal justice system that was traumatizing, expensive, difficult to navigate and often ineffectual.

The following year, she founded Rise, an organization advocating for the rights of survivors of sexual violence. She helped rewrite state and federal laws surrounding how sexual assault is handled and played an integral role in getting the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act of 2016 passed unanimously in Congress. That act, which was signed into law by President Obama in 2016, changed the way rape kits are processed and created a bill of rights for survivors of sexual assault and rape.

But Nguyen didn’t stop there. After the successful passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, Nguyen received more than a million messages from survivors around the world fighting for their own rights and protections. She knew she needed to take her cause even wider, advocating for survivors everywhere.

Nguyen knew from personal experience the impact of having face time with decision-makers. When she was trying to get a survivor rights bill passed in Massachusetts, she almost gave up when she was told there was a slim chance of the bill passing. But she got on a plane and met with lawmakers personally, which swayed them to support the bill.

“There’s nothing more powerful than hearing it straight from the people it has affected,” Nguyen told TIME. “We pushed the boundaries from a 0 percent chance to a 100 percent chance in 14 hours.”

Nguyen took that same energy to the highest international body, the United Nations. This summer, Rise set up a powerful exhibition, “What Were You Wearing?”, at the UN Headquarters in New York to highlight the problem of victim-blaming that so often follows sexual violence. For six years, Nguyen and Rise have been working toward an international resolution supporting the rights of sexual violence survivors. Finally this month, the United Nations unanimously passed a resolution providing access to justice for victims of sexual assault.

The vote was welcomed by exclamations of joy and relief from audience members. One of those cries came, understandably, from Nguyen herself.

Nguyen shared a powerful video synopsis of her story on TikTok, which has been viewed more than 18 million times. Watch:

@amandangocnguyen

My story

What Amanda Nguyen has accomplished is incredible and will make a difference in millions of lives around the world. The tragedy is in how she got to where she is now—both her own experience and the countless stories that have propelled her to work tirelessly for survivor rights.

“I wanted to be an astronaut, I didn’t want to be an activist,” Nguyen told Euronews. “But here I am.”

Nguyen’s accomplishments go far beyond the activism highlighted in her TikTok, however. Her bio on her website is a testament to what she is capable of and an inspiration for anyone who has survived sexual assault:

Amanda Nguyen is the founder of Rise, a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, and a 2022 TIME Woman of the Year. Amanda’s 2021 viral video ignited a wave of collective action in the anti-Asian hate movement. She made history by drafting and unanimously passing both the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights through the United States Congress and the Survivors’ Resolution through the United Nations General Assembly. Amanda’s directorial debut, Everything I Ever Wanted To Tell My Daughter About Men, won Best Feature at the 2022 Cannes Independent Film Festival. She is the lead of Emmy-nominated mini documentary “Rise Above” by Money Magazine. She served the White House, Department of State, and NASA, and is currently an Astronaut-Scientist Candidate at the Astronautical Science Institute. Amanda graduated from Harvard University. For her work, Amanda has been named a Heinz Laureate, Forbes 30 Under 30, Foreign Policy 100, Fedrick Douglass 100, TIME 100 Next, BBC 100, Marie Claire Woman of the Year. She loves bunnies and dogs.

Rob Zombie loves to do things his own way. He released the controversial House of 1000 Corpses and the fan-despised Halloween reboot, along with a handful of horror-inspired albums. And even when his stuff does badly, he just keeps making things because it’s fun. And that’s what it’s all about! Also, to be spooked. That’s what it’s about, too.

Zombie’s latest project is the family-friendly adaptation of The Munsters, which dropped on Netflix this week. Even though Zombie is known for his blood-soaked horror, this movie is pretty much as PG as you can get. “A lot of people have said to me: ‘Finally, I can watch one of your movies with my kids,’ which I don’t have kids so that’s kind of meaningless to me. But that’s nice!” Zombie recently told Variety. “This is how I got into everything as a kid. This is for the next wave of monster fans coming our way. This movie is the gateway drug for more hardcore horror.”

The Munsters stars Jeff Daniel Phillips as Herman Munster, Sheri Moon Zombie as Lily Munster, and Daniel Roebuck as Grandpa Munster, while Butch Patrick, who played Eddie Munster in the original series, makes a cameo. The movie is supposed to be some wholesome spooky fun, though Zombie was limited in what he could do. Originally, Zombie was looking to make the whole movie black and white as a nod to the original series, but the studio would not let him.

“When they were in the trailer, the studio wanted to take those few moments and make them color because they thought if people see a black-and-white shot they’ll be confused,” Zombie explains. “I’m like, ‘People aren’t that f*cking stupid.’” The movie is fully in color, bright and rich and saturated within an inch of its life, aside from some one-off scenes in black and white.

Though Zombie was unable to make his Munsters as he intended, the director didn’t let it slow him down. “Sometimes you’re dealt a certain scenario. You can walk away from it, but that doesn’t create anything. You figure out how to deal with it,” Zombie says. “Sometimes you create something you would have never created.” And thus, the PG Munsters movie was born, out of something that was never supposed to be created Hey, at least it isn’t Morbius.

The Munsters is now streaming on Netflix.

(Via Variety)

Netflix released its Ryan Murphy-created limited series Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story last week. The 10-episode arc stars Evan Peters as Dahmer, who is known for serially killing (and cannibalizing) 17 victims from 1978 and 1991. After watching it, the internet is upset with… Katy Perry?

People who have watched The Jeffery Dahmer Story are now revisiting Perry’s 2013 No. 1 smash “Dark Horse” featuring Juicy J and debating the Memphis rapper of Three 6 Mafia fame’s verse that references Dahmer: “She’s a beast, I call her Karma / She eat your heart out like Jeffrey Dahmer / Be careful, try not to lead her on.” Some people are disgusted, some find it weird to be upset about an old song, and some are dragging Kesha’s 2010 song “Cannibal” into the mix. (This is not the first time “Dark Horse” has given Perry headaches, by the way.)

According to the official plot synopsis, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story “examines the gruesome and horrific true crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer and the systemic failures that enabled one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.” All 10 episodes are available to stream on Netflix. But if Twitter rabbit holes are your preferred entertainment, see examples of the burgeoning “Dark Horse” discourse below.

2022 has been a breakthrough year for Omar Apollo: The Mexican-American singer is appearing for the first time on the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week with his song “Evergreen.”

Billboard refreshed its weekly Hot 100 chart today (September 27) and Apollo’s name is on there for the first time ever. He debuted at No. 62 with the sensual cut “Evergreen” from his debut album Ivory. In the past week, the song was streamed 7.4 million times in the US, which resulted in a 70 percent uptick compared to the week prior. “Evergreen” also debuted at No. 35 on Streaming Songs chart.

Billboard attributed Apollo’s rise in streams for “Evergreen” to his NPR Tiny Desk concert that was released last week. As part of Latinx Heritage Month, he kicked off the El Tiny series. In NPR’s studios, he performed “Evergreen” and other songs from Ivory like “En El Olvido” and “Endlessly.” “Evergreen” has also been used in over 300,000 videos on TikTok.

Over on Twitter, Apollo reacted to the news of his first Hot 100 debut. With celebration and crying emojis, he first wrote, “What is happening.” He later tweeted, “My first hot 100 entry b*tch wow.” Apollo wrote soon after that the his fans had him feeling “bricked up” over the song’s success.

Next month Apollo will heading out on his Prototype Tour. The tour kicks off in San Diego, California in October and later wraps up in Toronto, Ontario in November.

Omar Apollo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.

Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week we got new music from Alex G, The 1975, Mac DeMarco, and more.

While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.

Alex G — God Save The Animals

This week, Alex G dropped his tenth studio album God Save The Animals, and it’s already shaping up to be his magnum opus. The 13-track effort combines bluesy influences on tracks like “Mission” and “No Bitterness,” heard most distinctly on 2017’s Rocket, while leaning into experimentation like the auto-tuned number “S.D.O.S” and “Cross The Sea.”

Khruangbin, Vieux Farka Touré — Ali

Texas trio Khruangbin are known for their unmistakable jam band-like chemistry both on stage and in the studio. That magic doesn’t get lost — only amplified — on their collaborations. After dropping the silky-smooth EP Texas Moon in collaboration with Leon Bridges, Khruangbin honor a legendary musician with Ali, an ode to Mali’s renowned musician Ali Farka Touré. Recorded with his son, Vieux Farka Touré, Ali combines Khruangbin’s signature psychedelic guitar with the inspired sounds of Touré’s West African hits.

The Wonder Years — The Hum Goes On Forever

The Wonder Years‘ early albums were all about suburbia woes. But this time around, The Wonder Years had a different inspiration for their music: parenthood. With their latest album The Hum Goes On Forever, the pop-punk veterans continue with their aesthetic that first set them apart from the pack, while also honing their sound (and leaning on a helping hand from none other than pop punk legend Mark Hoppus). Overall, The Hum Goes On Forever manages to be both melancholy and inspiring, proving that you never truly lose your punk edge, even in parenthood.

Remember Sports — Leap Day

Remember Remember Sports? They’ve been building a steady catalog of power pop songs since 2017, their latest album arriving just last year. But this week, the band returned with a surprise EP, the four-track project Leap Day. Laced with frenetic riffs and explosive refrains, vocalist/guitarist Carmen Perry aptly describes the project as “a great EP for walking around your neighborhood on a sunny day and noticing things you never noticed before.”

Wild Pink — “See You Better Now” Feat. J Mascis

Following up Wild Pink’s 2021 album of the year contender A Billion Little Lights, the band have been moving from strength to strength with the singles off their upcoming LP ILYSM. The latest, “See You Better Now,” is wistful and nostalgic and even features a guitar solo by J Mascis. Wild Pink’s John Ross calls the track the “most straightforward love song on the album” and notes it was inspired by Tom Petty and Traveling Wilburys, which certainly comes through in Ross’ talky cadence.

Alvvays — “Belinda Says”

Fans have been patiently awaiting a new album from Alvvays following the Canadian indie-pop group’s 2017 sophomore release. But the wait is close to over, as the band are releasing their next project, Blue Rev, next month. Their latest single “Belinda Says” is a dreamy ode to ’80s pop icon Belinda Carlisle, and references her hit “Heaven Is A Place On Earth.” The song starts off with an explosion of fuzzy instrumentals which perfectly compliment vocalist Molly Rankin’s magnetism.

The 1975 — “All I Need To Hear”

The 1975 have been showing off their diverse songwriting abilities with the recent singles off the forthcoming Being Funny In A Foreign Language. They’ve delivered the folksy track “Part Of The Band” and the exuberant pop anthem “I’m In Love With You.” But this time, The 1975 show off their romantic side with the piano ballad “All I Need To Hear.” The slowed-down number is sincere and swooning, perfect for setting a late-night mood or taking the floor for a first dance at a wedding.

Mac DeMarco, Snail Mail — “A Cuckhold’s Refrain – Peppermint Patty”

It’s been a little while since Mac DeMarco has put out an album (since 2019’s Here Comes The Cowboy to be exact), but his new collaboration with Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan proves he hasn’t lost his musical talent or his humorous edge. The song, titled “A Cuckhold’s Refrain,” is booth tongue-in-cheek and groovy, somehow managing to be a jam even while using the lyrics “scrub a dub dub.”

Tenci — “Vanishing Coin”

Chicago band Tenci first won over hearts with their pastoral charm and lead singer Jess Shoman’s unique, throaty lyrical delivery. Now preparing their sophomore album A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing, the band makes it clear they haven’t let go of their enveloping sound, only refined it on the new track “Vanishing Coin.” The new songs carry a new perspective, a result of the band becoming older and wiser, which is reflected throughout “Vanishing Coin,” a song about the ebbs and flows of friendships.

Miss Grit — “Like You”

After turning heads with two critically acclaimed EPs over the past few years, Miss Grit is coming off a newly inked deal with Mute for their new single, “Like You.” The track is haunting, catchy, and vibrant, inspired by our inner voices and the actions they encouraged. “I had the character of Ex Machina in mind as the voice I was singing from,” Miss Grit said of the song. “Her arc in the movie felt really beautiful to me, and I wanted to reach the same ending as her in this song.”

It’s been a long time coming for EXO-Ls and K-pop fans, but Xiumin finally released his first ever solo project in the year 2022.

The eldest member of EXO released his much-anticipated solo debut on Monday, September 26 with a five-track EP titled Brand New, with a lead single of the same name. The debut project pays homage to the sounds of the ’90s and early 2000s with old school, electronic dance, hip-hop, and retro ballad influences. (If you listen to “Brand New,” it may remind you of Ghost Town DJ’s viral hit “My Boo.”)

A press release from SM Entertainment notes the title track’s lyrics “wittily express the determination to show a new, transformed self for the love of your life as if giving a surprise gift to a loved one.”

Aside from the lead single, the Brand New EP also celebrates the reunion between fellow labelmate Mark of NCT with their newest collaboration, “How We Do.” Compared to their first collaboration five years ago on SM Station (“Young & Free“), “How We Do” is a modern take on New Jack Swing with a message to push society’s boundaries to become the real versions of ourselves.

As of this morning, both EP and single, have topped iTunes charts all over the world.

Find the Brand New tracklist below.

1. “Brand New”
2. “Feedback”
3. “How We Do” Feat. MARK of NCT
4. “민들레 (Love Letter)”
5. “Serenity”