Category: News

With their new album, Chicago quintet Varsity wanted to make music that was a little more danceable. Fine Forever is due out in just a few weeks, on May 29, and sees the band striking a perfect balance between the guitar-driven indie rock of their previous efforts, with a bold new step forward.

In anticipation of the record, Varsity singer/keyboardist Stef Smith, guitarists Dylan Weschler and Patrick Stanton, bassist Paul Stolz, and drummer Jake Stolz all sat down to talk Andy Shauf, Austin Powers, and wrist tattoos in the latest Indie Mixtape 20.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

Public Freakouts After Dark.

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

If people remember us at all in 2050, we’d be honored.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

San Antonio, Texas. Best fans ever.

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?

Stevie Wonder – His unconditional love of composition and music in general is something we all admire.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

Everyone in the band loves Szechuan food, so we’re always on the lookout for legit restaurants on tour. We were driving through Cleveland a couple of years ago and stopped at Szechuan Gourmet after seeing Cloud Nothings tweet about it. We ate way too much food and it made the 6 hour drive back to Chicago a lot harder but it was totally worth it.

What album do you know every word to?

The Party by Andy Shauf.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

Andy Shauf and Chris Cohen at Schubas. The loudest quiet show I’ve ever been to.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

We played with CHAI at a Pitchfork aftershow last year and they wore full costumes with hoods and danced in unison for the encore. It was the middle of July and it must have been 120 degrees up on stage – so badass.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

Ryley Walker has the best indie rock twitter account.

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

“Cloud 9” by George Harrison

What’s the last thing you Googled?

“Kinds of Potatoes”

What album makes for the perfect gift?

Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy A Thrill.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

Cat Pee Palace.

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

I got wrist tattoos when I was a freshman in college so that I could never get a desk job. Now my day job is a desk job 🙁

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

Tom Petty, Steely Dan, David Bowie.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Pat’s mom just donated to our relief fund on Spotify.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

Dance, dance, don’t be afraid to DANCE!

What’s the last show you went to?

Pool Holograph at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. We miss shows…

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery.

What would you cook if Kanye were coming to your house for dinner?

Nothing because of the MAGA Hat.

Fine Forever is out May 29 on Run For Cover Records. Pre-order it here.

Wonder Woman fans received some bad news when Warner Bros. announced that the studio pushed the release date for Woman Woman 1984 from June to August, which is still very tentative given the uncertainty of the current situation, so hopefully, this latest update from director Patty Jenkins will be just what they needed.

In a new interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar), Jenkins revealed that not only is the long-rumored Amazonian spin-off — focused on the badass warrior women of Themyscira — officially in the works, but she also has a plan for Wonder Woman 3.

“I’m not going to nail down a fresh thought about it until this movie comes out, because I kind of want to give myself a palette cleanser, and be fresh of mind,” she explains. “But yeah, there’s an arc that I have in mind for the first movie, and then the second movie, and then the Amazon movie, and then the third movie.”

While Jenkins has a plan for the Amazon spin-off, she “hopefully” won’t be directing it. Her goal is to take a more producer-level approach alongside her Wonder Woman 1984 co-writer and DC Comics veteran Geoff Johns. More importantly, she confirmed that the spinoff story has been pitched and sold, and she’s looking forward to getting it going.

This news will certainly make Connie Nielsen happy. The actress, who plays Wonder Woman’s mother and Queen of the Amazons Hippolyta, recently shared that she isn’t confident that Wonder Woman 1984 will hit its August release date due to the lack of a “remedy” for COVID-19. It’ll probably take the sting out to learn that she has another chance to reprise her warrior queen role coming down the road, and with the careful hand of Jenkins guiding the project.

Wonder Woman 1984 is tentatively scheduled to hit theaters on August 14, 2020.

(Via GamesRadar)

Nobody loves Michael Jordan more than Dennis Rodman. That much is evident based on Rodman’s episode of “Detail” on ESPN+, which arrived this week as members of the Bulls team featured in The Last Dance trade off breakdowns of the Triangle and what made those Chicago teams tick.

Right away, Rodman gets down to it. After a clip where Rodman finds Jordan for a layup off a backdoor cut — a perfectly executed Triangle set — Rodman says, “He’s god.”

Rodman continues: “We’ve got a very easy option, because you’ve got the greatest player in the world” standing as a decoy in the corner. After the defense over-plays Jordan, the GOAT jukes to the baseline and gets free for an easy layup.

And we’re off to the races. Most of the clips Rodman talks through are from an early-season contest against Dallas that include him operating as the play-maker in the post, a learned maestro of the vaunted Triangle. In reality, though, Rodman makes it sound as easy now as he made it look in his heyday.

While a contest against the anonymous Mavericks may seem a peculiar choice (Scottie Pippen didn’t even play in the game), you quickly realize Rodman selected this matchup because it shows him punking 7-6 Shawn Bradley — and, as explored in The Last Dance, he became more of an offensive focal point when Pippen was out.

“It’s very difficult to keep anyone that’s 7’6 out of the paint, I don’t give a damn if you’re 190 pounds, it’s very hard to keep someone out of the paint if (they’re) that tall,” Rodman says.

Rodman forces Bradley into bad shots, noting that despite being plodding and massive, Bradley played like a guy who was a skilled power forward. Rodman jokes that it’s obvious Bradley’s dream was to be a superstar who averaged 20 a game, which contrasts nicely with the buy-in that made Rodman’s career so special.

Transitioning from his defensive tactics on Bradley to his role in the Triangle, Rodman shows how he would turn one into the other as a player. He highlights a play in which Dennis Scott chucks up a poorly thought-out floater over the long arms of Toni Kukoc and misses.

Says Rodman: “Guess who gets the rebound? I do, of course. And then the first thing I always do when I get a rebound is take a dribble and just throw an outlet pass. I’m one of the few people in the world who can actually do something like this: Get a rebound and throw an outlet pass, a dead-on, spot-on outlet pass.”

Off to the races once again. Check it out:

It’s awesome to see a player whom we normally think of as defense-only break down the entirety of his team’s offense like this. Rodman just isn’t a guy that anyone associates with play-making, but time and again, he shows us how his brain helped keep the Triangle churning. All these years later, Rodman has a preternatural instinct for his teammates’ strengths and tendencies. He harps on the trust this team had built up, such that they were able to play at a high level, even without Pippen.

“Of course, I don’t want to shoot the ball,” Rodman admits. His job was to “be the bad guy” and hold things together.

Rodman is quick to admit, however, that Jordan sacrificed a lot as well. Rodman highlights another nice Triangle set in which Jordan has to screen for Steve Kerr to get open from deep as evidence. In The Last Dance, we see the process play out in the playoffs in the early 1990s, as Jordan begins to understand how he can create easy shots for shooters like Kerr or John Paxson based on how much attention defenses aim at Jordan.

By 1997-98, the season documented in The Last Dance, Jordan was operating at the peak of his Triangle powers, as much as piece of the system as the star around which it orbited.

When the Bulls couldn’t get a great shot or simply missed, it didn’t get much better than Rodman to clean up mistakes. Because he operated out primarily out of the post, and as Phil Jackson explained in the first part of this series, Bulls coaches mandated that two players hit the offensive glass on every possession, Rodman was constantly in position to gobble up misses.

“That’s basically what the triangle’s all about,” Rodman says. “Even when a play is broken down, we still form a triangle, and all of a sudden you’ve got a good shot.”

To be fair, it would actually be cooler to hear Rodman go into even more detail about his mentality on rebounding, though that’s something he’s done in interviews before. Maybe that would just be interesting for the nerdiest of basketball fans, and of course hearing him wax about the Triangle and the deity status of MJ is great, too.

The episode’s 16 minutes just felt way too quick. Rodman could go on for hours and most would listen, but until then, we’ll have to wait for the next installment, which sounds like it will be from Kerr.

Into the Dark is Hulu’s horror anthology series where every film-length episode is centered around a different holiday. There’s “Pooka!” for Christmas (and the sequel, “Pooka Lives,” for Easter), “Pilgrim” for Thanksgiving, and “Culture Shock” for Independence Day. Of course, there are only so many real holidays on the calendar, so Into the Dark has already based episodes around April Fools’ Day, the first day of school, and coming this June, my favorite week-long holiday, Pet Appreciation Week.

Variety reports that Judy Greer, Steve Guttenberg, and Ellen Wong are set to star in Into the Dark: Good Boy, or as it shall henceforth be known, The Murder Dog Episode.

The film centers on Maggie (Greer), a woman who gets an emotional support dog to help quell some of her anxiety. Only, she finds him to be even more effective than she could have imagined because, unbeknownst to her, he kills anyone who adds stress to her life… Guttenberg [plays] Don, Maggie’s “misanthropic but at times soft around the edges” boss, while Wong is Annie, a former baby-sitting charge of Maggie’s who recently moved to Los Angeles and rekindles their friendship.

The role of the emotional support dog will be played by Chico the Dog, who looks like the dog from Dog With a Blog, the greatest TV show of all-time. If Chico doesn’t talk (“My name’s Chico and you’re not the man,” he says, while crunching into someone’s nuts), I am going to write a strongly worded letter to Hulu. Directed by Tyler MacIntyre and written by Aaron and Will Eisenberg, Into the Dark: Good Boy premieres on June 12.

(Via Variety)

While calling into Howard Stern‘s Sirius XM show, David Letterman went double-barrel on Vice President Mike Pence after Trump’s second-in-command walked around the Mayo Clinic without a mask on, which left many people dumbfounded at the blatant health hazard. The world-renowned clinic requires all visitors to wear a mask to avoid spreading the deadly virus that’s currently forcing large chunks of the population to shelter in place, and yet, there was the Vice President starring in photo after photo as the only person without a mask.

Letterman, whose home state is Indiana, has considered Pence a “thorn in my side” for a while, and he unloaded on Wednesday morning while discussing the mask incident with Stern. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“Now if you go to the Mayo Clinic because you have COVID-19, you really have it,” Letterman said. “[Pence] takes time off from his gig as a mannequin, and he’s walking around without a mask taunting these poor people who are bedridden and wearing a mask. To me, that is just taunting people who are ill, to see that guy walking around in his $40 suit walking around in the Mayo Clinic without a mask.”

Letterman joked that he had intel that Trump would not wear a mask because his aides couldn’t figure out how to attach it to his hair.

Since the incident made headlines and became an intense source of political debate on social media, Pence has defended his actions by stating that he is “tested for the coronavirus on a regular basis” as is everyone around him. The vice president also said that he felt the visit would be “a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible health care personnel, and look them in the eye and say thank you.”

As numerous people have noted since the Pence’s blunder, the recommended masks only cover your nose and mouth, not your eyes.

(Via THR)

UK rapper Little Simz independently released her debut record in 2015. Ever since, the rapper has been remaining prolific and collaborating with the likes of Gorillaz, James BKS, and Yuna. Like the rest of the world, Simz currently remains quarantined in her home. But the rapper has stayed creatively motivated and is gracing fans with new music. Simz announced the surprise EP Drop 6 is arriving next week, a project the rapper wrote over the course of just one month in quarantine.

In a lengthy statement, Simz detailed how struggling with being in quarantined has inspired her to write more music:

“I don’t mind being alone. I quite enjoy my own company actually. However choosing to be alone is different from being forced to be alone and that’s where the difficulty comes in. You’re stuck with yourself, 24 hours of the day, 7 days of the week. There are only so many naps I can take in a day. […] After serious procrastination I decided to stop being a lil b*tch and cry baby and knuckle down on the EP. I gassed myself up, There’s no one else here, I’m alone, I had to. It started to feel good. I started to get really excited, wheeling myself up, spudding myself. I had to. Then I completed it. and when? End of the month just as I’d set out too. Things come full circle in the end don’t they? The middle feels like growing pains, self-doubt is a bitch and the only way out is through. Thank you for being the lights that you are. You’re all needed, valued, appreciated, and loved. Not just by me of course and I am sure I can speak on behalf of everyone you hold dear in your lives close to you. This is a turbulent time but we don’t fold. We don’t come from that. We will always be fine.”

Announcing the release on social media, the rapper explained the EP’s title.

Check out the Drop 6 tracklist below.

1. “Might Bang, Might”
2. “Not One Life, Might Live”
3. “Damn Right”
4. “You Should Call Mum”
5. “Where’s My Lighter” Feat. Alewya

Drop 6 is out 5/6 via Age 101.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Houston hottie Megan Thee Stallion gets a timely assist from her hometown’s favorite heroine Beyonce on the remix of her viral hit, “Savage.” After rumors of the collaboration circulated on social media for the past several days, the collaboration was confirmed by nothing short of the real thing, featuring a revamped beat and a guest verse from the Queen Bey, who both sings and raps, digging deep into her “Feeling Myself” bag for one of her most stunning bars yet. Proceeds of the track will reportedly go to Bread of Life Houston‘s COVID-19 relief efforts.

“Savage” is the standout single from Megan’s recently released EP, Suga, which Meg dropped in early March amid her controversial battle with her label. The legal battle was precipitated by her move to Roc Nation management — founded by Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z — and a back-and-forth that saw Megan and her label accusing each other of withholding funds owed to the other party. Meanwhile, “Savage” became a viral hit after TikTok users began to perform choreographed dances to the song, creating a craze that fed its overwhelming success.

Meanwhile, Beyonce has flexed her rap muscles more and more lately after her verse from DJ Khaled’s “Top Off” and collaboration with Jay-Z for their album Everything Is Love. Her contribution to “Savage” is one of the few she’s bestowed on a female rapper — the first being the aforementioned “Feeling Myself” with Nicki Minaj, who incidentally also worked with Megan on “Hot Girl Summer.”

Listen to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” remix with Beyonce above.

While she hasn’t fought in the UFC since December 2019, current Women’s Featherweight and Bantamweight Champion Amanda Nunes is staying plenty busy. She recently was featured in an episode of the Quibi series Iron Sharpens Iron (which she talked to UPROXX Sports about here), and she’s training at home in hopes she’ll return to the octagon to defend her featherweight championship later this year.

She’s also been going down memory lane, recently posting a video of her win against Shayna Baszler at UFC Fight Night in 2015 on Instagram:

Baszler is now a WWE Superstar, as is another woman who Nunes handily defeated in the octagon, Ronda Rousey. Was Nunes trying to send a message with her post? Sports Illustrated reached out to her with the intention of finding out:

“[Beating Baszler] was a huge moment in my career. It’s not about showing people that I hurt her, it’s a reminder to me about believing in my coach. My coach at the time wanted me to drop her with the leg kick, and that’s what happened.”

When asked point blank if she would have an interest in WWE, here’s what the 31-year-old fighter had to say:

“Not right now, but maybe later when I retire. I’m open to it. Why not? I could try something new.”

There you have it: Nunes/Rousey II at WrestleMania 37. Book it.

Earlier this year, Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats put their heads together and emerged with a clever project, Unlocked. It was first released as a short film/long-form music video, in which a collaborative album between the two leaks online, so the two have to virtually traverse the internet to recover it. The next day, they released the songs from the film as a new album of the same title. Now, Curry and Beats are dipping back into the Unlocked well, as they are gearing up to release the project in comic book form.

The plot of the comic comes courtesy of Psycho Films, and the 48-page book will be illustrated by Sam Hochman, Joey Prosser, Forrest Whaley, Justin Johnson, Chaz Bottoms, Malik Bolton, Rachel Headlam, Borboev Shakhnazer, and Asekov Tilek. Additionally, the book will include a vinyl flexi-disc insert of the single “DIET_.”

Additionally, an instrumental version of the album will be available to stream beginning on May 1, and it will be the first instrumental album from Beats. In a recent episode of his YouTube series The Cave, Beats said, “Unlocked is so much more than a few songs, it’s a feeling we all have For the first time I’m releasing my instrumentals because I truly believe these beats can live on their own. Put them on while you read the comic and stay tuned for part 2!”

Pre-order the Unlocked comic here.

On Monday, Lizzo celebrated her 32nd birthday and all the success she’s had in the last year. While the singer received a huge amount of support and love for her birthday from friends and fans alike, one birthday wish mattered more than the rest. The singer took to social media to share her unabridged joy after seeing that Beyonce had wished her a happy birthday.

On her official website, Beyonce publically wished Lizzo a happy birthday. The heartfelt post included an adorable picture of Lizzo as a chubby-cheeked baby sporting oversized yellow glasses and a bright pink bow. Upon seeing the post, Lizzo lost it. Filming a selfie video of her reaction, Lizzo shed tears of joy. “Beyonce wished me a happy birthday on her website,” she said while wiping away tears. “She knows it’s my birthday. Thank you, Beyonce. Oh my god, thank you, Beyonce. She knows I exist. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Along with sharing a candid video of her reaction, Lizzo thanked the pop star on her Instagram. “I don’t know how to ACT,” Lizzo wrote in the caption. “She is my inspiration to be a singer after seeing destiny’s child perform in the 5th grade… I LOVE YOU BEY!”

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