In February, fans of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Gossip Girl were shocked to hear that Michelle Trachtenberg had suddenly passed away at age 39. At the time, the CW alum was “believed to have died of natural causes” with no foul play suspected, and ABC News had added that she recently had a liver transplant. Deadline is now reporting that although no autopsy took place, an official cause of death has emerged:
“Following a review of laboratory test results, it was determined that Trachtenberg died naturally as a result of complications from diabetes mellitus, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner told Deadline in a statement.”
Trachtenberg began her career in Harriet The Spy, and her co-star, Rosie O’Donnell, previously reacted to her death with a tribute while adding that Michelle had struggled with health issues over the “the last few years.”
Following that debut, Trachtenberg rose to fame not only with Buffy and Gossip Girl but also a guest appearance on the HBO reboot. Despite her many roles (including EuroTrip and Weeds), most TV viewers remembered her best as Dawn Summers, sister to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s vamp hunter. A Buffy reboot, in which Gellar will make recurring appearances, is in the works, although it’s not known whether Trachtenberg was planning to reprise her role as well prior to her death.
50 Cent has been involved in many feuds over the years. The latest addition to the list that includes Ja Rule, Rick Ross, and Joe Budden: a new Netflix show.
Last week, Deadlinereported that actor Shane Johnson joined the cast of Nemesis, the new Netflix series from Power co-creator Courtney A. Kemp. The headline referred to the pairing as a “Power reunion,” as Johnson played Cooper Saxe in the original Starz series and its spinoff Power Book II: Ghost.
This did not sit well with 50 Cent.
Why Is 50 Cent Upset About A New Netflix Show From The Creator Of Power?
“Nah this ain’t it,” the rapper wrote in a since-deleted post on Instagram, according to Vibe. “A Power reunion with one cast member? I don’t know none of these [ninja emoji]’s. Ain’t nobody jackin this sh*t! LOL.” In the comments, Johnson replied, “Yeah, but bro… we’re talking SAXE! That’s enough, man!”
Here’s more on Nemesis:
Nemesis is the story of two men on either side of the law, the tale of what happens when an unstoppable force, expert criminal Coltrane Wilder (Noel), meets an immovable object, brilliant police detective Isaiah Stiles (Law). What starts as a series that aims to subvert the heist genre at every turn — amped with thrilling life-or-death stakes — family dynamics and explosive action, actually gives birth to an exploration of what drives us, sustains us and ultimately destroys us.
Like most 30-something rock dudes, Taylor Madison despises TikTok on a deep existential level. But he despises any job, other than being in a rock band, even more. So even if the Superheaven frontman doesn’t have the app on his phone, he begrudgingly appreciates what it’s done for his livelihood.
Flashback to 2023, and one of the biggest contemporary rock hits is Superheaven’s “Youngest Daughter,” a 2013 deep cut that sounds like 1993. Years and years of grueling tours and inane interviews failed to accomplish what the algorithm did a decade after the fact, earning Superheaven a gold single without Madison having to leave his couch. “I don’t like to do anything, so I don’t,” he states shortly after firing up a Game cigarillo in our Zoom conversation. “I’m the laziest person on planet Earth. I don’t want to do anything that’s hard.”
Arriving almost exactly ten years after its predecessor Ours Is Chrome, Superheaven’s self-titled third album is the sound of a band secure in their artistry, operating from an unexpected position of strength. The band’s 2013 debut Jar, originally recorded under the name Daylight, was a staple in the burgeoning “soft grunge” scene defined by Balance And Composure and Citizen; One of my favorite grunge-era factoids is that the videos for “Sex Type Thing” and Sunny Day Real Estate’s “In Circles” were filmed on the same soundstage, and “soft grunge” was basically the midpoint of those two songs.
Whereas friends and peers saw Superheaven as a successful band on account of having a record deal and “not playing middle school talent shows,” Madison and co-vocalist/guitarist Jake Clarke experienced that time as a Sisyphean struggle for survival. “Second LP, you’re like, ‘We gotta fucking go hard on this,’” Madison recalls. “We were pressured into doing a lot of shit that we didn’t want to do.”
The strain of saying yes, only to play shows to a dozen people, led to Superheaven going into quasi-hiatus in 2016. Madison and Clarke started Webbed Wing, which added a spritz of Lemonheads-style power-pop to the surly grunge of their main gig. Drummer Zach Robbins joined DARK MTNS, whose debut Up Above This Cloud is well worth seeking out if you like indie rock that sounds like mid-2010s Philadelphia. Though they’d play an occasional benefit and joined Balance And Composure for their then-last tour, “[Superheaven] was pretty dormant for that time,” according to Madison. “It’s not like we were ever like, ‘Yo, we should get together and practice for no reason at all.’ We would practice before a show because I forgot how to play literally every single song.”
The success of “Youngest Daughter” transformed Superheaven into a festival band in the ensuing years, as they played Manchester’s massive Outbreak Fest in 2022, leading into a 10-year anniversary tour for Jar. As they conceived a comeback album, they had not only leverage as a free agent looking for labels, but also the ability to engage in Madison’s favorite pastime: turning things down.
“We’re not afraid to say no, and so many bands are afraid to say no,” he notes. “I love to say ‘no,’ and then have our team listen.”
Superheaven exists simply because they can be more choosy about their touring regimen and, like many of the ’90s bands to which they were once compared, a sound once dismissed as derivative has become a staple influence for a wave of younger bands. And while their sound is certainly timely, the sentiment of Superheaven is even more so — song titles include “Stare At The Void,” “Cruel Times,” and “Numb To What Is Real,” and those are just the singles. Meanwhile, opener “Humans As Toys” has already convinced European critics that Superheaven do politics now. “I’ve been doing a lot of German press, and they really want to talk about it,” Madison jokes.
Isaac Bashevis Singer once said, “If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet,” but Madison flatly rejects the idea that he’s accessed any unique insight to the American condition, so much as the struggle of being himself. “I don’t want to leave my house, but I’m also like, man, I’m sick of being in my house,” he muses after I ask him how he plans to use the rest of his Saturday. “But every day of the week for me is kind of like that.”
Madison: Some stuff shows up in your feed because social media can tell you are involved with something. And I hate it. I don’t want to see any of it. I used to, because you work so hard on this stuff and you want to know what people think about it. I don’t know if this is the case for everybody, but I’m extremely sensitive. Way less so now. It used to be that if someone said something negative, it would hurt me bad for days. And now I’m just kind of like, whatever. But if I see the same person repeatedly saying negative stuff, I do plot their demise.
I often think about the times right after Elon Musk bought Twitter and the site kept breaking down, or those few days where it seemed like TikTok was going to be banned in the United States — a lot of people seemed ready to be relieved of the burden of participating in social media, since it’s so hard to force ourselves to quit.
Madison: Honestly, I feel that way right now. And I mean, we’ve benefited from social media at this point, obviously, but there’s just nothing on there that I want to see anymore. I open up Instagram and I might like two posts or watch six Stories or something, and I’m like, “Who gives a fuck?” And then I close it and open it up 20 minutes later out of habit, and then the same thing happens. And that’s the case with every app. I don’t have TikTok, maybe it’s because I’m 38 and I’m just like, ‘”his isn’t for me.” It’s surprising when I see some guy in a hardcore band that’s 50 years old and extremely active on Instagram. I mean, God bless him, but I don’t know what he’s getting out of this. I’m surprised that he’s maintaining some sort of relationship with this because I just like fucking hate it all around.
Clarke: I’m here for the tutorials. Like, how do I change the light bulb in this certain car that I have? And I go there and there’s some eight-minute-long video by a guy holding his phone. I’m like, “Thank God that you uploaded this because I’d be fucked.”
Madison: YouTube is a godsend.
I think a lot of people are worried about what would replace social media in their lives if they deleted it. Most people say “I’d meditate more” or something and they’re not sure they really believe it.
Clarke: Meditation would be nice. I wish I had that kind of brain. I try to learn how to cook every once in a while, but my wife’s so much better, so I just kind of end up cleaning dishes.
Madison: I wrestle with that exact thing. I would have deleted it by now, but I don’t want to be the person on tour having a conversation with somebody, and every 30 seconds I have to be like, “Oh, like, what are we talking about?” because my ass doesn’t have fucking social media.
Did you feel like Superheaven’s recent success overshadowed what you were trying to do with Webbed Wing?
Madison: Dude, I like it. I like the thought of creating a new thing and I at least try to make it different. My voice sounds the way that it sounds, so there are people that think [Webbed Wing] sounds like Superheaven. But I do notice with bands, they are really afraid to start from scratch again if they have any kind thing built up. I get it because it’s like, yo, you did a lot of hard work. You don’t want to do that hard work again, especially me. But it’s fun to have to create a new logo and a new identity. Music is the only thing I like to do. I would love for people to be like, “Oh, the guy from Superheaven!,” and then everyone loves Webbed Wing just as much, so when Superheaven’s not doing something, I can go do this and pick up [Webbed Wing] right in the same spot. But it’s not that way. But Jake has his separate things, and Zach has his separate things, and I do think all of us get enjoyment out of having these vacation homes.
Once Superheaven started winding down, was there a point where you started to think, “man, we might have to get day jobs from now on”?
Clarke: We didn’t really make any livable money out of it. But we tried our hardest, you know? Through the eyes of people who aren’t us, it was like, “Oh, you guys are successful!” But it wasn’t success when we came back home. I can’t afford to make six months of rent.
Madison: I don’t really feel like I have to do this anymore, but the amount of people I’ve debated that referred to Superheaven as a “successful band” before like 2022… I was just like, “We’re not successful in any capacity.” I know to the layman, it might seem that way because we toured Europe too many times. And I’m like, “Listen, it sucked. I fucking hated it.” I can let them slide now but once we stopped touring, all of us were like, “Well, time to get a job.”
What kind of jobs did you have in the meantime?
Clarke: I was literally directionless, so it sucked. But I was like, “People work in coffee shops, right?” So, I got a job at a coffee shop. I did a fill-in tour with Balance And Composure once and that was fun, but it’s weird if you’re not on tour with your band. So, “What do I get out of leaving home?” Nothing: You get to play some cool shows, but I don’t know what else.
And then I found myself doing AV work, and that shit was grueling. You need to wake up at 5 a.m. to set up for these business people and think, “I hate these people.” They make so much money and you’re running around like, “Is your lav mic okay, sir?” I ended up finding my way into doing coding and tech stuff and that’s been nice. It’s still internet stuff where I can sit at home.
Madison: We went on millennial career paths. Jake did coding, and I went with graphic design. And then once Superheaven started making money, I was like, “I’m not ever doing this again because I don’t like dealing with bands.” I don’t like them. I think that musicians are the worst fucking people of all time. I don’t want to debate what looks cool to a band member that has never had a cool shirt design before the one I presented to them. I’m not a customer-facing kind of guy, unfortunately.
But one could argue that being a musician is literally a customer-facing job, even if it is one where being antagonistic towards the customer might actually be a good business practice.
Madison: I think our band has a bit of an outward standoffishness where… it’s not like we’re unfriendly to anybody that approaches us. But the thought of doing a meet-and-greet, I’d rather lose two fingers, to be honest.
Even if the lyrical themes are similar to those of Jar or Ours Is Chrome, I sense a more self-deprecating, or at least self-aware, treatment of depression and despair.
Madison: I think it’s a little more hopeful, but I’m also more aware of everything going on. I’m just here doing my best. Speaking for myself, after recording like four LPs total between Superheaven and Webbed Wing, I felt like a lot of the lyrical content is “me me me me me.” I’m pretty inward-looking, and not necessarily in a positive way most of the time. I feel like I wanted [Superheaven] to be a little more broad and speak more in terms of my outlook on life and the world. I don’t know anyone else’s perspective, so I don’t feel comfortable making something that’s like, “He wrote this from George W. Bush’s perspective.”
I lived through that era where people tried to do that in the early 2000s. And man, those songs weren’t good. When you talked about the disposition being more hopeful this time around, what brings you a glimpse of a better future?
Clarke: I think my relationships with my friends and family and, as a band, our relationship is great, better than ever. That gives you hope in the world. I also got married and so it’s nice to have someone you can center [your life] around and you weed out what you don’t like. You don’t have to deal with as much bullshit as you get older. It’s like, hey, “I don’t like these types of people. I’m sure they’re very nice, but they’re just not for me.”
Madison: I don’t think I’m hopeful at all, to be honest. I feel like anything I think about after thinking about it for longer than like four minutes, I’m like, “Nah, man, I think that’s going to end badly.”
Superheaven is out 4/18 via Blue Grape Music. Find more information here.
Here’s some news that will make Jin fans very “happy”: the “Running Wild” singer is going on his first-ever solo tour. The #RUNSEOKJIN_EP.TOUR (yes, that’s the full name) will visit nine cities around the globe in Korea, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.
The title of the tour is a reference to Jin’s popular Run Jin series on BTS’ official YouTube channel. Here’s more:
As the series comes to a close, Jin expressed his desire to continue connecting with fans by meeting them in person. In this way, the title is also a representation of Jin running to meet ARMY (BTS’ official fandom) around the globe through the upcoming tour.
Ahead of the tour announcement, Jin — who last year greeted his fellow BTS member J-Hope after he was discharged from military service — announced the release date of his second solo album Echo. It arrives on May 16 and “offers Jin’s perspective on universal life experiences, capturing everyday emotions with warmth and sincerity,” according to a press release.
Pre-sale and ticket details for #RUNSEOKJIN_EP.TOUR will be released on April 22, but you can check out the dates below now.
Jin’s 2025 Tour Dates: #RUNSEOKJIN_EP.TOUR
06/28-06/29 — Goyang, Korea – Goyang Auxiliary Stadium
07/05-07/06 — Chiba, Japan – Makuhari Messe International Exhibition Hall
07/12-07/13 — Osaka, Japan – Kyocera Dome Osaka
07/17-07/18 — Anaheim, California – Honda Center
07/22-07/23 — Dallas, Texas – American Airlines Center
07/26-07/27 — Tampa, Florida – Amalie Arena
07/30-07/31 — Newark, New Jersey – Prudential Center
08/05-08/06 — London, United Kingdom – THEO2
08/09-08/10 — Amsterdam, Netherlands – Ziggo Dome
Lil Wayne’sTha Carter VI is set to land on June 6 and he’s going heavy on the collaborators for the new album.
A fresh Rolling Stone profile on Wayne notes that among the guests on the album are pop stars Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus. Also involved is Andrea Bocelli. Wayne said he flew to Italy to ask Bocelli if he could sample “Ave Maria,” but when the singer heard the story of Wayne surviving a self-inflicted gunshot as a kid, he decided to sing the song for Wayne.
Also involved in the project are Machine Gun Kelly, Elephant Man, Wyclef Jean, Wheezy, Kameron Carter (Wayne’s son), U2 singer Bono, and Kanye West. It’s noted, though, that Ye just produced one song that may not end up making the album.
Elsewhere in the piece, Wayne noted that after being disappointed because he was passed over for this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, he didn’t watch Kendrick Lamar’s performance, saying, “Every time I looked, it was nothing that made me want to go inside and see what was going on. He also said he’s not interested in playing his own Super Bowl Halftime Show anymore, saying, “They stole that feeling. I don’t want to do it. It was perfect.”
Lil Wayne has been vocal with his disappointment about not being selected to perform the Super Bowl Halftime Show earlier this year, given that it was in his home state of Louisiana. Not only did Lamar not do the performance, but he didn’t even watch it.
In a new Rolling Stone feature, Wayne noted he didn’t check out Lamar’s performance, but instead played pool and smoked. “Every time I looked, it was nothing that made me want to go inside and see what was going on,” Wayne said.
He also declared he’s no longer interested in performing his own Super Bowl Halftime Show, saying, “They stole that feeling. I don’t want to do it. It was perfect.”
Wayne previously revealed he had spoken to Lamar about the performance, saying, “He saw how much it meant to me, I think that’s all he means. Obviously, he can’t control that, you know? So he didn’t let me down. It ain’t like he can control it or nothing. And also, I’ve spoken to him and I wished him all the best and told him he better kill it.”
Elsewhere in the Rolling Stone feature, it’s noted that among Wayne’s collaborators for his upcoming album, Tha Carter VI, are Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus, Andrea Bocelli, Machine Gun Kelly, and U2’s Bono. It’s also revealed that Kanye West produced a track, although it may not end up making the album.
Before Joe Keery started making music as Djo, even before Stranger Things, he was in a band. The “Potion” singer was a member of Post Animal until he left in 2017 to focus on his acting. The sleek psych-rock group has released three albums since then, but now Keery has returned for their upcoming album, Iron.
“When we made [2018’s] When I Think Of You In A Castle, that was near the start of Stranger Things,” Keery explained in a statement. “And now with it kind of coming to an end in my own life, we all felt it’d be great to do something like that again, to go somewhere and be isolated and work on music together. It was a labor of love.”
Post Animal drummer Wesley Toledo added, “We all agreed that even if we went and just hung out, we’d be happy with it. We’re just heartfelt, sentimental, and emotional, but there was a real positivity and optimism among us.” He’s joined in the band by Dalton Allison, Jake Hirshland, Javier Reyes, and Matt Williams.
You can listen to first single “Last Goodbye” above, and check out the Iron album cover and tracklist and Post Animal’s tour dates below.
Post Animal’s Iron Album Cover Artwork
AWAL
Post Animal’s Iron Tracklist
1. “Malcolm’s Cooking”
2. “Last Goodbye”
3. “Maybe You Have To”
4. “Setting Sun”
5. “Pie In The Sky”
6. “What’s A Good Life”
7. “Main Menu”
8. “Dorien Kregg”
9. “Common Denominator”
10. “Iron”
Post Animal’s 2025 Tour Dates: The Iron Tour
04/19 — Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren **
04/21 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Rockwell at the Complex **
04/23 — Denver, CO @ The Mission Ballroom **
04/25 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee **
04/26 — Saint Paul, MN @ Palace Theatre **
04/28 — Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple Theatre **
04/29 — Toronto, ON @ History **
05/01 — Washington, DC @ The Anthem **
05/02 — Boston, MA @ Roadrunner **
05/03 — Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall **
05/05 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel **
05/06 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel **
05/07 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel **
06/01 — Dublin, Ireland @ 3Olympia **
06/02 — Glasgow, UK @ O2 Academy **
06/03 — Manchester, UK @ O2 Victoria Warehouse **
06/05 — London, UK @ O2 Forum Kentish Town **
06/06 — London, UK @ O2 Forum Kentish Town **
06/07 — London, UK @ O2 Forum Kentish Town **
06/10 — Copenhagen, Denmark @ Poolen **
06/11 — Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum Scene **
06/13 — Stockholm, Sweden @ Annexet **
06/16 — Cologne, Germany @ E-Werk **
06/17 — Berlin, Germany @ Huxleys **
06/18 — Warsaw, Poland @ Progresja **
06/23 — Paris, France @ Élysée Montmartre **
06/24 — Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso **
06/25 — Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso **
11/01 — Detroit, MI @ El Club
11/02 — Toronto, ON @ The Garrison
11/04 — Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
11/05 — Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom
11/07 — Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
11/08 — Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
11/10 — Washington, DC @ DC9 Nightclub
11/11 — Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room
11/13 — Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
11/14 — Nashville, TN @ Third Man Records (Blue Room)
11/15 — Saint Louis, MO @ Off Broadway Nightclub
11/17 — Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
11/18 — Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
12/03 — Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
12/05 — Dallas, TX @ Dada
12/06 — Austin, TX @ The Parish
12/09 — Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
12/10 — San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
12/12 — Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
12/13 — Seattle, WA @ Neumos (Barboza)
12/15 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
12/17 — Denver, Co @ Bluebird Theater
** supporting Djo
Iron is out 7/24 via AWAL. Find more information here.
Aaron Dowdy started writing songs because of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. It started at age 11, when his parents took him to a music festival in their hometown of Bristol, Virginia. The musical duo had recently released their seminal album Time (The Revelator), which young Aaron loved. But it was the song at the end of the set — performed with another famous Americana act, Old Crow Medicine Show — that left the most lasting impression.
“They did a cover of ‘The Weight,’ with everyone taking a verse,” Dowdy, 32, recalled. “It was so ecstatic, and I was like, ‘I have to write a song.’ It just hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Writing songs wasn’t exactly typical in Bristol, for 11-year-olds or anyone else. Even though Bristol is sometimes credited as the home of country music (or a home, anyway) due to The Carter Family’s roots there. But nobody in Dowdy’s peer group was playing music at the time. And as a Jew living in a community where the local synagogue drew just 60 members from a 100-mile radius, he was used to feeling like an outsider. As he saw it, “It was punk to write songs.”
Dowdy’s father — a devotee of Van Morrison and Neil Young who worked at the local chemical plant — encouraged Aaron’s artistic impulses. And he went the extra mile, procuring and setting up home-recording equipment for his son.
“Home recording was part of songwriting from the very beginning for me,” Dowdy said when I reached him in early April. “It wasn’t about playing shows, it wasn’t about having a band, it was about recording. That’s been my whole project for the past 20 years. It wasn’t until the last two records with Fust that I felt like the songs have become coherent enough — and I’ve committed to having a band for the first time in my life — where I’ve committed to playing shows.”
Dowdy is referring to the band he is currently touring with in support of Big Ugly, the excellent album Fust released in March. I caught the six-piece ensemble last week at Minneapolis’ historic rock club 7th Street Entry — a gig Dowdy says he was extra-excited about, and I don’t think that was just stage banter — and they put on a musically rambunctious and spiritually big-hearted show that felt directly descended from that fateful performance of “The Weight” more than two decades ago.
On record, the focal point is squarely on Dowdy’s songs, which marry hearty alt-country music with impressionistic lyrics infused with authentic small-town southern lore. He is especially fond of deploying regional slang that might be confounding to outsiders, starting with the album title (named after one of the record’s best songs), which refers to an unruly, unsightly creek. On stage, however, Fust has a communal band vibe that’s immediately inviting, starting with the interplay between Dowdy and singer/fiddle player Libby Rodenbough, and extending to the lively interjections of pianist (and long-time Dowdy collaborator) Frank Meadows.
Seeing Fust live only made me love Big Ugly more, and it was already one of my favorite albums of early 2025. It sounds like a potential breakthrough for a band that has been active in some form since 2017, when Dowdy — who currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, where he’s a Ph.D. candidate in literature at Duke University — launched the project as a songwriting vehicle that over time has evolved into a proper band.
There were no expectations of success or even minimal exposure at the start, though that began to change somewhat in the early 2020 when Dowdy hooked up with the rising indie label Dear Life Records, which started putting out MJ Lenderman’s music around the same time. On 2023’s Genevieve, Fust became something more than a home-recording lark, and with Big Ugly, Dowdy’s songwriting and collaboration with the other musicians has achieved full maturity.
With the success of Lenderman and fellow NC act Wednesday, Dowdy freely admits that Fust now has a shot at a wider audience. I talked to him about that, as well as songwriting, the southern novelists that have influenced him, and the meaning of “fust.” But first, please enjoy what will likely be one of the year’s very best rock songs, “Spangled.”
For almost 10 years now, I’ve seen this cohort of artists and songwriters who are part of what I would call The Bandcamp Generation. I’ve talked to many artists who started out recording songs, and then after they got popular online they formed a band and started playing shows. Basically, the inverse of how it used to work. That’s been Fust’s path.
It was like, “This seems pointless, it’s so big, music’s so wild, no one’s paying attention. Your best friends are writing the best songs you’ve ever heard and we’ll release stuff for you to listen to.” That’s what music was for me for the longest time, and it still is. My best friends are all my favorite songwriters and none of them release their music, it’s just they share it with me on private links. That’s the community I came from — no expectations, or the lowest expectations possible.
My biggest collaborator, Frank, started working with Michael Cormier at Dear Life Records, when they were just starting out as a tape label. Frank sent him some of my weird demos, and Mike really loved them. He was like, “Maybe we’ll put them out on this label I’m starting.” That’s what made the slightest change in things. Nobody in my world had ever been like, “Let’s start a label,” it was just about putting it out on Bandcamp. So, having that little sign-off from Mike at Dear Life was the changing point in a long relationship with recorded music for me.
You mentioned Time (The Revelator) as a childhood touchstone, and there’s a straight line you could draw from that record to your music. Have you always worked in this folk/country/rock vein? Or did you ever have an adolescent “ska period,” or whatever?
I always liked — not to be too crude — really fucked-up music. Like The Modern Dance by Pere Ubu. But I didn’t know how to write music like that. I always wanted things to be more complicated and not in the folk form of “here’s the verse and here’s the chorus.” I shied away from that for a long time. I had a period where we were downloading royalty-free music and trying to write the craziest songs over those. It was always just an experiment of recording, but I think the through line was always a love for song. That’s my form.
Singing along to Van Morrison songs was my real education. Same thing with Neil. Fust is the first time where I felt comfortable letting go of a lot of preconceptions that music has to be this wild thing and really falling back in love with the form of a song, a traditional form that I grew up with and that I’ve always searched for.
As a Ph.D. candidate in literature, you are obviously well-read. What authors influenced you as a lyricist?
Obviously, Faulkner was an early example of somebody that I read in high school. Larry Brown is another southern writer who writes character in a way that I really identify with, where the character doesn’t have to be somebody that is real and it doesn’t even have to be a character that has a lot of inner life. It’s a character who can be a meaning unto itself. Southern literature is always really great at character, and I am looking at character a lot in these songs.
I’m always looking when I’m reading. I’m trying to find what the song is. Robert Stone is somebody I’ve read a lot, and I’m looking at his writing like, “Is there a song that could emulate how he develops character?” The last couple records — I don’t know if you want to call it literary — but it’s using tropes that are shared with literature. I am trying to have the lyrics do something in a way that a novel creates meaning with themes. I don’t want it to be too highbrow, but that’s just naturally where I tend to go.
What most intrigues me about your lyrics is how they derive from this self-contained world. You use a lot of slang and jargon that feels colloquial and southern — phrases repurposed for song titles like “Gateleg” and “Doghole” and “Goat House Blues” and “Big Ugly.” I’m also thinking of the part in “Jody” where you use “heavy” as (I think) a euphemism for “beverage.”
Yeah, it could be. A hard liquor or a Bud. But it’s definitely more than that. There’s an old ballad called “The Frozen Logger” where the logger stirs his coffee with his thumb. It’s an image of a rough and careless physical gesture that, I think, opens up a lot. Calling it “heavy” is one of those words that should unlock more than just the idiom or the colloquial use.
It just makes me think about going to a small-town bar where everybody knows each other. And you walk in as an outsider and the room quiets for a minute. And then they go back to their in-jokes and private stories. Nobody is going to explain anything to you. You just listen and figure it out. Your songs feel like that when you use those local slang terms.
I guess they’re local. It’s one of those things that you forget are local until someone shows that they’re local by saying “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But yeah, a lot of those words — goat house and doghole and gateleg — make you feel like you’re confused from the start. They become expressive unto themselves just because of their nature of being odd or barred from immediate understanding.
You made Big Ugly with Alex Farrar, who has also worked with Wednesday and MJ Lenderman. You are all based in North Carolina, and from the outside it feels like a coherent scene that’s pretty exciting. As someone on the inside, however, do you see it as a scene? Or are you just a bunch of musicians who happen to live in the same general area?
It’s definitely more of a scene than it’s not, but there’s so many elements to it. Like, Jake and Carly are huge. I don’t want to say it’s a fluke because both are incredible. It’s just that they’re huge, so we’re dealing with a different scale there a little bit in terms of visibility and engagement. But there’s no doubt about it that they have made us more legible. Their visibility opened up a kind of legibility for us, for people to be one, what’s going on in that region, and also a kind of comfort with that kind of song and that kind of imagery. I think we are lucky that people really love their music because it seems to oil and soften people’s expectations to maybe also like our music. But I think of them first and foremost as friends, which maybe is what a scene needs, where there’s all these bands and no competition. It doesn’t feel like there’s tension. It feels like we’re friends, and I love to see them and talk with them and hang with them. And it just so happens that we all make music and people are hearing it, and we’re all from North Carolina.
Before I let you go, I have to ask about the band name. When I tell people to listen to Fust, I often get this quizzical look about what, exactly, “fust” is. So: What, exactly, is fust?
I started writing Fust songs in 2017, and I was listening to a lot of private press country records that sounded awful. We were trying to find the strangest, nastiest sounding songs. And then I was like, “I’m going to do a project where I write songs, but it’s going to sound bad. And it’s going to be part of a very minor tradition of home-recorded music.” I needed a name for it, and I wanted something kind of gnarly and ugly. A word that could appear to be offensive, but was not.
I was thinking a lot about my great-grandfather’s house in West Virginia. There’s a smell there, such a weird smell. As a kid, you’d go in, and it would be so disarming at first, this old musty, mildewy smell, and it became the most romantic thing for me. How can this nasty smelling thing become romantic? That’s fust. It’s got a fust. It just means a kind of gnarly old and unused lingering smell that, I think, is romantic. I love that tension between something that’s just not right, a little crude and is yet the romantic ideal.
Big Ugly is out now via Dear Life Records. Find more information here.
Chappell Roan‘s latest single “The Giver” is about, well, giving. “Ain’t no country boy quitter,” she sings. “I get the job done.” It’s this lack of giving from the country boys that made Roan realize she was gay, as she explained on the latest episode of the Las Culturistas podcast.
“The reason I say this is actually a huge reset for people, the way people talk about sex in this day and age is that it has been so divorced from pleasure,” co-host Bowen Yang (no, there is no feud between the two of them over that Moo Deng sketch) said, to which Roan replied, “That is my experience when I hooked up with men. That’s how I knew I was gay.”
When co-host Matt Rogers asked if it never felt like it was for her, the in-love “Good Luck, Babe!” singer explained, “It just felt so performative. To me, when I’m like, okay, service top is that you want to do service even if you don’t want to? I don’t know, I just want to do what my partner makes them feel good, and when I make them feel good, that makes me feel good.”
You can listen to Roan’s episode of Las Culturistas above (be sure to stick around for the part where she talks about being a guinea pig owner — it’s about time we got representation in the media).
Lady Gaga, Green Day, Post Malone, and Travis Scott are the headliners for Coachella this year, and they all took the stage for the first weekend. Now, weekend 2 is coming up, but it looks like it’ll be more like Weeknd 2, as The Weeknd is teasing… something.
On Instagram last night (April 16), The Weeknd teased a “Ferris wheel takeover,” having something to do with his upcoming album and/or filmHurry Up Tomorrow, for April 18, 19, and 20. “SEE YOU IN THE DESERT,” he wrote in the caption. He has yet to offer any clarity on just what specifically a “Ferris wheel takeover” will entail.
Either way, this will be his first Coachella appearance in a couple years, since he was a special guest during Metro Boomin’s set in 2023. He was previously a headliner in 2022 (alongside Swedish House Mafia) and 2018.
As for things we know more about, The Weeknd recently announced a new run of After Hours Til Dawn tour dates for North America that launch in May. Check them out below.
The Weeknd’s 2025 Tour Dates: After Hours Til Dawn
05/09 — Phoenix, AZ @ State Farm Stadium
05/24 — Detroit, MI @ Ford Field
05/30 — Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field Stadium
06/05 — East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife Stadium
06/10 — Foxborough, MA @ Gillette Stadium
06/14 — Minneapolis, MN @ U.S. Bank Stadium
06/21 — Denver, CO @ Empower Field at Mile High
06/25 — Inglewood, CA @ SoFi Stadium*
06/26 — Inglewood, CA @ SoFi Stadium*
07/05 — Las Vegas, NV @ Allegiant Stadium
07/08 — Santa Clara, CA @ Levi’s Stadium
07/12 — Seattle, WA @ Lumen Field
07/15 — Vancouver, BC @ BC Place
07/19 — Edmonton, AB @ Commonwealth Stadium
07/24 — Montréal, QC @ Parc Jean Drapeau
07/27 — Toronto, ON @ Rogers Centre
07/28 — Toronto, ON @ Rogers Centre
07/30 — Philadelphia, PA @ Lincoln Financial Field
08/02 — Landover, MD @ Northwest Stadium
08/12 — Nashville, TN @ Nissan Stadium
08/15 — Miami, FL @ Hard Rock Stadium
08/21 — Atlanta, GA @ Mercedes-Benz Stadium
08/24 — Orlando, FL @ Camping World Stadium
08/27 — Arlington, TX @ AT&T Stadium
08/30 — Houston, TX @ NRG Stadium
09/03 — San Antonio, TX @ Alamodome
* without Playboi Carti
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