Category: Worldwide

Coco Jones chooses between hits from rappers like Doechii and Doja Cat, alt bands, and more in this week’s episode of Sound Check With Jeremy Hecht. While we’ve had some R&B singers before, even longtime fans of the actress-turned-hitmaker might be surprised by some of her choices. While Coco is best known for songs like “Other Side Of Love” and “Toxic,” her tastes run the gamut of genres, proving she has the range.

Here’s how it works: Jeremy plays two songs for the guest artist, who has to choose one and explain their choice, giving Jeremy a chance to learn their musical taste. Jeremy then has to guess the artist’s life anthem, the song they’d take to a desert island, which the guest wrote down earlier on a piece of paper. Our production team has also given him a decoy song, and Jeremy has to guess which is correct based on what he’s learned in the previous rounds.

When it comes to R&B, Coco’s more of a Jazmine Sullivan “Pick Up Your Feelings” girly than a SZA “Kill Bill.” Meanwhile, her pop palate runs more Justin Bieber than it does One Direction, and hey, when it comes to Doechii vs. Doja, she’s got a little more Swamp Princess in her than Tarzana troublemaker.

Watch Coco Jones take on the Sound Check challenge above. New episodes of Sound Check drop every Wednesday at noon ET/9 a.m. PT on Uproxx’s YouTube.

Everybody Scream, the first Florence + The Machine album since 2022’s Dance Fever, is set to come out next month, on October 31.

So far, we’ve heard the title track, and today (September 24), Florence Welch offers “One Of The Greats,” an epic rocker made with Aaron Dessner and Idles’ Mark Bowen.

In a statement, Welch says of the song:

“I don’t really know how to explain myself with this one, it was sort of a long poem about the cost of greatness. Who gets to decide what that is? Why do I even want it? Why am I never satisfied?

I feel like I die a little bit every time I make a record, and kind of literally nearly died on the last tour. Yet I always dig myself up to try again, always trying to please that one person who doesn’t like it, or finally feel like I made something perfect and I can rest.

Early in my career, I was consistently ridiculed and derided for the bigness of my expression. I was thrust into the spotlight but also told again and again I didn’t deserve it, or that because it wasn’t to their taste it wasn’t good. So maybe this is a 15-year outpouring of frustration. But also, a lot of the lines I just left in because I thought they were funny.

Me and Bowen from IDLES wrote it in one take. He played the guitar and I just sang it straight from the page. We meant to re-record it but the first take just had this amazing energy.

Then Aaron Dessner helped us take it to a truly transcendent place. I wanted it to feel like you were disintegrating into nothing at the end. Which is sometimes what the creative process feels to me. Death and resurrection over and over.”

Listen to “One Of The Greats” above and check out the Everybody Scream cover art below.

Florence + The Machine’s Everybody Scream Album Cover Artwork

Everybody Scream is out 10/31 via Polydor. Find more information here.

The All Things Go festival is celebrating a decade with All Things Go: 10 Years, a benefit compilation benefiting Jack Antonoff’s charity the Ally Coalition. Bartees Strange is doing his part by contributing a new song, “DCWDTTY.”

The track is inspired by DC post-hardcore icons Smart Went Crazy, specifically their song “DC Will Do That To You.” It’s not a cover, though, but a new song Bartees made with Antonoff. In a statement, Bartees explains:

“One of my favorite songs from people in this part of the world is ‘DC Will Do That To You’ by Smart Went Crazy. Content-wise, this song doesn’t have much to do with theirs, other than I feel like a big part of who I am is because of DC and what I feel like it did to and for me. This song is just me, wandering through the DMV — things seen and heard in a uniquely lovely and upside down place.”

Listen to “DCWDTTY” above and find Bartees’ upcoming tour dates below.

Bartees Strange’s 2025 Tour Dates

09/27 — Columbia, MD @ All Things Go
09/28 — Saugerties, NY @ AutoCamp Catskills
11/10 — Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theater
11/12 — San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
11/15 — West Hollywood, CA @ The Peppermint Club
11/18 — Grand Rapids, MI @ St. Cecilia Music Center

Philadelphia has always been a city of grit and resilience. From the corner bodegas to the arena stages, that hustle mentality runs through its veins, and few embody that spirit like Fridayy. The Grammy-nominated singer, rapper, songwriter, and producer has already carved out his place on platinum records and hit collabs with DJ Khaled and Lil Baby, and landed hooks with Chris Brown and Swae Lee. He’s earned the attention, admiration, and respect of legends (JAY-Z, Drake) and from audiences worldwide — a payoff following a marathon of patience and commitment to excellence that echoes the aging process of Rémy Martin V.S.O.P. That’s what makes Fridayy the perfect person to represent for Philly on Uproxx and Rémy Martin’s Sound of My City series.

Fridayy’s story begins far from the spotlight, in a home where his father, a pastor, kept a piano in the family room, and a 10-year-old kid found his voice singing gospel in church. That mix of discipline and faith has shaped Fridayy’s sound – a versatile blend of gospel, Afrobeats, Kompa, and R&B that refuses to stay in a single lane.

“I always wanna go left when people box me in,” he tells UPROXX spirits expert Frank Dobbins III over a cocktail inspired by his work-in-progress legacy. The pair sat down for the latest episode of Sound of My City series to celebrate his years-long grind.

From late nights writing in Philly basements to long stretches in L.A. honing his craft, Fridayy’s journey has been about putting in the time, trusting the process, and letting the results speak loudly and proudly. Now, he’s ready to raise a glass to Philadelphia’s resilience, celebrating heritage, home, and the refusal to stop pushing boundaries.

Watch the full episode above.

It looks like Coi Leray is gearing up for a proper return to the spotlight. After taking some maternity leave earlier this year, she delivered a stunning new single, “Pink Money,” alongside Bktherula and G Herbo last week. And now, just a few days later, she’s got a music video for the ballistic missile of a track, which finds her throwing ass and throwing cash at a strip club with her new compatriots.

The biggest beneficiary of the song might not even be Coi herself, though. Bktherula has come a long way from the first time we wrote about her back in 2021. She’s since found a niche and supporte from fellow women-in-a-male-dominated-industry Coi and Rico Nasty, and thanks to these co-signs from those pioneering peers, it might not be too much longer before we see her take a leap to a new level of stardom.

In the meantime, “Pink Money” suggests that Coi Leray might well be back on cycle for the follow-up to her last album, 2023’s Coi. While she did release a couple of EPs since then — Lemon Cars last May and What Happened To Forever? this February — the time is ripe for her to drop a new full-length LP.

You can watch Coi Leray’s “Pink Money” video featuring Bktherula and G Herbo above.

Indigo De Souza is fresh off the release of her latest album, Precipice, in July. But, she has some more business to attend to. She expanded her tour, adding new shows with support from Mothé, and to mark the occasion today (September 24), they have shared a new collaboration, “Serious.”

In a statement, De Souza says of the song:

“Serious is a reflection on overthinking — and trying not to! Reminders to myself, and from people I love, to loosen the tight grip I’m often holding internally.​ Life is a heavy experience, so it’s important to make time for letting loose!​ This song is about that moment when you decide you don’t care who’s watching, you’re just going to dance with your whole heart. It’s about trusting joy.​ I absolutely loved singing this song with my friend Mothé. They have such a beautiful voice and they are so fun to write with. I am grateful to have made this song with them, and really excited to hopefully sing it a few times on the tour we have coming up!​”

Listen to “Serious” above and De Souza’s upcoming tour dates below.

Indigo De Souza’s 2025 & 2026 Tour Dates

10/18/2025 — Columbus, OH @ Athenaeum Theatre ^
10/19/2025 — Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall ^
10/22/2025 — Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer ^
10/23/2025 — Washington DC @ 9:30 Club ^
10/25/2025 — Norwalk, CT @ District Music Hall ^
10/26/2025 — Boston, MA @ The Royale ^
10/27/2025 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall ^
10/30/2025 — Charlottesville, VA @ The Jefferson ^
11/02/2025 — Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel ^
11/05/2025 — Paris, FR @ Pitchfork Festival
11/08/2025 — London, UK @ Pitchfork Festival
03/03/2026 — Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
03/04/2026 — San Diego, CA @ Music Box
03/05/2026 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda
03/06/2026 — San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
03/07/2026 — Sacramento, CA @ Harlows
03/09/2026 — Portland, OR @ Revolution
03/10/2026 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox Market
03/11/2026 — Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood
03/13/2026 — Boise, ID @ The Shrine
03/14/2026 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Soundwell
03/16/2026 — Denver, CO @ Gothic Theatre

^ with mothé

Precipice is out now via Loma Vista Recordings. Find more information here.

Camila Cabello’s “First Man” has become a solid father/daughter dance song pick for weddings, since it sees her singing about the relationship between dads and their little girls. One fan who got married recently chose “First Man” for their big moment, but the day before, she happened to run into Cabello, who decided to turn up at the wedding and sing the song herself.

In a video shared by a relative of the couple, Cabello explained the situation to the gathered friends and family, saying:

“We were at our hotel yesterday, and I run into Kelli and her family, and she was like, ‘Guess what? I’m doing my father/daughter dance to your song ‘First Man.” I got to meet Kelli, I got to meet her family, I got to meet her amazing dad Mike. ‘First Man’ is a really special song to me; It’s a song that I wrote about my dad and about, you know, the moment that I get married — which, I have not been married yet. […]

We kind of planned this and it was kind of a little last-minute thing that we put together, and I’m really honored to be a part of this moment for you, Kelli, and I’m happy to be a part of specifically this father/daughter dance moment, because I’m such a daddy’s girl. And I feel like your dad, if you’re lucky, is your first love, is your first hero, and he’s a man that kind of sets the stage for the next man in your life. And I could tell from speaking to you guys yesterday that your dad loves the hell out of you.”

Here’s the video of Cabello singing “First Man.”

Shaboozey is on top of the world following a 2024 that saw his smash single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” become one of the most successful singles in Billboard Hot 100 chart history. He’s been bringing the song to the stage lately, too, as he just kicked off the Great American Roadshow tour, starting in Indianapolis on September 22.

The setlist (via setlist.fm) pulled almost entirely from Shaboozey’s hit 2024 album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going. The only songs performed that weren’t from that album were the Kevin Powers collaboration “Move On” (performed with Powers himself), a cover of Hank Williams Jr’s “Family Traditions,” and “Tall Boy” from Shaboozey’s 2022 album Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die.

Check out the setlist below, along with Shaboozey’s upcoming tour dates.

Shaboozey’s The Great American Roadshow Setlist

1. “Last Of My Kind”
2. “Anabelle”
3. “Blink Twice”
4. “Tall Boy”
5. “Drink Don’t Need No Mix”
6. “Vegas”
7. “Highway”
8. “Move On” (with Kevin Powers)
9. “Family Traditions” (Hank Williams Jr cover)
10. “Amen”
11. “Finally Over”
12. “Fire And Gasoline”
13. “East Of The Massanutten”
14. “Horses & Hellcats”
15. “Good News”
16. “Let It Burn”
17. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”

Shaboozey’s 2025 Tour Dates: The Great American Roadshow

09/25 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Philadelphia
09/27 — Virginia Beach, VA @ The Dome
09/29 — Nashville, TN @ The Pinnacle*
10/01 — Birmingham, AL @ Avondale Brewing Company
10/02 — New Orleans, LA @ The Fillmore New Orleans
10/05 — Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall
10/09 — Fort Worth, TX @ Billy Bob’s Texas
10/12 — St Petersburg, FL @ Jannus Live
10/14 — Fort Lauderdale, FL @ War Memorial Auditorium
10/16 — Orlando, FL @ House of Blues Orlando

I. “I DON’T DESERVE THIS/NOBODY DESERVES THIS”

Music critics like to do this thing where they point to an album or a song and declare, “This music captures how it feels to live in America right now.” And, often, I make fun of this. And you probably do, too. It just sounds so foolish and pompous. Because it’s almost never literally true. Art that aspires to capture “how it feels to live in America right now,” 99 percent of the time, is terrible. If it happens, it’s only by accident, which paradoxically undermines the allegedly “definitive” nature of the enterprise. Either way, most arguments about a particular piece of music capturing the national mood are rooted in faulty premises. Worse, it’s pretentious “music critic stuff,” ripe for derision.

Having said that: I have a song that captures what it feels like to live in America right now.

It’s called “Trinidad,” and it’s the first track on the new Geese album, Getting Killed. You might already know it — Getting Killed is among the year’s most anticipated indie-rock records, and “Trinidad” was the second single, released about two months before the arrival of the LP this week. Though it’s hardly an obvious choice for a single. It is, rather, a confounding sonic blob, a bad acid trip that sounds like a late-’90s Phish improv plucked from the middle of “You Enjoy Myself.” In the chorus — if it can be called a chorus — singer Cameron Winter screams, “There’s a bomb in my car!” And the music makes you believe him. The swirl of sounds, the bleeps and bloops and thunder and crashes, replicate the slow-motion sensation of spinning out in a cataclysmic car wreck. That feeling where your body hasn’t quite yet been annihilated but is keenly aware that total devastation is coming. A familiar premonition these days, to be sure.

“My son is in bed / my daughters are dead,” Winter intones. “My wife’s in the shed / My husband’s burning lead.” The details are so extreme and terrifying that it morphs into comedy as dark as a shark’s eyes. This can’t possibly be happening, you think when “Trinidad” is on. Though you were already thinking that, because — here it comes — that’s what it feels like to live in America right now. “Trinidad,” like our unreal reality, is ridiculous and horrific, numbly stoned and violently kneejerk, and on the verge of certain collapse even as it spins destructively forward.

After listening to Getting Killed for the past few months, I have no doubt that it is the greatest album of 2025. But I am even more confident that is the most 2025 album of 2025, the record that, by far, best captures how scary and chaotic things seem right now, in this age of smart robots and dumb authoritarians and passionately litigated talk-show controversies and memory-holed sex-trafficking conspiracies. Getting Killed nailed that “tragicomic horror show” vibe from the moment the video for “Taxes” dropped, when Geese depicted themselves playing for an audience of unhinged freaks who rip each other apart as the music hits an exhilarating peak.

That was back in July. At the start of fall, we are currently in full-on self-immolation mode. Threats, invective, limbs, bullets — they’re all choking the air like vultures. And now, finally, the appropriate soundtrack for the madness has arrived.

II. “ALL PEOPLE IN TIMES OF WAR MUST GO DOWN TO THE CIRCUS”

Getting Killed was made in Los Angeles at the start of the year. Outside, various American plagues lurked. They city was burning down. The former president was about to inaugurated as the new president. But from a career perspective, Geese were no longer, it seemed, a second or third-tier indie outfit, due to the growing buzz for Winter’s recent solo album Heavy Metal.

Geese’s previous two albums hadn’t exactly (pardon the expression) set the world on fire. The first of these, 2021’s Projector, had garnered some initial hype, though personally I couldn’t hear much to be excited about. In retrospect, my personal biases worked against Geese. They had been pegged by supporters as the latest “cool NYC indie-rock band,” an archetype that has long triggered my skepticism (even though I like a lot of bands in that lineage). Also, I had already pledged my critical support to a different band of waterfowl, the jam-band Goose, who I cast in my mind as the upstart to Geese’s Big NYC rock homefield media advantage.

Silly, I know. But I nevertheless found Projector to be a rather run-of-the-mill indie-rock record. And it turned out that Winter himself ultimately agreed. As he recently told Rolling Stone, “We just did a fucking facsimile of a copy of a goddamn rip-off.”

What I didn’t know at the time was that Projector wasn’t actually their first album. Their actual first album came out in 2018, when the band members were still in high school. It’s called A Beautiful Memory, and it’s since been scrubbed from streaming platforms (though you can still find it on YouTube). I get why these guys wanted to bury music they made when they were 15 or 16, but A Beautiful Memory is actually… pretty great? At the risk of perpetrating gross hyperbole, I think it might be the most accomplished music made by high-school sophomores since Alex Chilton sang “The Letter” nearly 50 years ago.

It’s also, admittedly, a blatantly derivative classic-rock pastiche, with nods to the all the typical blacklight poster favorites: Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Rolling Stones. For an outfit obsessed with being a true original — a potentially Quixotian pursuit for a rock band in 2025 — I can see it being an embarrassment, no matter how expert the execution. (Honestly, it’s the album that Greta Van Fleet will spend the next 30 years trying and failing to make.) But A Beautiful Memory does add some important context to the arrival of Getting Killed, which marks the point where Geese’s teenaged classic-rock scholarship comes full circle.

You can hear traces of Physical Graffiti and Sticky Fingers in the remarkably limber title track, where a bluesy riff bangs against the chants of a sampled Ukrainian choir and a hopped-up, arena-rock backbeat. The bombast also echoes through the rubbery funk of “100 Horses” and the delectably manic “Bow Down,” which spotlight the fluid and frenetic drumming of Max Bassin, the band’s secret weapon. On these tracks and elsewhere, Geese applies a funhouse mirror to guitar-based traditions and transforms them into exciting and exotic new shapes. Despite still being a very young band — they’re all still in their early 20s — they have fully internalized the rock syllabus and therefore can now move beyond it. Their talent is immense. It’s thrilling, honestly, to ponder how far they’ve already come, and imagine where they might go.

III. “AND TELL ‘EM GET RID OF THE BAD TIMES / AND GET RID OF THE GOOD TIMES, TOO”

A Beautiful Memory peaks with the penultimate track, a Gen Z spin on The Doors’ “The End” called “I Will Never Die.” Over several alternately suffocating and riveting minutes, Winter relates a story about a miserable old man tormented every day by “the same three little shits” who come to his house and beat him mercilessly. Finally, the man decides to shoot one of the kids and then himself, an early portent of the apocalyptic vibes emanating from their latest record (and, you know, everywhere else).

If I had heard A Beautiful Memory back then, I would have been an instant fan. As it is, I didn’t come on board with Geese until 2023’s 3D Country, which stands as the most purely fun rock record of the decade thus far. As of now, I think, I still prefer it slightly over Getting Killed, just for the sheer exuberance on display, even though the new album is a deeper and more emotional work. (3D Country is Boogie Nights, and Getting Killed is Magnolia.) In terms of laugh-out-loud unpredictability, nothing on Getting Killed can quite top 3D Country‘s third number, “Cowboy Nudes,” when the song explodes at the 1:10-mark into a delirious percussion breakdown, like something Roy Thomas Baker would have dreamt up had the produced Santana in the mid-’70s.

The most decisive artistic development on 3D Country was Winter’s ascent to “generational talent” status as a rock singer. Admittedly, this is a low bar, especially for male vocalists, who in the modern era usually sing like they’re trying extra hard to not be singled out for criticism or mockery. Winter, meanwhile, constantly risks failure as a singer. And, depending on your point of view, he succumbs to it. I am sure that anyone who reads this and ends up hating Getting Killed will do so because they can’t stand his voice. But for me, Winter’s fearless phrasing and operatic emoting (coupled with his natural charisma) makes him the first truly great rock frontman in I don’t know how long.

On Getting Killed, he constantly puts himself on the tightrope, caterwauling like a man trying to simultaneously channel Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart, and Julian Casablancas. And he actually pulls it off on “Half Real,” one of two songs (along with the hilariously titled “Au Pays du Cocaine”) that can be loosely classified as ballads. As was the case on the funereal-paced Heavy Metal, Winter starts “Half Real” in a pained warble that conveys a feeling pitched somewhere between a spiritual crisis and an epiphany, before gradually lifting his voice to an ecstatic purr that sounds like a woolly mammoth having a tantric orgasm (complimentary).

Again: I don’t expect everyone to appreciate the sound of a woolly mammoth have a tantric orgasm. But you must admit it’s not something you’ve heard before. And when did you last think that about a young, hotshot indie-rock band?

IV. “YOU WERE THERE THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED / AND I’LL BE THERE THE DAY IT DIES AGAIN”

I want to reiterate the last word of the previous sentence: band. Geese is a band. Along with Winter and Bassin, guitarist Emily Green and bassist Dominic DiGesu are critical components of the overall whole, their instruments melting into one another even as the music zigs and zags at unexpected pivot points. The pleasure of listening to Getting Killed derives from the harmonious tension of their ensemble playing, whether it’s centered on the lethargic groove of “Husbands,” the slippery dynamics of “Islands Of Men,” or the beatific jangle of “Cobra.”

And then there’s the closing number, the “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” of Getting Killed. On “Long Island City Here I Come,” Winter rides a barreling wave of barely contained noise, with Bassin, Green, and DiGesu plugging away furiously as the singer searches for a way out of our modern-day hyperreal nightmare. The quest proves inconclusive. What he finds instead is a religious vision: “And Joan of Arc she warned / ‘The lord has a lot of friends, and in the end / He’ll probably forget he’s ever met you before.’”

The band part bears emphasizing, as Geese is still best known for the (brilliant) solo record put out at the end of 2024 by their lead singer. Heavy Metal, indeed, is a mesmerizing listen, and the confidence gained from that “difficult” album’s rapturous reception has clearly carried over to the fearlessness of Getting Killed. But I also think Cameron Winter broke out ahead of Geese because, as a music culture generally, we are no longer geared toward glorifying groups. And I don’t just mean rock groups. Think back to the 1990s and recall how groups once also dominated pop, R&B, hip-hop, and country. Groups still exist, obviously, but they don’t capture the zeitgeist anymore. And that’s our fault as much as theirs. As we, the listeners, have retreated from communal spaces to tech-aided isolation, so have our musicians. Solo artists are simply more “relatable” now, as conduits that reflect our own limited IRL social circles and suspicion of outsiders. After all, how many of us ever stand in a pack of three or four people out in public anymore?

Geese, therefore, is the rarest of beasts: A great, young American band. Not a side project for yet another popular singer-songwriter with undeniable parasocial appeal, but a working unit where the members become something greater than their individual selves. Maybe it’s still possible to have faith something bigger, whether it’s a group of musicians or a nation, after all.

Getting Killed is out 9/26 via Partisan Records. Find more information here.

Cardi B fans waited more than six years for her new album, Am I The Drama?, but commuters in her native New York will be getting to hear her voice all the time now. Cardi’s teamed up with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to record a series of PSAs that will be played at subway stations across the city. The MTA posted an Instagram Reel following Cardi during the recording of the PSAs, which make clever use of the boisterous Bronxite’s over-the-top personality and instantly recognizable wit.

In one, she employs one of the Big Apple’s signature catchphrases, cracking, “We’re walking here! Steps are for stepping, not sitting. Move it, Bucko!” In another, she reminds riders, “These trains don’t move without you, so make sure you pay that fare and keep it real.”

It’s a fun and funny collaboration between two of New York’s staples, and another example of Cardi’s innovative album promo, which included her busking during a subway ride and selling albums from a station pitch. Meanwhile, Los Angeles’ Metro recently teamed up with the estate of one of its hometown hip-hop heroes, Nipsey Hussle, to transform Nip’s neighborhood station in his honor and putting his face on limited edition Tap cards.