Category: Worldwide

Sarah Paulson and Ryan Murphy‘s upcoming project for Netflix just got a release date and a whole slew of first look photos.

Starring Paulson in the title role, Ratched acts as a prequel series to the 1975 classic film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Next. In doing so, it examines the early days of the character first made famous by actress Louise Fletcher. The limited series’s first season has been wrapped for almost a year now, just waiting for a release date, which is coming up very soon. Ratched will officially hit Netflix on September 18.

As for tackling the origin story to a cinematic classic, Paulson told The Hollywood Reporter back in October that Murphy hooked her on the project with the following pitch: “Lady, do you want to have some like Walter White shit happen?” From there, she was on board:

“What I found really interesting is that people prescribe such villainy to her and the truth of the matter is that she really was a product of her time. Part of the conceit of the movie is that you fall in love with all the men and their friendship, but you never want the killjoy coming in to say, ‘We have to follow the rules.’ But she was, in her way, trying to offer them help, just with devastating consequences.”

You can get your first look at Ratched in the photos below.

Here’s a look at the official poster:

And, finally, here’s the official synopsis:

From Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, RATCHED is a suspenseful drama series that tells the origin story of asylum nurse Mildred Ratched. In 1947, Mildred arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind. On a clandestine mission, Mildred presents herself as the perfect image of what a dedicated nurse should be, but the wheels are always turning and as she begins to infiltrate the mental health care system and those within it, Mildred’s stylish exterior belies a growing darkness that has long been smoldering within, revealing that true monsters are made, not born.

Ratched debuts September 18 on Netflix.

UK duo Disclosure is gearing up for their anticipated record Energy, which is due out later this summer. The group began teasing a comeback in February when they released a new song each day for five days, comprising the EP Ecstacy. After sharing a particularly violent video with Aminé and Slowthai, Disclosure return with a more tranquil number.

Disclosure shared a video to their track “Douha” which features vocals by Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara, a song they originally teased during a Boiler Room DJ set in April. Directed by Mahaneela, Disclosure’s “Douha” visual was filmed three countries using nine different locations with three separate local film crews. With the help of the team, the scenic visual captures rural areas and cityscapes in Como, Italy, Johannesburg, South Africa, and New York City.

About the filming process, Mahaneela said: “Right now, all over the world, we’re going through an incredibly strange time. I wanted to make something that was visually beautiful, but also felt symbolic of what we’re all going through. People feel more isolated than ever and I wanted to create something joyful that really shows the power music and movement has and the connectivity it brings.”

Watch Disclosure’s “Douha” video above.

Energy is out 8/28 via Capitol. Pre-order it here.

Conversations around travel are shifting rapidly. As social justice movements push our society to evolve, the colonial and exploitive aspects of the travel experience are being highlighted and called out. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has underscored both the interconnectivity of humans and the fragility of many of our systems. Plus it’s grounded us for the foreseeable future — make wanderlust-inspiring TV, when done well, all the more vital.

This is the backdrop for last week’s release of Rogue Trip on Disney+. The show stars longtime war reporter Bob Woodruff, who was injured in Iraq in 2006, and his son Mack, a talented young photographer. The premise is simple and representative of the generational conversations happening around travel right now — Bob wanted to show Mack the world he’d reported on and wash away any longheld stigmas about those nations. Mack wanted to have the sort of adventure he’d grown up hearing from his dad about.

To film Rogue Trip, the duo visited Colombia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and Ukraine in an attempt to re-evaluate media-driven perceptions of the places Bob had worked as a reporter. Also to eat, dance, and connect with locals — time-honored entries in the travel TV playbook. The result is a show that balances sweeping vistas and unique foodways with self-reflection set against a father/son backdrop. And while some of the heavier questions currently plaguing the travel world aren’t wrestled with here, the desire to find commonality in the human experience, especially in places that have long been stigmatized, feels deeply significant.

On the eve of Rogue Trip’s six-episode launch on Disney+, I spoke with Mack and Bob Woodruff about their experience of traveling together, how they approached the show, and the storied legacy of Anthony Bourdain.

I’m excited about this show and I think it’s a really interesting conversation to be having right now. What was the genesis around saying, “Okay, we have this opportunity to do a travel show — what we want to do is to take on places that, through the media, have become places Americans seem to have a certain level of xenophobia about, or have maybe been misportrayed, or portrayed as one-note”?

Mack: My dad has been in the media for more than 30 years, so he knows that this problem exists, and it’s something that he’s, I think, struggled with at times during his career of saying, “I’m in this beautiful place of Pakistan or Afghanistan, and all I’m doing is talking about the war that’s here. And while that’s incredibly important, no country can be defined by one thing.” So an opportunity presented itself, and I think the show was actually initially supposed to be with just you, dad, and then Disney+ came around. And I’ve been a photographer and a videographer for a while and Disney+ obviously has a very family-friendly audience. So we wanted to make a family travel show. I said, “yes!” faster than you could possibly even imagine.

I’ve been in travel media for a long time and I’ve seen how destinations get kind of stigmatized. What was the impulse to say like, “Oh, this is the story that needs to have a generational aspect?” Because I think that’s really cool. One of the things we’re seeing so much in society right now is that some of these generational learnings are handed down and they’re wrong, and they get carried out. So there was very much this aspect of the show for me, that is like, “I’m rethinking how we think things and handing new messages down.” What was the thought process behind that, or the decision-making behind that for you?

Bob: All of these years of traveling to places, there’s always… You can’t cover everything. You can’t see everything, so it’s hard to get a really good sense of the depth of the country. It’s not that simplistic. So you’re never going to be able to be successful summarizing a country and a culture, you know?

You can never accomplish it. What I do know is that a lot of times, I’ve always covered one side — a crisis, a war, starvation, environmental collapse. These kinds of sad elements, generally, is what makes news. But I have not been able to cover much the other elements that are not news, because they’re ongoing and they’ve always been the case in history. In this one, we wanted to create a little bit more of a balance for me and Mack, who sees the good and the bad, and just to tell the world that it’s hard to find the most amazing place because there are, as you said, almost propaganda around them.

We’ve done war reporting in the past, and though we’ve not done the other extreme side, you do see like the foreign ministry propaganda videos. Either one, a little piece of both balances out.

That balance lands you in a more authentic, realistic spot.

Mack: And I think your point about generations and why that is an important part of this show. I think my dad is almost 60 and I’m almost 30. And those two generations, for us, grew up in different Americas. And for the people that we were talking to in these countries, their country, when the older generation was young, looks different than the country that younger generation is growing up in. And in America, we kind of know what that looks like, but we didn’t know what that looked like in these countries.

In Pakistan, a lot of the young kids don’t necessarily have memories of what a war-torn or Taliban-occupied country looks like. And in Columbia, some of the younger generations doesn’t know what it means to live in a Columbia that’s a bit torn up from drug trafficking. So I was able to relate a little bit better with the younger generation and my dad a little bit more the older generation, but it’s important to tell both of those stories because every country is evolving and every generation, even after my generation, is different than mine. That’s a good conversation to be having.

Travel for me has always been so kinetic. Did you find that your travel styles and the way that you wanted to see things diverged or was there a lot of similarity and overlap there? Is that something that was in conflict on the road? I imagine that as much as you can reflect on it all now and go, “Wow, what a special trip,” were there things that were in conflict on the road?

Mack: Oh yeah. As our cameraman on the first episode, Keith Luzinski said, “All these trips are going to have a high dose of type two fun.” And type two fun from what he explained to me basically means during the time that you’re there, it’s not really that enjoyable, but it’s always incredibly enjoyable to look back on. So while we’re sitting out in these, we’re in a canoe for eight hours and we’re getting sunburned to a crisp, that’s not fun in itself — but it’s really fun to sit here and talk to you about it.

It’s cool to see it on TV, would I eat that bug in Columbia again, right now? Not particularly interested in it, but it’s great that I did it and I’m happy I did it.

In terms of our traveling style, my dad’s been doing this professionally for so long. So he knows, and he’s gravitated towards character stories and he understands that you can’t go to a country and just shoot the beautiful mountains and the crystal clear lakes and the foliage. You have to get some real down-to-earth human elements that allow the audience to relate. And I didn’t have that natural instinct when I got there, because I’ve been a photographer. And so I would just… things would attract my eye and I would want to go and show them. So my dad kind of had to reel me back and say, “Hey, this is like, that is incredibly beautiful. And we will have time for that. But first we got to talk to this guy and this girl and this kid about their experiences here and what makes this place so special to them, and then we can go and explore it a bit more.” That was something that I learned from him pretty quickly.

I like that. I would say that’s the reflective-versus-kinetic thing of a father and son that I was trying to get at. That was well put. Bob, did you have a different impression of that?

Bob: I just really think that, listen, these are beautiful places and I’ve been to them before when there’s huge, gigantic breaking news. And I think it’d be a real challenge to do a travel story in places like this that would really interest people unless it’s got some different perspective. And one of them is, I’ve got someone with me who can tell the story, who’s grown up in very different decades. Because I think we always assume when we’re old that everything we saw 30 years ago is probably going to be pretty much the same as it was 30 years ago. But I remember growing up and my father had no real idea what the personalities within certain countries were. I had to go to them.

I was addicted to traveling early on, I think partly because I did not feel like I was getting the true stories out of countries. And I think Mack and I have different ideas of what a country is before we go there based on our generations. So I think it was great to have a more balanced report that has come from two different perspectives.

Who were the people and what were the conversations across the history of travel TV that you both looked at and said, “Okay, these are touchstones or these are people doing it right. Or these are things we want to avoid.”?

Mack: I think if I had a nickel for every time my dad or someone on the crew brought up Bourdain, I’d be a pretty rich man. I think everyone, awe of what that guy did, in a lot of ways blazed the trail for maybe what my dad and I did together on the show. In terms of what other travel programs I consumed, I think, I mean, I gravitated a lot towards the Planet Earth stuff, and I’m a huge documentary fan. So 180 Degrees South, and those stories of incredible adventures are some stuff that I’ve always loved. But we really did set out to make something different. I think the father-son thing has been done before, but never on a travel show that looks like this, especially not with a foreign correspondent that’s been to war-torn countries a lot. So I don’t know if I answered your question fully, but…

You did! Bob, what were your touchstones?

Bob: I think I would just say that food has been an amazing entry point because people can relate to it. People can relate to food, so you can tell serious stories and bring real news to people. Someone like John Oliver, he’s able to use humor to tell stories and bring people to do it. I think sometimes, for me as a war correspondent to go back to a country I’ve been to before, it’s not going to be as easy to get people pay attention, but to have my son there, a guy with a perspective and also with reporting skills of his own, I think it seemed to open things up. I was able to, for me to learn a lot more and younger audiences have someone they can relate to.

Mack: I think that as much as Bourdain was a chef and his love for food was very contagious, his show wasn’t really a food show. They just use food as a way of helping to tell a story about a specific place. So I think we’re using the father and son thing as our version of Anthony Bourdain’s food — we were there to tell a story about a country, we used our relationship as father and son as the way that people can hopefully relate to that sense. Everyone eats food and a lot of people have kids of their own. So I guess that was one of our goals.

One of the things from travel TV that has been slowly rejected for 10 or so years now, and is now getting more quickly rejected, is this fine line between kind of “othering” cultures versus celebrating them, right? Where you go and you taste a food and you go, I think 20 years ago it was like, “Ewww, that’s strange!” And now it’s like, “Okay, this is different to me.”

How do you walk that balance between saying, “Hey, this is exciting and new and not in my lived experience,” but at the same time, “I’m not going to act like something is generally bizarre or weird because there are millions of people whose lived experience it is representative of”?

Mack: I think not bringing your value judgments to the table is important for that situation. I mean, we didn’t do a lot of exotic food tasting stuff, but we did find ourselves in pretty uncomfortable situations a lot. That was the goal of the show. But I wouldn’t say we ever cast value on that or felt like we were superior in any way, because we were American and our cultures are better than yours. That was not how we approached it at all, and my dad has certainly imprinted that on me at a young age that you can go to a really, really dangerous country, and if you act the right way, you’ll be totally fine. Or you can go to a really safe, perceived safe country and act in the complete wrong way and find yourself in dangerous situations. So it’s all about not imposing your values on someone else.

Bob, do you want to speak to that too? I think that’s an interesting one for both of you.

Bob: We didn’t really set out a plan of how to act or how do we approach our own decisions or how we accept or reject something that was introduced to us. I don’t think we had this as a plan of how to act. It was purely what our natural instincts were. I think that’s really what we ended up using. I don’t know what’s right or wrong and you watch it, you’ll see, if is a good or a bad way of treating differences in culture or something brand new to us from a new culture. But I think we have just pretty much… We played ourselves, we didn’t really… It was really much more news reporting in many ways. We were out there… We were not acting out a show. So I’m not sure there’s a lot that we can say other than that.

Anything you guys looked for as you traveled? Certain communities that you wanted to tap into? Mack, you surf, don’t you — did you find surfers on the road?

Mack: I am a half-decent surfer. I wouldn’t say I’m a surfer, but I’m on my way. For me, I had this idea in my head that I was going to try to play soccer with as many kids in the country that we went to as possible. So I actually packed, kind of in retrospect, was a silly decision, but I brought nine deflated soccer balls in my suitcase with the hopes of pumping them up on the street and getting a little game going with kids. It never quite manifested itself in the ways that I had daydreamed about, but I was able to give a few soccer balls away and make a couple of kids happy.

I do find that I’m always awestruck by how kids, no matter where you are, are really, they’re just the exact same kids that you were when you were growing up in the sense of they’re very full of wonder and curiosity, and they don’t have social norms deeply ingrained in them yet. And they don’t feel weird about pointing at me and saying, “Why is your skin a different color?” Or, “Why do you look that way?” Or, “What’s that big camera in your hand?” They just are incredibly curious, and I gravitated towards that a lot.

“Rogue Trip” is streaming on Disney+.

Buffalo rapper Westside Gunn has been nonstop in 2020: He’s already released two projects this year, Pray For Paris and Flygod Is An Awesome God II, the latter of which just dropped earlier this month. He’s not resting, though, as he already has another on the way: Today, Gunn has announced that Who Made The Sunshine, his third project of 2020, is coming out on August 28.

She shared the cover art — created by his daughter, WS Pootie — on Instagram and talked up the album, calling it his “best work to date.” He also noted, “I know soon I’ll be done rapping”:

“Everything I’ve done thus far has led up to this moment, when I said FLYGOD was a classic ppl didn’t see it at that moment, then I dropped Supreme Blientele and made ppl to start believing, then I dropped PRAY FOR PARIS and I knew I had my formula together and I was ready for my first major release album and now it’s officially here ‘WHO MADE THE SUNSHINE’ every project has been painted diff and with purpose, I know soon I’ll be done rapping but I have to give u WSG on a diff level this project I swear is my best work to date and I know it’s great bc it took me a week to make and not 2 days lol… but this is what HIP HOP is ALL about I feel young on this Album and I can’t wait until I give u this offering, I promise u You never heard ANYTHING like this on @shadyrecords […] this cant be compared to anything I’ve done beforE it’s IF ‘FLYGOD’ and ‘SUPREME BLIENTELE’ has a baby.”

This all comes after a busy 2019 for Gunn as well. He released his Flygod Is An Awesome God album, dropped his Hitler Wears Hermes VII mixtape, and, as part of Griselda, released WWCD.

Who Made The Sunshine is out 8/28 via Shady Records.

The music world suffered an incalculable loss today with the report that Philadelphia rapper Malik B, a founding member of The Roots, had passed away at the age of 47. The news was initially confirmed on Twitter by both Malik’s cousin, former CBS News correspondent Don Champion, and fellow Philadelphian Reef The Lost Cauze, a close friend and collaborator of The Roots MC who was well-known in the 2000s as a member of underground rap supergroup Army Of The Pharaohs.

Born Malik Abdul Basit in Philadelphia in 1972, Malik B was added to The Roots ahead of the release of their 1993 debut Organix and subsequently appeared on three of the band’s succeeding albums — Do You Want More?!!!??!, Illadelph Halflife, and Things Fall Apart. He left the group, along with several other longtime members, ahead of The Roots’ fifth album, Phrenology. Black Thought dedicated the Phrenology track “Water” to Malik B, detailing their meeting and his addition to The Roots.

Malik had guest verses on Game Theory and Rising Down, the band’s seventh and eighth studio albums, in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Twitter was quickly flooded with messages expressing condolences to the rapper’s family and fond remembrances of his contributions to hip-hop’s rich tapestry. Collaborators like Reef and Mr. Green and peers like J-Live shared videos and links to his standout performances while saying goodbye to the rap pioneer.

As of press time, The Roots’ fellow founders have yet to respond to the news but this post will be updated when they have.

With recent slots supporting Kacey Musgraves and Ray LaMontagne, Liza Anne’s music occupies a space that exists between the boundaries of genre. Merging elements of new wave, art rock, and ’90s indie grunge-pop, Liza Anne’s new album Bad Vacation is one of those records that captivates and doesn’t let you go until it’s over.

To celebrate the new album, which is out now, Anne sat down to talk Hillary Duff, Paris, and Adam Sandler in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.

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

My favorite emotional work.

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?

I would hope it’s attached to really good memories or memories where they felt themselves grow a lot or just windows of time where they really felt at home in their body. If my music could remind anybody of that feeling, that’s it – that is the point of it, always.

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

Either Brooklyn, Nashville, or London. Favorite city to be a person in though, that’s Paris every time.

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

This is hard to answer as just “one person.” So many people. I guess so far as the longest spanning inspiration – my Aunt Liza. I’m named after her. Her dedication to her art and her personal growth has been very pivotal to sit close to for my whole life. She is incredible. (@lizasnyderart)

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

Les Fabricants in Paris. It’s this big bowl of salad and potatoes and cheese and ham and an egg. I love this place. I’m sober now but their Sangria is homemade and very special.

What album do you know every word to?

Hilary Duff’s Metamorphosis

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

St. Vincent at the Ryman for her Masseduction tour. Also, Feist at Town Hall for her Pleasure tour ALSO every show I saw Kacey Musgraves play when we were on tour with her last year. She is unstoppable. I am so amazed by her.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

Whatever expands the music and whatever can be moved around – clothes are really important to me and have always been an external expression of an internal feeling – I use my clothes to sort of manifest a confidence and power that I don’t always feel. A really important thing though is that once I am on stage, I don’t want to think about my clothes. If I’m thinking about my outfit because it’s feeling weird or falling off my shoulder or the pants might rip, it’s distracting from the whole thing for me. I want colors, I want comfort, I want to feel like I could do anything.

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

On Twitter, Bernie Sanders. On Instagram, Bernie Sanders.

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

I feel like I’ve given Broadcast’s “Come On Let’s Go” a proper run on tour. I think I’ve worn it out. But I also don’t think that’s possible.

What’s the last thing you Googled?

“Top of the World” chords and then before that pictures of a 1980s Volkswagen.

What album makes for the perfect gift?

Father John Misty’s Fear Fun and Feist’s The Reminder.

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

Oh no, we had the worst experience at this Airbnb about an hour outside of San Francisco. Thank God we were refunded. I thought we were going to get murdered. We arrived really late. Weird dirty dishes were all in the sink and everything smelled like cat poop. The owner got mad at me for asking for a refund – which I totally get but it was like $300 to stay in a fire hazard. Anyways, we have stayed in so many cool places. But the bad ones are comical to look back on.

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

My first tattoo is three lines around my right arm. I used to draw that on my arm with a pen all through high school (so emo, so cute). It stands for notebook paper lines and it’s on my writing arm. Writing has always been a very easy way for me to find a home in my body

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

Harry Styles and Lizzo.

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

My boyfriend, Josh, bought us a cat when my depression was getting really bad this year. Also, just most things Josh does are very nice. I have a big fat crush on him.

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

Leave the religion and be soft with yourself in the process and while you’re working through it: anger is just the first room in the healing, don’t stay there forever. Self-love isn’t something to be scared of, believing in yourself is a good thing. You don’t have to morph into what everybody needs at any given moment, just be present, be kind and be the same you in every room. She is really special, stop ghosting her.

What’s the last show you went to?

This is hard because quarantine. I think the last show before this all happened was seeing Shane T at The Basement East. I fucking love his music.

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

Anything with Adam Sandler. I have a very soft spot for Adam Sandler.

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

Man, I don’t really want Kanye coming to my house for dinner right now. He’s having a weird moment. But, if he’s coming for sure – I’d make some bomb ass coconut rice and sweet potatoes with some kind of fish. I would hope the dinner would end with him not running for President. He is an impressive artist and entrepreneur, sure – of course, but that does not make for a President.

Bad Vacation is out now on Arts & Crafts Records. Listen here.

Tegan And Sara had a new music video to premiere today, and the sisters went about it in an atypical way. Instead of just putting the video online, or even just taking advantage of YouTube’s video premiere functionality, they created an entire TV-length, 24-minute special to give their “I Know I’m Not The Only One” video its debut.

Highlights include footage of the duo as high schoolers and the announcement of the Hey, We’re Just Like You (The Remixes) EP, which is set for release on August 7. As for the video itself, which starts at 12:17 into the special, it is focused on the sisters re-creating a high school photo shoot.

Watch the “I Know I’m Not The Only One” special above, and find the remix EP’s tracklist below.

1. “I’ll Be Back Someday (Tracy Young Extended Remix)”
2. “Please Help Me (Matthew Dear Remix)”
3. “I Know I’m Not The Only One (Shura Remix)”
4. “I Don’t Owe You Anything (Tim Mislock Remix)”
5. “Hello, I’m Right Here (Mija Remix)”
6. “I’ll Be Back Someday (Tracy Young Remix)”

Hey, We’re Just Like You (The Remixes) EP is out 8/7 via Sire Records. Pre-order it here.

Tegan And Sara is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

There’s always another road to travel when it comes to bourbon, and whiskey in general. Not that long ago, mash bills (recipes) for bourbon were fairly static and barrel aging was focused on toasted new American Oak. Then the whiskey revolution happened and now anything is possible — as a new generation endlessly toys with mash bills and boldly loads their juice into barrels from every corner of the world.

Angel’s Envy has been at the forefront of unique aging techniques for a decade now, and they just took it one step further. The latest Angel’s Envy’s release is taking their tried-and-true method of finishing their bourbons and ryes in port, sherry, tawny port, and rum casks to new heights. They’ve added the proverbial holy grail of international casks to their line up — the iconic and very rare Mizunara oak cask from Japan.

To the uninitiated, that may not sound like a big deal. But the specialness of the Mizunara cask cannot be understated. The casks are made from trees that are at least 200 years old when they’re selectively harvested. Older wood is harder to work with. So, it’s difficult for coopers to create the staves and form the casks. That rigidity of the wood affects the juice’s ability to mingle with the oak’s sugars and, well, age.

Meaning the whiskey has to spend a lot longer in the barrels. This expression spent two years in the Japanese barrels, after their time in toasted new American oak. All of which adds up to a very unique aging experience.

Overall, this is an exciting time to be a whiskey drinker. Though we haven’t tested the Angel’s release, we were lucky enough to taste an American whiskey that was also aged in Mizunara casks recently and it was phenomenal. The expectations for Angel’s Envy’s riff on this elite aging process are through the roof with good reason.

“After the two year finishing window, I expected the whiskey to have smoky, floral and spicy notes,” Angel’s Envy Production Manager, Kyle Henderson told Forbes, “but was surprised by the unique notes of apple we ultimately ended up with.”

(Via Forbes)

One of the most memorable moments from the second season of HBO’s Succession was undoubtedly when Kendall Roy (played by Jeremy Strong) honored his father with a cringe-worthy rap song titled “L To The OG.” But, thanks to Cousin Greg (played by Emmy-nominated actor Nicholas Bruan), “L To The OG” has a new competitor: Bruan just released a pandemic-themed anthem titled “Antibodies.”

Braun’s tongue-in-cheek single was created after he posted the idea to Instagram and implored fans to help with the instrumentals. After penning the lyrics, Bruan knew the song had to be of the pop-punk persuasion and drew inspiration from Blink-182 and Papa Roach. “Do you have the antibodies? / ‘Cause if you don’t / You better stay away,” Braun sings a the chorus.

Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in an interview about the track, Braun said it was originally born out of quarantine boredom. Braun was staying at a friend’s house in LA and planned on going on a date before his friends advised him not to: “So I was in this two-week quarantine away from even my friends in this house and I think my brain just started turning like, what would make this okay? Or what would allow me to go on a social distance walk with somebody? And maybe it’s the antibodies. And, obviously, just felt like a punk song because it’s the word antibodies … I knew it had to be in the Blink 182, Papa Roach, POD realm.”

While the single may be less than serious, the actor knows the pandemic is no laughing matter. Proceeds from the track will benefit two charities, Partners In Health And Cope. Partners In Health is a global organization that helps people in communities that don’t receive adequate healthcare and Cope is a non-profit assisting the Navajo nation in the midst of the pandemic.

Listen to Braun’s “Antibodies (Do You Have The)” above.

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

You might be familiar with our Indie Mixtape newsletter. (If you’re not, go ahead and sign up for that right here or below.) But what if you could also listen to our newsletter in addition to reading it each week? Wouldn’t that be a dream? Well, we’ve got you covered.

Starting on Friday, July 31, Indie Mixtape is pleased to announce a new podcast called Indiecast, hosted by our very own Steven Hyden and long-time music critic Ian Cohen of Pitchfork and Stereogum fame. Each week, Ian and Steven will talk about all the latest news in indie music. They will review new albums, break down trends, expose exciting new artists, and give you all the necessary context to understand what’s happening in the indie world as well as moments that established the genre’s canon. Of course, they’ll also pointlessly rank things — whether it’s the best indie albums of the aughts, the greatest Phoebe Bridgers tracks, or their favorite chillwave songs. True to its name, Indiecast has you covered on everything indie.

The show debuts on July 31, and there will be new episodes every Friday. Listen to the trailer and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.