St. Louis crooner Jordan Ward released one of the best R&B albums of 2023 in his debut Forward, snapping up attention with its single “White Crocs” and becoming one of the most exciting young voices in music today.
Now, he’s returned to announce its follow-up, Backward, and share the first single: “Smoking Potna” featuring Florida breakout singer Sailorr. In the single, Ward asserts that his “smoking partner” is the only person he smokes with, highlighting the special connection between them. “I don’t pass the blunt to no one else but you, baby / You can help yourself.” Sailorr doubles down on this sentiment, explaining that she may have low tolerance for the smoke, but she likes her own smoking buddy enough to put up with it.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Rolling Stone about the new album, Jordan said, “Coming up off the last project, I felt I had a lot of room to grow with the songwriting, as far as structuring [it,] having more clear takeaways for the songs.”
He says he wants “to keep the story evolving,” and to do so, he’s looked at the songwriting of legends like Donny Hathaway, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley, James Taylor, and Roberta Flack. The results will arrive January 30th.
You can watch the video for Jordan Ward’s “Smoking Potna” featuring Sailorr above.
Backward is due on 01/30/2026 via ARTium Recordings/Interscope Records. You can find more info here.
Colleen Hoover is on fire. Last year, the author’s book It Ends With Us was adapted into a Blake Lively-starring movie (even if the whole thing has been at least a little overshadowed by off-screen drama). She has two other movies, Reminders Of Him and Verity, in the pipeline for 2026, but before that, we get Regretting You this year.
The latest young-adult adaptation dives into the aftermath of an unexpected accident and how it shakes up a family. Among those portraying that family are Allison Williams and Mckenna Grace.
Ahead of the movie’s release, keep reading for everything you need to know before it hits theaters.
Plot
An official description reads:
“Based on the bestselling book, Regretting You introduces audiences to Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) and her daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace) as they explore what’s left behind after a devastating accident reveals a shocking betrayal and forces them to confront family secrets, redefine love, and rediscover each other. Regretting You is a story of growth, resilience, and self-discovery in the aftermath of tragedy.”
Director Josh Boone previously said of the film, “When I read Regretting You, I was captivated by the characters and knew we needed a partnership with an amazing cast to make it real. I’m thrilled to be joined by old friends and new to bring Colleen Hoover’s novel to the screen. I’ve been working for several years with the incredible team at Constantin, and my producers Brunson, Anna, and Flavia, and our plan is to make a classic that mothers and daughters will cherish for years to come.”
Cast
The movie stars Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Willa Fitzgerald, Scott Eastwood, Clancy Brown, Sam Morelos, and Ethan Costanilla.
“[My character is] pretty pure-hearted and to a fault sometimes — he is always trying to do the right thing, even if it goes against what his heart is telling him. [Laughs] I usually play either villains or very morally corrupt characters, which is also very fun, but it’s nice to play a character that is hopefully a little bit closer to who I am in real life. That’s been really, really fun to not start in a place where I feel like I’ve dug a hole for myself, and I’m trying to plead and beg audiences to relate to me and understand where I’m coming from. I can now start in a good place where audiences will hopefully be on board with me from the get-go.”
The first night of her Live From The Swamp in Chicago upheld the standard she set at shows like The Grammys, wowing fans who attended and setting online fans abuzz with some of the innovations captured by their smartphones. One moment that caught fans’ eyes (and ears) was Doechii covering Charli XCX‘s Brat standout “360” (a rap fave, clearly) blending it with her breakout song “Persuasive.” Other fans were amused to see Doechii selling K-pop-style light sticks at her merch table.
With 11 dates remaining on the Live From The Swamp tour, future fans will have plenty more opportunities to get their hands on the Doechii light stick, and see what other surprises she has in store. See below for the remaining tour dates.
Doechii Live From The Swamp Tour Dates
10/14 – Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
10/17 – Toronto, ON @ Coca-Cola Coliseum
10/19 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall
10/21 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem
10/23 – Charlotte, NC @ Bojangles Coliseum
10/27 – Atlanta, GA @ Coca-Cola Roxy
10/29 – Dallas, TX @ Toyota Music Factory
10/31 – Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall
11/03 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre
11/05 – San Diego, CA @ Gallagher Square
11/07 – San Francisco, CA @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
11/10 – Seattle, WA @ WAMU Theater
The last we heard from Courtney Barnett was her 2023 instrumental album End Of The Day, and before that, her 2021 LP Things Take Time, Take Time. Thankfully, she’s revving up a new era: Today (October 15), Barnett shared a video for the new single “Stay In Your Lane.”
The tune is carried by a buzzy guitar riff and she sings on the chorus, “Gotta get this off my chest / This never would’ve happened if I stayed in my lane, stayed the same way.” The video, meanwhile, isn’t for the squeamish, as there is blood.
Barnett also revealed she’s set to perform the song on The Tonight Show Starr Jimmy Fallon next week, on October 22.
Barnett hasn’t officially announced a new album, but she previously revealed that one is on the way. In a Guitar World interview from earlier this year, Barnett said of working on new music:
“Sometimes I find it hard to know [where I’m going musically] because I’m so into it, I’m just writing all these different songs and sometimes I don’t completely see the differences in dynamics in them or whatever. I’m working on a new album now, and the songs… I guess they’re kind of varied. It depends on the mood and energy that’s necessary for the song. Sometimes it’s not even intentional, I just have to follow. I like it when things move around and when everything doesn’t sound the same.”
At the time, she said she felt like she was “in the last quarter” of finishing the album and added, “It’s getting close and it’s feeling good: I’m feeling excited about it being a journey.”
Watch the “Stay In Your Lane” video above and find Barnett’s upcoming tour dates (“date,” rather) below.
Courtney Barnett’s 2025 Tour Dates
11/15 — Hobart, Australia @ Odeon Theatre (triple j 50 On Tour)
Charli XCX’sBrat tour is one of the biggest music events in recent memory, but don’t expect a tour documentary to surface, because Charli shot the idea down. Why? She thinks the market for tour docs is saturated.
That’s what she said in a new Vanity Fair interview. She said she didn’t feel like her experience didn’t line up with what’s expected of a music documentary, saying:
“I feel like my problem with a lot of musician documentaries is it often shows the musician coming up against some kind of opposition and eventually overcoming it to be the hero. And that’s just not been my experience, you know? Maybe it has been a lot of other people’s, and that’s awesome.”
She added of her movie The Moment, “It’s not a tour documentary or a concert film in any way, but the seed of the idea was conceived from this idea of being pressured to make one. It’s fiction, but it’s the realest depiction of the music industry that I’ve ever seen.”
Of making The Moment, she also said, “I always find it hard to sit down and look at things with distance, because I am always moving on to the next thing. I think that I process myself through my work. I’m writing about myself and my thoughts all the time, and my thoughts about what people think about me.”
Hope In LA Photography/Ethan Karlin/Ross Allen/Uproxx
From the moment you hit the sand at Same Same But Different (SSBD) festival at Lake Perris, the world turned technicolor. Paddleboards bobbed at the shoreline, sun shards reflected across the water, and that boutique festival energy that SSBD has bottled since its early days was on full display. This year’s two big performance sites — the Same Stage and the Different Stage — ran like a relay. No overlaps, no FOMO. The weekend’s biggest name headliner, Zeds Dead, leveled the beach with a set that swung from pop-culture winks to full-body catharsis; LSZEE (LSDREAM + CloZee) followed with that honeyed bass they’ve been perfecting, and Dr. Fresch kept the throttle pinned. Support was savvy: ALLEYCVT ripping frenetic pockets; Know Good pushing a live-instrument hybrid that felt custom-built for sunset.
If you went for headliners, you ate. If you went to discover, you still ate.
But the music is only half the sentence. SSBD treated the assembled adults (and a smattering of kids) to a hot-air balloon drifting over the cove and a secret shack called “The Corn Hub” that played on “corn” as the IG-safe word for “porn” and then sort of ran chaotically wild from there. Fire dancers stitched the transitions, and somewhere along the way the boundaries between performer and attendee fell away.
That’s the point. We’re deep in the co-creation era, and attendees were fully on board.
The little festival that could has also grown up. Attendance is intentionally capped around 7,500, and you feel it in the air: enough energy to surge, not so much that it swallows you. Camping was… almost quaint — real bathrooms and showers courtesy of the state park — even if the occasional empty sink or TP-less porta reminded you this isn’t a mega-corp production. “Fixable logistics” win over “corporate sprawl” any day.
But there’s another reason why SSBD matters this year: ownership. The festival just opened a community investment window via Wefunder, inviting fans to buy an actual equity stake for as little as $100 — not a VIP club, not a donation, real securities in the company behind the festival.
Does that change festival culture? Yes, and for the better. In a consolidation era where indie fests either sell or vanish, sharing upside with the people who camp, dance, and build the art cars feels both smart and progressive. If the cap table includes the crowd, decisions trend toward experience over bloat, and the community gains real leverage to keep the thing weird, welcoming, and human. Fan ownership won’t solve every growing pain, but at SSBD it reads like the natural extension of what’s already happening on the beach: the audience stepping onto the stage, not just for one set — for the long haul.
Three years after his last release, 2022’s Smithereens, Joji is back. His new single, “Pixelated Kiss” is a critique of modern dating, as he points out the inadequacy of digital interaction in comparison to the real thing.
“Pixelated kisses got me goin’ insane / Replicate this moment from a million miles away,” he croons on the chorus over a thundering, slowly dissolving trap beat. “Waiting for the signal, baby, nevеr make a sound / If you never hеar from me, all the satellites are down.”
After spending the first five years of his career on Warner and 88rising (at least, under the name Joji. Kid’s got a complicated story), “Pixelated Kisses” is Joji’s first single released by Virgin. With a new label deal in place, and his prior history justifying his buzz, the next year or so is looking up for the YouTube comic-turned-music star.
While Joji hasn’t released much new music since 2022, he has managed to keep himself in the spotlight thanks to a string of praised performances at festivals such as Hive and Bleached in 2023 and 88rising’s Head In The Clouds in 2024. He also played the Pandemonium Tour in 2023, which saw him book arenas across North America.
You can listen to Joji’s comeback song “Pixelated Kisses” above.
You can listen to Joji’s “Pixelated Kisses” above.
Sudan Archives put her heels to work in the high-fashion video for “A Bug’s Life,” the latest single from her upcoming album, The BPM. The video sees Sudan marching through the desert with a bouquet of balloons, and then donning a chrome bodysuit that Beyoncé would definitely approve of. The track itself transforms a soulful house beat with Sudan’s deadpan rhymes about a highly successful gold digger who “just hit a scam over 90 bands,” but can’t find love.
The single shows off just another facet of her upcoming album, which bounces from boisterous battle rap on “Ms. Pac Man” to silky Afrobeats on “Come And Find You.” Her diverse musical range — which she calls in a press release “Orchestral Black Dance Music” — will also be on full display as she goes on tour beginning next January. You can see the full dates below.
Watch Sudan Archives’ “A Bug’s Life” video above.
Sudan Archives Tour Dates 2026
01/16 – Tucson, AZ @ La Rosa
01/17 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
01/20 – Dallas, TX @ Trees
01/21 – Austin, TX @ Radio/East
01/23 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade Hell
01/24 – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
01/25 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
01/27 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
01/29 – New York City, NY @ Webster Hall
01/30 – Boston, MA @ Royale
01/31 – Montreal, QC @ Le Studio TD
02/01 – Toronto, ON @ The Great Hall
02/03 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement East
02/05 – Chicago, IL@ Thalia Hall
02/06 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre
02/07 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
02/10 – Denver, CO @ Gothic
02/11 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Complex in the Grand
02/13 – Portland, OR@- Revolution Hall
02/14 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune
02/15 – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl
02/18 – San Francisco, CA @ Regency Ballroom
02/19 – San Diego, CA @ Music Box
02/20 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
The BPM is due on 10/17 via Stones Throw Records. You can find more info here.
La Dispute returned with a new album, No One Was Driving The Car, last month. They’ve already done some performing behind it and they’re about to do some more, as they’ve just announced new tour dates.
The new shows start on April 17 before wrapping up with a hometown show in Grand Rapids, Michigan on May 9. Tickets go on sale starting October 17 at 10 a.m. local time and more information can be found here.
The band’s Jordan Dreyer recently told Uproxx of performing live:
“The beauty of how particular I am about my writing, about making every word perfect and constantly editing and re-editing, is that I go over it eight million f*cking times in my head. So I’ve more or less committed lyrics to memory through writing and repeatedly tracking them. But some songs require more effort than others, to not get in the habit of misremembering what I’m saying and reciting it incorrectly live. […]
There’s a lot of sitting in the green room with my headphones on while everyone was, like, hanging out and talking and getting ready to play, and just listening to our own band over and over again, which is pretty f*cking embarrassing. But the beauty of playing new songs and fucking it up is that no one else knows the words. As long as I don’t fully draw blank on stage, I’m fine.”
Find the full list of dates below.
La Dispute’s 2026 Tour Dates
02/18/2026 — Glasgow, UK @ SWG3 Glasgow
02/19/2026 — Manchester, UK @ Manchester Academy
02/20/2026 — Cardiff, UK @ Tramshed Cardiff
02/21/2026 — London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
02/23/2026 — Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg @ Rockhal
02/24/2026 — Mainz, Germany @ KUZ – Kulturzentrum Mainz
02/25/2026 — Munich, Germany @ Backstage Kulturzentrum
02/26/2026 — Vienna, Austria @ WUK
02/27/2026 — Budapest, Hungary @ A38
02/28/2026 — Prague, Czechia @ Rock Café
03/02/2026 — Dresden, Germany @ Beatpol
03/03/2026 — Leipzig, Germany @ Täubchenthal
03/05/2026 — Warsaw, Poland @ Proxima
03/06/2026 — Berlin, Germany @ Astra Kulturhaus
03/07/2026 — Hamburg, Germany @ FABRIK Hamburg
03/08/2026 — Copenhagen, Denmark @ Pumpehuset
03/10/2026 — Cologne, Germany @ Live Music Hall
03/11/2026 — Haarlem, Netherlands @ Patronaat
03/13/2026 — Stuttgart, Germany @ Im Wizemann
04/17/2026 — Madison, WI @ The Majestic Theater
04/18/2026 — Lawrence, KS @ Granada Theater
04/20/2026 — Dallas, TX @ Ferris Wheelers
04/21/2026 — Austin, TX @ Mohawk
04/22/2026 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
04/23/2026 — San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
04/25/2026 — Mesa, AZ @ Nile Theater
04/26/2026 — Las Vegas, NV @ 24 Oxford
04/27/2026 — Pomona, CA @ Glass House
04/28/2026 — Los Angeles, CA @ Belasco Theatre
04/29/2026 — San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
05/01/2026 — Seattle, WA @ Neptune
05/02/2026 — Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
05/05/2026 — Denver, CO @ Summit
05/06/2026 — Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
05/07/2026 — Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
05/08/2026 — Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
05/09/2026 — Grand Rapids, MI @ 20 Monroe
No One Was Driving The Car is out now via Epitaph. Find more information here.
Last month, Billy Woods and Elucid (collectively known as Armand Hammer) and The Alchemist announced their second album, Mercy. Due November 7 via Backwoodz Studioz and Rhymesayers Entertainment, the album is the follow-up to the trio’s 2021 debut, Haram.
Today, they’ve shared the second preview of the project, a track called “Super Nintendo.” As suggested by its title, its beat sounds very 16-bit (I can’t place it, but if anyone wants to let me know if there’s a specific game, feel free to reach out on social media), and Billy and Elucid rap their usual, densely-packed verses. You can check it out below.
Regarding The Alchemist: the Los Angeles native has had just about the busiest year of his 30-year career, beginning in January with the rollout for his project with Larry June and 2 Chainz, Life Is Beautiful. From there, he followed up with the ultra-exclusive Forensics alongside Yasiin Bey, then announced Abi & Alan, a collaborative project with Erykah Badu, right before releasing Alfredo II with Freddie Gibbs. Somewhere in all that, he had time to produce the return project from Mobb Deep, Infinite, splicing unused Prodigy verses into new or unheard beats featuring the late Queens rapper’s partner-in-rhyme Havoc to craft the closest thing to a perfect Mobb Deep album we’ve gotten since 2017.
Mercy is due 11/7 via Backwoodz Studioz. You can find more info here.
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