A few weeks ago, Kevin Abstract and Dominic Fike released their joint single “Geezer” as a preface to a longer project called Blush. At the time, they teased that Geezer would also end up being the name of their group, which they made official today with the release of their second single, “Doggy.”
While Abstract had initially called the song “Doggystyle” in a teaser tweet about its release, it seems that they’ve toned down the imagery of the title. This could end up being a wise choice, as the upbeat toe-tapper certainly comes across less raunchy than the original title suggests.
As for Blush, the album wound up being the follow-up to Kevin’s 2023 album Blanket, albeit casting the Texas musician as more of a curator than the sole focus. The title also refers to the collective of artists featured on the project, which includes fellow former Brockhampton member Ameer Vann, rappers Danny Brown and Jpegmafia, Fike, and a crew of up-and-coming Houston artists.
Despite Blush being less than two weeks old, Abstract has already begun soliciting producers and collaborators for a sequel album on Twitter; you can find more info about that here.
Just days ahead of a headlining performance at the Essence Festival of Culture, New Orleans rap legend Master P announced that the set would be his last. After over three decades of setting the standard for independent rap hustle with his label No Limit Records and classic songs like “Ghetto D” and “Make ‘Em Say Ugh,” the man born Percy Miller will hang up his mic to accept a position coaching the basketball team for his hometown college, the University of New Orleans.
With Master P moving on from music, it’s a great time to reconsider his substantial musical legacy — and, perhaps, to speculate a bit on his future, which has ties to all the things he did outside of music. You know how J. Cole played pro in Africa and Canada? As we’ll discover throughout this retrospective, as with so many things, he was just following in footsteps laid down by Master P.
It’s a fitting career pivot for the veteran music impresario, who already had at least a pair of side quests into the sports world. In 1999, he was invited to play in the Charlotte Hornets’ training camp; although he didn’t make the roster, the opportunity turned into a second NBA stint with the Toronto Raptors the following season. He also diversified No Limit to include sports management, representing the New Orleans Saints’ Ricky Williams in his 1999 contract negotiation.
While other rap impresarios such as Jay-Z and Dr. Dre seem to get more press these days, it’s fairly safe to say that hip-hop just wouldn’t look or sound the same without Master P. Certainly, No Limit Records was one of rap’s first completely independent record labels, and its unprecedented success set the bar for endeavors from peers like fellow New Orleanians Cash Money Records and successors such as Tech N9ne’s Strange Music and Los Angeles-based Top Dawg Entertainment.
No Limit was spun off from No Limit Record Shop in Richmond, California, where P first sold tapes from himself and his small cadre of initial signees, which included Big Ed, Dangerous Dame, and Kane & Abel. The direct market success of No Limit led to its deal with Priority and relocation to New Orleans, where P signed many of the artists that eventually became one of the most iconic rosters in Southern rap: Mystikal, Mia X, Mac, Mercedes, Silkk The Shocker, C-Murder Fiend, and even eventually Snoop Doog, fresh from his falling out with Death Row.
Aside from putting New Orleans on the map as one of hip-hop’s most productive hubs, No Limit pioneered the borderline insane level of output we’ve come to expect from today’s rappers. Every time the label released an album, its jewel case booklet featured ads for at least four more listed as “coming soon.” Any discography printed online is almost certainly incomplete, as even the most ardent fans probably couldn’t tell you if every one of those projects dropped as planned.
Then there are the covers. There have already been extensive histories written about Houston’s Pen & Pixel Graphics Inc., the design company that photoshopped bling, flames, military tanks, strippers, and brown bears onto the covers of albums, generating some of the most ludicrous and legendary album covers in hip-hop history. This isn’t scientific, but there’s a nonzero chance that some portion of No Limit’s awe-inspiring sales numbers in the late ’90s and early 2000s were at least partly inspired by the covers alone.
The success of the label allowed No Limit to spin off into a diverse portfolio of industries, including low-budget films (a tradition that continues to this day with labels like Buffalo, New York’s Griselda picking up the torch), television production (hello, 50 Cent and G-Unit), book publishing, fast food (Rap Snacks!), real estate, and even a travel agency. There should be little doubt that P’s broad-ranging, omnivorous appetite for business laid a blueprint for so many rappers-turned-moguls to follow — and a map of pitfalls to avoid in the process.
At Essence Fest, P seemed reluctant to reflect on those days, choosing instead to highlight his ongoing and future endeavors, as well as partners like former Pretty Ricky member Spectacular Smith and Smith’s online business school, Spectacular Academy. The two also apparently have a joint interest in tech. He passed the mic to entrepreneur Jack Hutton, who gave away pieces from his designer eyewear collection to attendees. And he took care to direct attention to Syrita Steib, founder of Operation Restoration, a non-profit geared toward reintegration for incarcerated women, offering education, housing, and employment resources.
And as for P’s future employment: while I’m sure his experiences playing pro and semi-pro basketball and coaching AAU will serve him well at U of New Orleans, it’s his killer instinct that will probably end up determining his success there. During a weekend celebrity basketball game presented by The Battle of Jollof in which P coached Team Jambalaya, he demonstrated some real hoop psychopathy, instructing his team to press full-court from opening tip-off. Again, this was in an exhibition game featuring teams named after diaspora rice dishes, stocked mostly with actors and influencers. Kobe Bryant was definitely looking down grinning from ear to ear.
So if the next few years sees a rash of rappers suddenly jumping into coaching or commissioning their own basketball leagues, you can thank Master P. He may not get the credit for being the pioneer that he is, but just remember: if a rapper anywhere does practically anything other than rap, Master P probably did it first.
Alison Brie and Dave Franco have been married for years at this point, and here and there, their acting careers overlap and they work on projects together. The latest puts an extreme twist on relationship, as Together is a supernatural horror film exploring themes of co-dependency.
The film is a major one for Michael Shanks, as he wrote it and it’s also his directorial debut. It hasn’t been stress-free for him, as the project hit a bit of a rocky stretch recently: It’s facing a lawsuit over claims it plagiarized another movie, Better Half, which also explores the idea of a couple being stuck together through uncertain means. But, the two movies have one major difference, as while Better Half is relatively lighthearted in tone, Together appears to be anything but.
Ahead of the movie’s release, keep reading for everything you need to know before it’s screening in theaters.
Plot
The logline reads:
“Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie (Dave Franco and Alison Brie) find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country, abandoning all that is familiar in their lives except each other. With tensions already flaring, a nightmarish encounter with a mysterious, unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love, and their flesh.”
Brie also told The Wrap, “The movie is about a co-dependent couple who have been together for over a decade. They are in a little bit of a rut, and they move to the countryside, sort of away from their friends and community, and some weird things happen to them.” Dave Franco added, “This sounds like a relationship drama, and it is, but it’s also a full-on horror movie. The set pieces are like nothing you’ve seen in a horror movie. It’s very leaning into body horror.”
Cast
Brie and Franco are firmly the focus of the film, but aside from them, it also features Damon Herriman, Mia Morrissey, Jack Kenny, Sunny S. Walia, and Karl Richmond.
“This was great timing, I think, to do this project. We have acted in some things together, and by this point, Dave has directed me in a couple of movies, we wrote a film together. Our shorthand has gotten shorter and shorter to where it’s like a mind-meld, eye-contact thing. We’ve been together over a decade, so has this couple in the movie. We’re very selective about projects that we will act in together. We read scripts quite often, where we would act together, and it’s all about which one makes the most sense, and this one did.”
This week’s Sound Check With Jeremy Hecht is also a Sound Check with Tech — as in Tech N9ne, the Midwestern indie stalwart whose tongue-twisting rhymes have upheld the standard for lyrical excellence for the past 25 years. The Kansas City native takes on the challenge of choosing between carefully selected songs to display his taste, and once again, Jeremy has the unenviable task of guessing Tech’s desert-island fave, all while our production team tries to throw him off the scent.
Songs he had to choose from included entries from Outkast and The Doors, Too Short and Metallica, The Beatles and Slipknot, and of course, his onetime mentee Kendrick Lamar, who our team pitted against fellow Componite The DOC. The choices highlighted Tech’s diverse influences and the mind-boggling versatility of his own music.
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.
Watch Tech9 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.
They don’t make bourbon like they used to, but what if they did?
It’s a simple question, one posed by a group of American whiskey luminaries, now dubbed the “Distiller’s Council,” back in 1996, and now, in 2025, we finally have the answer. Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr. Distiller’s Council is the newest bourbon from Buffalo Trace, but what makes it so unique is that it draws its inspiration from the past. Utilizing production practices that date back to the late 19th century, when Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr. (the man) was running the show at what was then known as the O.F.C. Distillery. This bourbon features a recreation of his original grain recipe as well as Taylor’s fermentation and sour mashing process.
The visionaries in that 1996 group include well-known names in contemporary bourbon circles, such as Mark Brown, Elmer T. Lee, and Buffalo Trace’s current Master Distiller, Harlen Wheatley, among others. The group tasked itself with speaking to longtime distillery employees and other masters of their craft to try to hone in on what made old-school bourbon so special. Now, in 2025, we finally get to taste the fruits of their labor: A meticulously made hyper-premium bourbon, crafted in the Bottled-in-Bond mold that E.H. Taylor was integral in pioneering.
The resultant liquid is housed in a vintage-style Grecian glass decanter modeled after the Old Taylor bottle of yesteryear, one that was popularized through advertisements in the era’s foremost publications. This release, currently intended to be a one-off, marks the 14th entry into the Colonel Taylor portfolio and stands alone as the priciest expression to date. With an MSRP of $1,500, reflecting both the time it took to craft this whiskey and the high-quality packaging it comes in, one might give pause and ask, is the juice worth the squeeze?
While not as iconic as the Distiller’s Council itself, I was fortunate to be part of an exclusive group that was afforded a sneak preview of this whiskey at New Orleans’ famed Sazerac House in June. Keep reading for my full review to find out whether this whiskey, made in the traditional way, offers promise for the future, or if it’s a relic best left in the past.
Whether it’s the use of copper fermentation tanks, steam-heated barrel warehouses, or his advocacy leading to the passage of the landmark Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr.’s legacy is cemented in bourbon history. To honor the techniques that he helped revolutionize, Buffalo Trace created this bottled-in-bond bourbon using the same grain varietals as its famed mash bill #1, albeit with a revival of his grain recipe and his fermentation process, setting it apart from the rest of the E.H. Taylor bourbon lineup. Once it reached its peak maturity, this non-age-stated bourbon was bottled in a decanter modeled after Old Taylor’s original 1950s decanter, which itself was styled after ancient Grecian vases.
Tasting Notes:
Nose: The aroma profile begins with an outpouring of cedar and tobacco leaves. Once that earthy top note blows off, a robust base of honeycomb and underripe apples begins billowing out of the glass to greet the senses. Finally, notes of peppercorn, green tree bark, black tea, and herbal tea accent the air along with closing notes of sponge cake and maple candy.
Palate: On the palate, this whiskey follows the lead of its nosing notes as cedar, freshly baked biscuits, and tobacco leaves grace the tongue before swiftly receding to reveal green grapes and maple candy with some of those herbaceous and eucalyptus qualities cropping up at mid palate. It’s a grain-forward melange of flavors that weaves corn husk, nutmeg, and sponge cake notes with black tea and a rich butterscotch note, reminiscent of vintage bourbons.
Finish: The short-to-medium finish on this bourbon prominently features nutmeg, hazelnuts, and maple candy before tapering off with a touch of nougat, barrel char, and honey.
Bottom Line:
It may seem odd to say, but this whiskey very much tastes like a precursor to dusty bourbon. If you’ve ever tasted bourbon from the 70s and 80s, it tends to have a “dusty” quality and a rich butterscotch note that makes it almost immediately distinct from contemporary bourbon. Colonel E.H. Taylor, Jr. Distiller’s Council offers a similar experience, and though it’s more muted than standout expressions from that era, one can easily imagine it continuing to evolve to rival them.
Without wading too heavily into the debate over whether a whiskey “opens up” once exposed to oxygen, what’s striking about this whiskey is that you can actually taste the potential that it will improve over time and grow increasingly similar to “dusty bourbon” as it rests in an open bottle. While the overall experience is more grain-forward than the rest of the Colonel E.H. Taylor bourbon lineup, its subtle layers of supporting flavors are a success, as they offer insight into how bourbon was made and thus tasted during Taylor’s heyday.
The price is the price, and whether it’s right for you will be determined by the size of your bank account and your affinity for vintage-style bourbon. For $1,500, you could scour the secondary market for bourbon from yesteryear that will meet or exceed the quality found in this offering. However, suppose you want a glimpse into the future of bourbon production at Buffalo Trace. In that case, this modern-day example of the way whiskey used to be made is both eye-opening and exceedingly enjoyable.
Jay Som (aka Melina Duterte) has popped up here and there in recent years. She and Palehound’s Ellen Kempner teamed up for a 2021 album as Bachelor, she had a 2022 song with Troye Sivan, and she was part of the I Saw The TV Glow soundtrack, and she was a touring band member for Boygenius. As far as a proper Jay Som album, though, we haven’t had one of those since 2019’s Anak Ko.
Now, she’s making her return, as today (July 9), she announced Belong, her first album in six years. She’s not along, either, as the project features contributions from Hayley Williams of Paramore, Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World, and Lexi Vega of Mini Trees. Out now are two new songs, “Float” featuring Adkins and “A Million Reasons Why.”
Adkins says of “Float”:
“This song is about desperately trying to hold on to past versions of yourself for self preservation. The fear of the unknown is so overwhelming that sometimes the best solution is to sit with it instead of fighting or running from it. Melina is an absolute professional in all aspects of music creation. I am honored she had space in her vision for me to contribute. And it was a lot of fun to work on. Great song!”
Listen to “Float” and “A Million Reasons Why” above. Below, find the Belong cover art and tracklist, along with Jay Som’s upcoming tour dates.
Jay Som’s Belong Album Cover Artwork
Polyvinyl
Jay Som’s Belong Tracklist
01. “Cards On The Table”
02. “Float” Feat. Jim Adkins
03. “What You Need”
04. “Appointments”
05. “Drop A”
06. “Past Lives” Feat. Hayley Williams
07. “D.H.”
08. “Casino Stars”
09. “Meander/Sprouting Wings”
10. “A Million Reasons Why”
11. “Want It All”
Jay Som’s 2025 Tour Dates
07/25 — Philadelphia, PA @ FDR Park %#
07/26 — Columbus, OH @ KEMBA Live! #
07/27 — Milwaukee, WI @ Riverside Theater #
07/29 — Detroit, MI @ Masonic Temple Theatre #
07/30 — Lewiston, NY @ Artpark Mainstage Theater #
08/02 — Shelburne, VT @ The Green at Shelburne Museum #
08/08 — Troutdale, OR — Edgefield Amphitheater #
08/09 — Boise, ID — Morrison Center #
08/10 — Carnation, WA — Remlinger Farms #
08/12 — Vancouver, BC — Queen Elizabeth Theatre #
08/13 — Vancouver, BC — Queen Elizabeth Theatre #
08/16 — Berkeley, CA — The Greek Theatre #
10/31-11/01 — Amsterdam, NE @ London Calling @ Paradiso
11/03 — Berlin, DE @ Kantine am Berghain
11/06 — Brussels, BE @ Botanique, Rotonde
11/05 — Paris, France @ Pitchfork Paris @ Le Trabendo
11/08 — London, UK @ Pitchfork London
11/23 — Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey
12/02 — Austin, TX @ The Parish
12/03 — Dallas, TX @ Club Dada
12/05 — Atlanta, GA @ Aisle 5
12/08 — Washington, DC @ Atlantis
12/09 — Philadelphia, PA @ Foundry
12/11 — New York, NY @ Warsaw
12/12 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Hall
12/13 — Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
12/14 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
% with Hop Along
# with Lucy Dacus
Belong is out 10/10 via Polyvinyl. Find more information here.
Getty Image/Merle Cooper / Essence Festival Of Culture
New Orleans is known for a few things, but somewhere at the top of the list is its food. Local cuisine is one of the most cited reasons for New Orleans’ booming tourism trade, and it has some of the most recognizable regional dishes in American cuisine. If you’re going to NOLA, you’re going for the gumbo, the jambalaya, the po boys, and the beignets. With a Creole grandmother, it’s the food I find myself pining for most that’s hardest to get here in LA.
But while in The Big Easy for the 2025 Essence Festival of Culture, I discovered at least one surprising addition to the usual roundup of local New Orleans fare after taking a gamble on a recommendation from — where else? — TikTok. It was a reminder for me that sometimes, the most magic can be found off the beaten path, by getting away from the “must try” tourist traps and taking the local view of any so-called destination city.
But first, I had to try the offerings from the Essence Festival itself. After all, the Festival was the whole reason for the trip, and there’s no easier way to catalog all the possibilities of New Orleans’ local food scene than by hitting the convention floor’s food court, where over a dozen of the parish’s local vendors had been assembled to purvey a variety of takes on the Creole and Cajun cuisine that makes up the city’s staples.
Aaron Williams
Choosing from the proffered assortment of catfish, fried chicken, sausages, and sweet treats proved to be a challenge, though. After all, one only has so much stomach space, and as seafood made up the bulk of the options on call, very little of any given plate would have survived the heat and humidity of the 30-minute walk back to my hotel (or a night spent in the room’s mini-fridge, for that matter).
Eventually, I settled on an establishment serving one of everything. From Finger Lickin’, a combo plate of catfish, fried shrimp, and fried chicken sufficed for the first day’s lunch, accompanied by a healthy slathering of yum yum sauce, the sweet and tangy condiment that often accompanies dishes from the proliferation of “hibachi”-style establishments that have popped up in New Orleans over the past several decades. All three proteins were perfectly crispy, and seasoned the way only southern cooking can be — not too salty, though, with a zing that would keep anyone diving back for more.
And look, I could have gone more adventurous — think catfish soule, seafood eggrolls, or oxtail plates — but I’ve always believed the best way to get a read on what a restaurant or municipality does well food-wise is to order the thing they do the most. If you’re in Texas, get barbecue. If you’re trying a Thai place for the first time, it’s hard to go wrong with pad see ew. And at Essence Festival, that three-way plate was absolutely a home run.
I have no scientific evidence to support this, but I’m fairly certain that that New Orleans accent makes food taste at least 36% better. If the person serving it calls you “baybeh” as they hand you the container, it’s going to kick. That was the case on day one with Finger Lickin’s three-way, and on day two, when I opted for crawfish pasta from NOLA Creole Cookery, a spicy, creamy combination that opened my sinuses with a blast of pepper. My only regret is that there was no way to get it back to California.
Beyond the festival, the awe-inspiring variety ranged from local historical icon Cafe Du Monde for its world-famous beignets and café au lait to a dive bar called Parasol for a shrimp po boy that put a brother in touch with the ancestors. A quirky breakfast nook called Ironworks felt more in line with a Silver Lake hipster hot spot, but served up a savory crêpe with prosciutto and apricot jam that could only be described as divine. Sweet and savory are flavors that have always gone together, and here, both were turned up to the max, with the tangy jam taking the edge.
Aaron Williams
But that place TikTok sent me to was the highlight of the trip. Now, taking recommendations from TikTok is an iffy proposition at best; I’ve lost count of the trendy spots it’s landed me at in Los Angeles that ranged from overpriced “meh” to “barely worth the wait” delicious, but Acamaya, an upscale regional Mexican spot just north of the French Quarter, proved to be everything those wannabe influencers promised.
Built around coastal Mexican go-tos like roast octopus (soft and chewy without being rubbery as octopus can so often be) and aguachile (bright, tangy, addictive), its carne asada was probably one of the best steaks I’ve had in months, with a light, friendly atmosphere that clashed a bit with the homey casualness of the down-to-earth service I experienced elsewhere in New Orleans (I joked in my festival recap that almost no counter clerk was nice for the entire weekend, although there was a familial familiarity to the whole frustrating procedure). But Acamaya’s café de olla (slightly sweet, with hints of cinnamon, cardamom, and chives) would have made the trip worth the cost of a ticket by itself.
The Essence Food and Wine Festival offerings included panels with well-known chefs and restaurateurs like Kevin Hart, Patty LaBelle, Marcus Samuelsson, Ghetto Gastro, and the like, and if you’re someone who loves Food Network and Netflix cooking shows, that programming looked interesting from the few times I popped my head in. But when it comes to food, I’m Kevin Garnett from Uncut Gems: “Why the f*ck would you show me something if I couldn’t have it then?” Fortunately for me, New Orleans and the Essence Festival of Culture had plenty for me to see AND eat. I left satisfied.
As a music critic, I’ve always been fascinated by “popular but not famous” bands. The type of act that manages to achieve tangible success without exactly becoming a household name. For years, these bands typically derived from genres marginalized in the mainstream — metal, prog, the jam-band scene, and so on. But in the streaming age, “popular but not famous” acts have become more common across the board, as it’s now easier to quantify popularity (streaming numbers, ticket sales, social media followers) and also harder to achieve true cultural ubiquity.
In the indie-rock space, the defining example of this phenomenon for me is the Los Angeles group Lord Huron. Formed in 2010, they have made five albums, including the forthcoming The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1, due July 18. It’s possible you have heard of them, but I bet it’s more likely that you have heard them without knowing that it’s Lord Huron. Their most streamed song is “The Night We Met,” a dreamy country-rock ballad that closes their second record, 2015’s Strange Trails. But it didn’t reach a mass audience until two years later, when it was featured on the much-watched Netflix teen drama 13 Reasons Why. At that point, “The Night We Met” entered the Billboard Hot 100 on the way to being certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association Of America, denoting sales of more than three million units.
But that was just the beginning. As I type this, “The Night We Met” has more than 3.1 billion streams on Spotify. (The specific streaming platform matters for reasons I’ll explain in a minute.) An additional version recorded as a duet with Phoebe Bridgers has been played more than 325 million times, which pushes the overall number to nearly three and a half billion spins.
To put those numbers in perspective, it’s helpful to compare them to other songs typically regarded as the biggest rock anthems of the 21st century by indie-adjacent acts. I recently wrote about “Mr. Brightside,” a defining jock jam of the modern era by one of the best-known arena-rock bands. That song has almost 2.7 billion streams. “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes also has bulletproof “sports song” status — it has just under 2 billion streams. Arctic Monkeys, the acknowledged champs of British rock in the past 20 years, clocked more than 2.6 billion streams for their biggest hit, “Do I Wanna Know?” (A TikTok craze a few years back also propelled the lesser known “I Wanna Be Yours” to 3.1 billion plays.)
As it currently stands, “The Night We Met” is one of Spotify’s Top 30 most popular songsever. Which means Lord Huron, on this one song at least, outperforms practically every other band (or pop singer or rapper) you can think of. The rivals to “The Night We Met” on Spotify include the top songs by two of the biggest pop-rock institutions of the century, Coldplay (“Yellow,” just over 3.1 billion streams) and Imagine Dragons (“Believer,” nearly 3.5 billion). The only band that decisively outpaces them is another “popular but not famous” LA group from the 2010s, The Neighbourhood, whose LGBTQ+-themed 2013 hit “Sweater Weather” presently sits at almost 3.9 billion streams.
What is going on here? “The Night We Met” is quite pretty and pretty likeable. It also sounds like a million other countryish, reverb-heavy indie-rock songs that don’t have close to 3.1 billion streams. Though, maybe, that’s the point.
The most common explanation for the success of “The Night We Met” is the song’s prominent placements in the first and second seasons of 13 Reasons Why, a controversial series about teen suicide that briefly captured the zeitgeist in the late 2010s. In the show, “The Night We Met” is practically its own character, acting as a nostalgic callback for two of the main characters. It is essentially framed as “The Most Beautiful Love Song You Have Ever Heard,” and for the show’s young audience — who might not have been familiar with the music that has obviously influenced Lord Huron — “The Night We Met” seemed to have hit that way.
But 13 Reasons Why ended five years ago. And “The Night We Met” has clearly escaped containment from that massive but still niche audience. It not only hasn’t faded in recent years, it has surged. In January of 2023, I noted that it had 1.2 billion streams , and that Lord Huron overall had close to 11.8 million monthly listeners. They have almost tripled both numbers since then.
This month, following a spring tour celebrating the 10th anniversary of Strange Trails, they begin a run of shows in arenas and amphitheaters, including a July 30 gig at Madison Square Garden with Waxahatchee (a “famous but not quite as popular” band) opening. And while their mastermind Ben Schneider maintains a low profile — good luck finding much in the way of press about his band — he’s definitely broken into elite levels of exposure in other ways. Kristen Stewart makes a cameo on one song from the new record. And the promotional bio was written by none other Norwegian celebrity author Karl Ove Knausgård. (His take on the album: “It ought to crush us, for we are so obviously nothing, a microscopic anomaly of flesh and blood in an infinite, black and lifeless space, but it doesn’t crush us. It is terrifying, this black abyss with tiny pinpricks of light that we live at the edge of, but it is also beautiful.” Leave some adjectives for us poor working rock critics, Karl!)
Knausgård, naturally, discovered Lord Huron on Spotify. Speaking of Spotify: There’s evidence that “The Night We Met” is uniquely suited to that streaming platform. While the song does gangbusters inside that walled garden, it appears to do less well at Apple Music, which just announced their Top 500 most streamed songs. Coldplay and Imagine Dragons, predictably, show up multiple times on that list, and “Sweater Weather” comes in at an impressive No. 154, two spots higher than “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But “The Night We Met”? Nowhere to be found.
Surely that discrepancy can be partly attributed to showing up on the right playlists over at Spotify. But I wonder if something in the Spotify algorithm favors Lord Huron — or if Lord Huron, inadvertently (or not), makes music perfectly suited for gaming the system. I have listened to The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 several times in recent days, as well as the older Lord Huron albums, and I’m struck by how much the music sounds remarkably similar to other bands I like. They might very well be the most “sounds like other bands I like” band I have ever heard. Listening to Lord Huron is like condensing nearly 70 years of rustic, rootsy rock music into easily digestible four-minute packages. You can hear Sun Sessions era Elvis and Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind period in there. And the first three My Morning Jacket records and the first two Fleet Foxes albums. And flashes of Wilco and Grizzly Bear and The Lumineers. And even the country and Americana artists that came after Lord Huron, like Zach Bryan or Tyler Childers. Anyone who goes to Spotify to hear those artists (and many others) could be credibly pointed to Lord Huron as a “recommended if you like” option.
When AI band The Velvet Sundown had their 15 minutes of infamy last week, I thought immediately of Lord Huron. Not only because they (it?) sort of sound like Lord Huron, but also because of Lord Huron’s own flesh-and-blood AI tendencies. I like “The Night We Met,” but if you told me that it was produced by artificial intelligence instructed to reconfigure the two most popular songs by Band Of Horses, “Funeral” and “No One’s Gonna Love You,” I’d believe it.
Let me reiterate that I like listening to this band. If the worst that can be said of Lord Huron is that they are very derivative of bands that don’t stream nearly as well, that shouldn’t completely overshadow the obvious craft that Schneider and company apply to the records. (His ability to create elaborate backstories for songs and the impressive scale of their live shows also dispel any overly reductive “generic” charges.) Best of all, they are — for now at least — a sign that humans are still better than robots at integrating preexisting sounds into new songs. I want my enjoyably imitative folk rock made by people, not machines.
They have a new song out today (July 9): “All Night All Day,” which is classic Big Thief with a bit of New Age influence thrown in. A press release describes it as “an expression of love and desire without shame.”
A press release previously noted the group recorded the album last winter at the Power Station, New York City, for three weeks. They worked with “a community of musicians” including Alena Spanger, Caleb Michel, Hannah Cohen, Jon Nellen, Joshua Crumbly, June McDoom, Laraaji, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Mikey Buishas.
Listen to “All Night All Day” above and check out Big Thief’s upcoming tour dates below.
Big Thief’s 2025 Tour Dates: The Somersault Slide 360 Tour
09/17 — Sacramento, CA @ Channel 24
09/19 — Troutdale, OR @ Edgefield
09/21 — Boise, ID @ Outlaw Field at the Idaho Botanical
09/22 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Twilight Concert Series
09/25 — Berkeley, CA @ The Greek Theatre
09/27 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
09/28 — San Diego, CA @ Rady Shell at Jacobs Park
10/01 — Mexico City, MX @ Teatro Metropolitan
10/20 — Portland, ME @ State Theatre
10/21 — Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall
10/22 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Met
10/24 — Washington, DC @ The Anthem
10/25 — Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium
10/29 — Raleigh, NC @ Red Hat Amphitheater
10/30 — Atlanta, GA @ The Fox Theatre
10/31 — New Orleans, LA @ Saenger Theatre
11/03 — Tulsa, OK @ Cain’s Ballroom
11/04 — Dallas, TX @ The Bomb Factory
11/05 — Austin, TX @ Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park
11/07 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Lawn
Double Infinity is out 9/5 via 4AD. Find more information here.
Wet Leg did a home version of the Tiny Desk Concert series a few years ago, but now NPR has gotten the band into the office for a proper Tiny Desk performance, which was shared today (July 9).
It’s one fans are going to want to pay attention to. Aside from playing “CPR” and “Davina McCall,” Wet Leg also played “Mangetout,” an unreleased song they’ve played live before. They also debuted “11:21,” another unreleased track, but this one, they hadn’t performed before.
Meanwhile, a press release previously noted the group’s upcoming album “contains love songs of every stripe: stressed-out, gooey-eyed, gratuitously horny, blissed out, obsessive and mysterious.” The project is also said to be “defined by its sheer exuberance and Teasdale ended up finding the process empowering.”
Watch the video above and for more live Wet Leg, check out the band’s upcoming tour dates below.
Wet Leg’s 2025 Tour Dates: The North American Moistourizer 2025 Tour
09/01 — Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
09/03 — Vancouver, BC @ Malkin Bowl
09/05 — Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
09/09 — Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
09/10 — Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed
09/12 — Toronto, ON @ HISTORY
09/13 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
09/14 — Boston, MA @ Roadrunner
09/15 — Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall
09/17 — New York, NY @ Summerstage in Central Park
09/19 — Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
09/21 — Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees
09/30 — Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
10/03 — Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre
10/07 — Oklahoma City, OK @ The Criterion
10/14 — El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace
10/17 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre
Moisturizer is out 7/11 via Domino. Find more information here.
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