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In the past few weeks, Amazon Music Live has become appointment viewing for music fans. Streaming on Prime Video immediately after Thursday Night Football, the weekly concert series is the go-to show to watch new, rising, and established stars perform their latest. After returning with a lineup including Jelly Roll, Big Sean, Halsey, and J Balvin, Amazon Music has announced the next pair of performers that will follow in 2024.

On November 15, Gunna will take the stage as he completes his One Of Dem Nights Tour, while on November 21, K-pop sensations TWICE will become the first performers from their genre to perform on Amazon Music Live. As usual, Actress Liza Koshy will be interviewing each guest ahead of their performances, and you can follow @amazonmusic on socials for more exclusive content.

Each episode streams live on Prime Video and the Amazon Music channel on Twitch at 9 PM PT on Thursdays, preceded by the Amazon Music Tonight! pre-show on Twitch at 8.

In addition to completing his recent tour, Gunna appears to be rolling out an extension of his new album, One Of Wun, after dropping the single “Him All Along” earlier this month. Meanwhile, TWICE’s recently released album With YOU-th topped the Billboard 200 this spring, giving the pop band their first-ever US No. 1.

“We make underground films with very little money for the love of the art,” Christopher Bickel, director of the eagerly awaited underground horror movie Pater Noster And The Mission Of Light, said in pre-release materials. “This is literally my backyard we’re shooting in. Everything we do is like The Little Rascals, putting on a show for the neighborhood kids.”

Bickel’s CV includes stints as a columnist for Maximum Rocknroll magazine and Dangerous Minds. He was also singer in the punk bands In/Humanity and Guyana Punch Line, as well as the brains behind prolific avant garde recording project Anakrid. These musical roots continue to inform his cinematic work.

“Everything I know about filmmaking, I learned from punk rock,” he says. “The movies we make are punk rock demo tapes. We operate outside of Hollywood focus groups and traditional distribution routes.”

Pater Noster And The Mission Of Light itself is also for those prone to straying off the beaten path, as Bickel notes, “We make movies for people looking for something different. What happens in Pater Noster And The Mission Of Light is beyond belief. It’s not for the squeamish or easily upset.”

In a new interview, Bickel tells Uproxx about the new movie, how it was made on a tight budget, and what makes something punk rock.

This film! I watched it, and it was like a freaking call to action. I started immediately reaching out to everyone I know, telling them that they need to see this. So, for those who don’t know anything about this movie, tell them what it’s about.

It’s about a girl who works in a record store, and she stumbles upon this rare psychedelic record that was produced by this hippie cult in the early ’70s. She kind of falls down the rabbit hole, as collectors often do, and ends up getting an invitation to visit the remnants of the commune, where these hippies existed and still exist, and things go really bad for everybody that goes along with her on the ride. It’s kind of a Grindhouse-type of horror movie. There’s a lot of violence, exaggerated violence. It’s just a lot of fun. We made it on, like, no budget. It was very, very cheap.

When you say no budget, can you tell us what the budget was?

The budget was $21,000 in total, and we raised that through crowdfunding.

This film inspires me the way early hip-hop did, where you had artists with limited resources trying to make the best possible art they could for a fan base that was loyal to them, without caring about the rest of the industry or what other genres were doing. Do you see that connection at all?

Yeah, absolutely. I come out of punk rock. Punk rock and hip-hop have a very similar track in how they started and where they went. For me, it was, when I was younger, playing in bands and putting out fanzines and stuff like that. It was just about trying to make something with no money, to reach as many people as possible. I think with punk rock and hip-hop, there’s this sort of “from the streets,” aggressive spirit about it that’s sort of screaming out into the void. And I think I’ve carried that over into movies where, you know, we’re up against these $50 million, $100 million movies, and the only way we can compete with that is to offer something that’s a little bit different, maybe a little edgier in some ways.

I think there’s a genre where they think the joke is being bad, and it’s an easy way to cop out of having a low budget, and you see that in music as well. I’ve always disliked it in music. What I loved about your movie is I felt like it was trying to be good. For example, the sound mix: it’s amazing. Do you buy into the notion that for something to be punk rock, it’s just three chords? For me, I think there’s a lot of high art in punk and in this type of filmmaking.

Yeah, I’m with you. I’ve never gone in for the movies that are intentionally trying to be a B movie. You know, “We’re going to be a B movie just because of our budget,” right? We want to try to make the best thing that we can, and I think that’s where the authenticity is in this, or for anybody else working at this level. If you’re trying to do your best, people are going to see the heart in it and appreciate it.

You know, we don’t need to try hard to make a bad movie. We want it to escape our budgetary restraints, I guess is what I’m trying to say. The only way you can do that is to try to do the best thing you can.

What makes something punk rock?

Man, how do you answer that? I think it’s a spirit. There’s a rebelliousness to it, an anti-authoritarian streak. This is a crazy time we’re living in right now. There’s a lot of stuff that might happen within the next couple of years that really scares a lot of people. This movie in particular was sort of written against a lot of that. There are themes throughout it about women being forced to carry babies they don’t want to carry. I mean, it’s done in a very Grindhouse kind of way, but it’s a reflection of the time we live in. And to me, that’s punk rock.

Let’s get into some of these film details. It’s clearly a feminist movie. Would you agree?

I think so, yeah. There are things that are happening in our culture right now that I think we have to take women’s side on. So, I try to put that into the movie, maybe in kind of a sneaky way, you know, because I’m still just telling a horror story about this demon and a forced pregnancy with a mutant baby and stuff like that.

The film is a love letter, in some ways, to independent record stores. Where does that come from?

I’ve worked in record stores my entire life. I was in college when I started, and I’ve owned my own shop for a while, and I worked in another shop. So a lot of the dialogue that’s in there… we keep a book behind the counter of dumb sh*t customers say. A lot of the dialogue that’s in the movie is straight out of that book.

That’s amazing. The other musical thing that grabbed me, and you might get a kick out of this, is the movie describes the music of the fictional band as a mix of psych free jazz and early electronics. And I thought to myself, “God, this filmmaker literally reached into my brain and devised the exact album that I would want to go hunt for if I was record collecting.” Where did that come from?

Just stuff that I’m into personally. The idea was that it was a record made in 1972 that would have been slightly ahead of its time in ’72, so the influences they would have had at the time would have been like the Stooges and Black Sabbath. Like rock and free jazz, but maybe just slightly ahead of the curve on that stuff.

We wrote a whole album of the songs for the movie that aren’t even in the movie because we couldn’t shoehorn them in, but we put out an album that just came out with all the music. So all the music is sort of taking that idea that it’s 1972, but really, we’re kind of playing around in, like, 1976.

In the movie, there’s a massive modular synth room. What’s up with the synth room?

It’s just because when you make a low-budget movie, you just have to use stuff that you have access to. I have a friend that has all these analog synths, so I knew that I had to write a scene in a room with a bunch of synths. And I work at a record store, so I knew that there had to be a scene in a record store. The whole movie came about because some friends of mine, they’re gear heads that work on all these old cars and stuff. They got this bus, and they said they wanted to paint it like an old hippie bus, like the Ken Kesey bus from the ’60s. That’s basically why the movie exists, because they said they had this hippie bus, so I wrote a movie around that.

Well, you know what’s funny about the Ken Kesey hippie bus: I kept on thinking about this line in the movie, “F*ck your whole generation.” I was wondering to myself how much of this movie was taking aim towards the hippie generation or the ’60s, or was that just a fun line to have?

It was mostly a fun line to have, but I think that every generation hates the one that came right before. It’s playing around with that a little bit: “You guys thought that you were the coolest people in the world, and you were the cutting edge of everything, and now you’re just the establishment.”

I loved it so much. He could have said anything to them. And it was like, those hippies want to stay young, right? By saying, “F*ck your whole generation,” it was this acknowledgement of, “You’re old and your ideas are bad.”

That was totally the intent. You nailed it.

Your sound mix in this movie is insane. If you told me that the sound mix was from a major-budget movie, I would totally believe you.

I’ve been a musician for a lot longer than I’ve been a filmmaker, and my background, aside from being in punk rock bands, is I do a lot of avant garde music, and I have for decades. So I’m deeply rooted in sort of experimental soundscape-type stuff. So, it was really easy to apply that towards making movies. Getting the mix right is tough. I’m doing everything just on a desktop computer. It’s like a real crappy setup, but, you know, I think it turned out OK.

It’s incredible. So, I want to talk a little bit about your philosophy. I’ve seen you in an interview, and you gave a list of five perfect movies. They were Taxi Driver, Harold And Maude, The Shining, The Exorcist, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Yeah, that’s definitely my list.

Do you have a list of perfect albums or perfect songs, or even perfect musicians that inspire you?

Oh, crap. I wish I had time to think about this. My favorite song of all time is “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. I think that’s the perfect pop song. My favorite album of all time is Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. I just think it’s the greatest punk record ever. I would probably put Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” way up at the top of my list. I think that, when I hear that song, I feel like the heavens open up, and she’s just an angel, and it’s just lifting the listener up into the clouds.

Having worked in record stores for so long, I love pretty much every genre of music. You know, every day I’m in a store where I’m buying and selling records and listening to them all day long. So, you know, there’s just so much great sh*t out there.

Speaking of buying records, your film is a bit of a cautionary tale about record collecting. Were you making fun of the fact that people take it a little too far?

Oh, absolutely. This is me indicting myself. The character Max in the movie, she finds all these rare records, and her roommates are like, “Well, you need money, you have duplicates of these: you should sell them.” And she’s like, “No. I found these in the wild, I rescued these. If I sell this record, it’s just going to go to some rich bougie guy.” There’s this weird sort of fetishizing of things and wanting to hold on to them. And it’s pretty ridiculous, but I’m just as guilty of it.

How can people watch it the movie? I want everyone to go see it.

We’re doing all our own distribution. It’s all DIY. Right now, people can buy the streaming or pre-order the Blu-ray at paternostermovie.com, and that just takes you to our Indiegogo page. We’re sort of using that as a retail outlet now, but for the time being, it’s only on Night Flight. They’ve just been super cool to me, so they didn’t ask for it, but I offered to give them an exclusive for a month on it, just because they’ve been really cool with promoting it, and cool with paying me on time, which is somewhat of a rarity. But, after a month is up, then it’ll probably be on Prime any any of the other big streamers.

So if anyone wants to see it for Halloween: Night Flight, that’s the place.

Dwyane Wade’s new statue outside the Kaseya Center in Miami has garnered a lot of conversation, unfortunately much of it making fun of how it looks nothing like Wade, but it has also sparked some discussion of who will be next to get a statue in the NBA.

LeBron James in Cleveland and Stephen Curry in Golden State are locks, but the other top star from their generation doesn’t expect to end up with a statue anywhere. Kevin Durant is a surefire Hall of Famer with a pair of championships and an MVP award, but he’s been something of a basketball nomad over his career and explained to Kay Adams on “Up and Adams” that, despite Wade saying he deserves a statue, he “highly doubts” that happens.

Durant is nothing if not pragmatic, and he knows that statues are reserved for those with extended runs as the face of a franchise that have own. His longest tenured stop was in Oklahoma City, but he didn’t deliver the Thunder a title and left on bad terms with the organization, bolting for the rival Warriors — and if anyone’s getting a statue in OKC, it’s Russell Westbrook. He won a pair of titles and Finals MVP awards in Golden State, but spent just four years there on a team with Curry as the established face of the franchise. His time in Brooklyn didn’t go according to plan, and he joined a Suns team that, even if they go on to win a championship or two, would build a Devin Booker statue before a Durant one.

I appreciate that Durant doesn’t try to act like this would be some great injustice, but simple states it as a matter of fact. It is, in a way, the price he’s paid for his journey, but he’s also been highly successful at just about every stop, even if some have fallen short of the loftiest expectations. He’ll be good with his Hall of Fame plaque and the respect of his peers, even as his colleagues will surely be getting immortalized in bronze in San Francisco and Cleveland in the not too distant future.

Being Dead is a band that indulges its members’ goofiest tendencies. For starters, the two core members’ (stage) names are Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy (né Gumball), and their excellent sophomore album, EELS, opens with a love song about Godzilla. The Austin band donsn’t shy away from tongue-in-cheek humor, but their delivery and execution remain fully earnest. Their dueling vocal harmonies convey similarly extreme levels of yearning as heard on 100 gecs’ breakup song about a tooth extraction.

EELS blazes forward with a gleeful, playful sense of levity. Assisted by legendary indie producer John Congleton, Being Dead adorn their brief yet hard-hitting chamber-punk tunes with gritty guitars, deft drumming, and two-part vocals that play to the duality that lies at the heart of the band itself: silliness and sincerity.

Following the record’s release in September, the group sat down with Uproxx to talk about The Velvet Underground, Cindy Lee, crashing at a sheep farm in Amsterdam, and more in our latest Q&A.

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

Songs for enjoying spaghetti.

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?

The only audio media left. Fingers crossed, they know how hot, strong and toned our muscles were!

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

Velvet Underground because they are hardcore rockers who aren’t afraid to take it there.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life and what was it?

In the kitchen of the ‘sad pad’ where we all wore diapers and feasted upon succulent duck! A delicacy and a delight!

Tell us about the best concert you’ve ever attended.

Deerhoof at Wizard Rodeo 2023!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What song never fails to make you emotional?

“Power & Possession” by Cindy Lee.

What’s the last thing you Googled?

Definition of ‘squandered’

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

Sheep farm in Amsterdam. Incredible.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform and what’s the city you hope to perform in for the first time?

So far probably New York or London! But we’d love to play Tokyo. Las Vegas also seems like a trip lol but any city can surprise ya, huh?

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

Invest in that Gamestop stock.

What’s one of your hidden talents?

Falcon is the fastest person in the band. She can beat mostly anyone in a footrace or swim race too.

If you had a million dollars to donate to charity, what cause would you support and why?

Relief for those suffering in Palestine because of basic humanitarian reasons and the fact that we’re complicit as Americans.

What are your thoughts about AI and the future of music?

Hmmm I don’t think it will get too out of hand but who knows the world is a pretty unpredictable place.

You are throwing a music festival. Give us the dream lineup of 5 artists that will perform with you and the location it would be held.

The Beatles, System of a Down, Neil Young, Daniel Johnston, Steely Dan on top of a beautiful, scenic mountain with cool natural water slides and sweeping meadows of lush green grass and trampolines and rainbows and all your best friends and family.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on social media?

Patti Harrison.

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

Falcon tattooed Cody’s best friend’s name on his arse while we listened to Black Sabbath and drank whiskey.

What is your pre-show ritual?

We like to sit in total darkness and repeat, in a whisper: “we are worth it” and then pound 5 beers each and watch WWE.

Who was your first celebrity crush?

Rachel Weisz from The Mummy / Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You.

You have a month off and the resources to take a dream vacation. Where are you going and who is coming with you?

Falcon would go to New Zealand and do some serious exploring, thru-hiking, eating, n’ playing!

What is your biggest fear?

Roaches (fuck em). And being locked in a box with 1 inch of space all around me so I can barely move but I never die… Kinda like in the movie Interview With A Vampire. I think that’s where it stems from.

EELS is available now via Bayonet Records. Find more information here.

The Halloween costumes have been pretty good so far this year. The stars are reaching into their genre bag, with Megan Thee Stallion’s Teen Titans costume earning the approval of DC Studios CEO James Gunn, and Halle Bailey channeling her namesake in her 007-inspired costume.

Halle posted photos of her simple but inspired costume on Twitter, showing off the iconic orange bikini and white knife belt of infamous Bond girl Jinx, from Die Another Die, as portrayed by Halle Berry (who Bailey sometimes gets mistaken for). The costume hails from Jinx’s second appearance in the film and one of its most recognizable scenes, when the NSA agent emerges from the ocean in the striking swimsuit — an homage to a prior Bond girl, Honey Ryder (portrayed by Ursula Andress) from the first 007 film, Dr. No.

Halle Berry is turning out to be a favorite of Gen Z stars’ 2024 Halloween costumes, as South African singer Tyla and rapper Coi Leray also donned costume sfrom the actress’ oeuvre, albeit much earlier in her filmography. Tyla went with an homage to Berry’s Flintstones character, Sharon Stone (ha), while Coi opted for Berry’s take on Catwoman from the oft-maligned (yet, somehow, much beloved) camp classic and favorite celebrity Halloween costume.

It was tough to tell which line at the Sabrina Carpenter concert was going where. They twisted around the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, like a tangle of cords. That could be for the box office… or maybe it’s for general admission? The only line that I knew for sure was the longest one: the merch line.

If you didn’t have a ticket for The Short N’ Sweet Tour (it’s a hot ticket), you could understand the vibe of the show just by looking at the official merchandise being sold outside the venue. There was “short” and “sweet” socks; lots of pleasing pinks and blues; a hoodie with red lipstick kisses; a shirt with “God Bless Your Dad’s Genetics” written on it; and a hat with “I’m Working Late” on the front and “Cause I’m A Singer” on the back. The more daring items were a “69” soccer jersey and a shirt that spelled out “ca-ma-ra-de-rie” with the pronunciation “kǝm-rit-on-me.” Go ahead. Say it out loud. If the goal was to convey the flirty aesthetic of multi-platinum singles “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Taste,” the merch was a success.

As was the concert itself. The Short N’ Sweet Tour was one of the best pop shows I’ve ever been to. It begins with a video of Carpenter reacting to the camera while taking a bubble bath, like Margot Robbie in The Big Short, before an old-school announcer tells her the show is starting. She takes the stage in a bath towel, which gets dropped to the floor, revealing a sparkly bodysuit underneath. That winking charm remains throughout the entirety of the well-paced 90-minute set, which is part co-ed slumber party at Megan Draper’s dream New York City studio apartment, part television show. There are vintage cameras emblazoned with “​​SC” on either side of the stage; the band is introduced through late night talk show-style credits; and there are retro commercials to distract the 16,000-strong crowd during brief set breaks.

But when Carpenter is on stage, all eyes are on her. She’s very good at Being A Pop Star. Her practiced banter sounds off the cuff, and there’s a playful ease to the way she carries herself; she’s able to channel both innocent Sandy and “tell me about it, stud” Sandra Dee. Even (especially?) when she’s singing the Jack Antonoff-produced “Sharpest Tool” while sitting on a heart-shaped toilet.

As for the accusations that she’s lip-syncing: she’s not. In person, Carpenter has an appealing twang to her voice reminiscent of Kacey Musgraves in the Pageant Material era (she even referenced Kacey’s “I didn’t say f*cking yee”). It served her well for the spin-the-bottle cover of Dolly Parton’s “9 To 5,” which the parents in the audience happily sang along to with their tween-age kids. (The mom in front of me looked over nervously at her young daughter every time Carpenter told a dirty joke or made a double entendre or lost an item of clothing, which meant she was looking over a lot.)

The encore, naturally, was “Espresso,” the Billboard-charting hit that provided the opportunity for Carpenter to sell out arenas, and likely soon, stadiums. But the concert’s true ending was the song before it. During “Don’t Smile,” the “credits” for the concert were projected on stage. The names of the wardrobe, audio, set construction departments — they were all there, scrolling on the screen behind the performers. It’s really cool.

The final credit before Carpenter left the stage to prepare for “Espresso”: tour merchandise (shout out to Joe H and Chris V). This clever acknowledgment shows how much merch means to the Short N’ Sweet experience, and not just for the obvious financial impact. Sabrina Carpenter is working late ‘cause she’s a singer, but so is everyone putting fans in Sabrina Carpenter shirts and “69” jerseys. They did — as Carpenter herself would probably put it — a nice job.

The debate about what constitutes an album versus a mixtape has raged since the introduction of digital music. Denzel Curry is about to blur the lines even further with his next release. In July, he released King Of The Mischievous South Vol. 2, a follow-up to his 2012 mixtape King Of The Mischievous South Vol. 1. Today, he announced the release date of King Of The Mischievous South, the album, which updates the tracklist of the July mixtape with five new songs and a new track order. The album is due on November 15.

The new songs on the album version will include “Act A Damn Fool” featuring Duke Deuce and Slim Guerilla, “Got Me Geeked,” “P.O.P.” featuring Key Nata and Sauce Walka, “Anotha Late Night” featuring 454, and new single, “Still In The Paint” featuring Bktherula and Laser Dim 700, which he released the video for today, as well. Original tracks like “Hot One,” “Black Flag Freestyle,” “Hoodlumz,” and “Set It” remain. You can watch the video for “Still In The Paint” above.

King Of The Mischievous South is out 11/15 via Loma Vista Recordings. You can find more info here. See below for the tracklist.

Denzel Curry’s King Of The Mischievous South Tracklist

01. “KOTMS II Intro”
02. “Ultra Shxt” Feat. Key Nyata
03. “Set It” Feat. Maxo Kream
04. “Hot One” Feat. TiaCorine & A$AP FERG
05. “Act A Damn Fool” Feat. Duke Deuce & Slim Guerilla
06. “Black Flag Freestyle” Feat. That Mexican OT
07. “Headcrack Interlude”
08. “G’z Up” Feat. 2 Chainz & Mike Dimes
09. “Lunatic Interlude”
10. “Sked” Feat. Kenny Mason & Project Pat
11. “Got Me Geeked”
12. “Cole Pimp” Feat. Ty Dolla $ign & Juicy J
13. “P.O.P.” Feat. Key Nyata & Sauce Walka
14. “Anotha Late Nite” Feat. 454
15. “Wishlist” Feat. Armani White
16. “Hit the Floor” Feat. Ski Mask The Slump God
17. “Still in The Paint” Feat. Bktherula & LAZER DIM 700
18. “Hoodlumz” Feat. PlayThatBoiZay & A$AP Rocky
19. “KOTMS II Outro”

Olivia Rodrigo‘s favorite movies include one where a woman gets covered in blood, and another involving blood suckers.

While walking the red carpet at the premiere of Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour, the arena rock star was asked to name her “Four Favorites” by Letterboxd. Her picks: Gone Girl, Lady Bird (“I remember watching that for the first time and just bawling my eyes out”), The Worst Person In The World (“I love that movie so much”), and Twilight. “I’m a Twihard girlie,” the “Vampire” singer explained. “I don’t even know what draws me into it so much, but it’s just so intoxicating and sexy and beautiful, and I love the goth aspect of it.”

Rodrigo also shared that she has a Letterboxd, but she won’t reveal her username. “I leave some pretty scathing reviews sometimes,” she said (we need to hear her thoughts on Cats). If someone wants to comb through every account with five-star ratings for both Gone Girl and Twilight, that should only take, oh, 13 hours. Or as long as Rodrigo sleeps while touring.

You can watch Olivia Rodrigo’s “Four Favorites” video with Letterboxd here. Olivia Rodrigo: Guts World Tour is also streaming now on Netflix.

Although Tory Lanez was convicted of shooting Megan Thee Stallion almost two years ago and sentenced to 10 years in prison, Megan is still dealing with the legal fallout of the case. According to Billboard, the Houston rapper has filed a lawsuit against a YouTuber named Milagro Gramz for allegedly spreading disinformation about Megan and the case.

The lawsuit accuses Milagro Gramz — whose real name is Milagro Elizabeth Cooper — of being a “mouthpiece and puppet” for Tory Lanez, using her platform to “denigrate, belittle, insult, and spread false statements” about Megan. The lawsuit also alleges that Cooper shared a pornographic deepfake of Meg, along with cyberstalking, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and invasion of privacy.

Among the disinformation allegedly circulated by Cooper was an assertion that the gun used by Tory to shoot Meg in the foot had gone missing. However, according to Meg’s attorneys, “The firearm remains in the custody of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

This isn’t the first time Megan’s legal team accused Tory of using surrogates to attack her in the media and undermine her credibility. Tory was found guilty of committing assault with a firearm causing great bodily injury; concealing a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and discharging a firearm with gross negligence after the July 2020 incident, which left Meg with bullet fragments in both feet. Despite this — or perhaps because of it — Lanez has amassed a more dedicated following of supporters who seem much more interested in trolling Megan than they ever did in streaming or buying Tory’s music.

Meanwhile, Meg isn’t the only rap star irritated by Gramz’s antics; in June, she also got into a Twitter tiff with Cardi over Cardi’s comments about the BET Experience in LA.

Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.

1. Various Artists, Cardinals At The Window

John Coltrane. Nina Simone. Thelonious Monk. Ben E. King. George Clinton. Doc Watson. James Taylor. Loudon Wainwright III. Emmylou Harris. J. Cole. Jodeci. Randy Travis. Eric Church. Flat Duo Jets. Archers Of Loaf. Superchunk. The Avett Brothers. Sylvan Esso. Wednesday. MJ Lenderman.

All of these artists and bands are among the musical natives of North Carolina. Clearly, this is a state that has given so much. Now, it’s time to give back. Cardinals At The Window — a massive 135-track compilation featuring unreleased songs by everyone from R.E.M. to The War On Drugs to Sharon Van Etten to dozens more — benefits flood relief in Western North Carolina. The people there are still trying to pick up the pieces. Help them along, and enjoy some incredible music in the process.

2. The Hard Quartet, The Hard Quartet

There are few terms in the modern musical lexicon more loaded than “supergroup.” It denotes an assemblage of well-known musicians, but what it actually communicates is “likely underwhelming short-term marriage.” I have no idea if The Hard Quartet — the new group featuring Stephen Malkmus, Matt Sweeney, Jim White, and Emmett Kelly — will last beyond their self-titled debut. But the wonder of this album is how un-supergroup-like it is. It feels homey and lived-in, more like it’s the fourth or fifth LP in the catalog than an introduction. And there’s a certain modesty in how the various singers and songwriters complement each other — Malkmus’ slack surrealism, Kelly’s laconic cool, and Sweeney’s campfire croon already sound like they have coexisted for the better part of a decade.

3. Styrofoam Winos, Real Time

This Nashville trio reminds me a lot of The Hard Quartet, only the members aren’t indie-famous. However, they do occupy a similar space of loose-limbed guitar music that can meander without losing the lyrical and melodic plot. Perhaps what I’m trying to say is that both bands remind me of American Water — Malkmus playing on American Water helps, obviously, but Styrofoam Winos residing on the same “approachably eccentric and impressively erudite” side of the Nashville divide also matters. The larger point remains: “Music that remind me of American Water” is one of my favorite subgenres.

4. Bon Iver, SABLE

Justin Vernon has long treated his most famous music project with a certain weariness. As Bon Iver releases have become less frequent, it seemed reasonable to assume that he might eventually mothball the brand name for good. So, the arrival of this EP registers as a surprise on multiple layers. One, because it exists. But more important, this has to be the most straightforward and accessible music he has ever put out as Bon Iver. Singing in his natural, lower register and mostly eschewing the terror-techno digital distortions of his late-2010s work, Vernon more or less sounds like the man who shaped our curent generation of sad-guy superstar singer-songwriters. (I refer to you, Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan, among many others.)

5. Wild Pink, Dulling The Horns

This Brooklyn band has been saddled with the dubious “critic’s favorite” tag for so long that it must feel like a hindrance at this point. Not that it has affected the music in any discernible way — this is their fifth very good-to-excellent album released in the past seven years. (Congratulations on passing The Five Albums Test, fellas.) It might also be their most purely enjoyable record to date. After the emotionally taxing ILYSM, which was informed by frontman John Ross’ cancer battle, Dulling The Horns feels palpably lighter, even as it rocks much harder. At heart, Wild Pink remains an expert heartland rock band at the top of the post-Lost In The Dream class, though their embrace of noisier sounds on Dulling The Horns gives their music extra grit and power.

6. Good Looks, “Chase Your Demons Out”

Speaking of post-Lost In The Dream heartland rock: Good Looks’ Lived Here For A While has stayed in my regular rotation for months now, and in October they kindly issued two more songs, presumably from the same sessions. Both are great, but “Chase Your Demons Out” immediately belongs with their top-tier material, spotlighting the alchemy of Tyler Jordan’s heart-tugging songwriting and the inspired improvisations of guitarist Jake Ames.

7. Kelly Lee Owens, Dreamstate

The previous work by this Welsh producer could be classified as “thinking person’s” dance music, no matter how dumb that sounds. (I’m trying not to use the even cornier “IDM” tag.) I’ve enjoyed her past albums, but Dreamstate hits the hardest for me, mostly because it actually sounds like a record you could dance to. Not that I would dance to it, because nobody wants to see that. But I can theoretically dance to this album for sure. My Indiecast co-host Ian Cohen describes this as her “basic” album, and he means it as a compliment. And so do I.

8. Peel Dream Magazine, ‘Rose Main Reading Room’

I became a fan of this L.A. band after hearing their second record, Agitprop Alterna, in 2020. Based on that album, I had them clocked as proponents of drone-pop in the mold of Stereolab. Turns out Peel Dream Magazine couldn’t be so easily categorized. Their next album, 2022’s Pad, shifted to a more orchestral, Pet Sounds-inspired sound, while their latest release refines that aesthetic a bit, alluding to Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois and Air’s Moon Safari. This is catchy, sophisticated and well-composed pop music made to luxuriate in.

9. Tim Heidecker, Slipping Away

The tricky balance between “media-skewering comic genius” and “low-key and earnest singer-songwriter” seem to get a little easier in 2022 with High School, a warm and witty song cycle supported by a well-received tour backed by the aptly named Very Good Band. Heidecker’s latest brings the spirit of the tour to wax — Slipping Away is an old-school, “live in the studio” effort in which Heidecker sets his suburban dad musings to rollicking country-rock that evoke Gram Parson and the twangiest numbers by the early ’70s Rolling Stones.

10. 2nd Grade, Scheduled Explosions

Power pop is such a hard genre to master because there’s nowhere to hide — you either have the tunes or you don’t. Most bands of this ilk tend to keep on making records well past the point of losing their melodic touch. Thankfully, that’s not yet true of this Philadelphia outfit, whose previous effort, Easy Listening, was one of my favorite LPs of 2022. Scheduled Explosions doesn’t have the same hit rate as that record, but it doesn’t seem like it was supposed to. This is a deliberately messy record, like if mid-’90s GBV had tried to sound more like The Monkees. Which, of course, is a pretty awesome thing to be.

11. The Voidz, Like All Before You

I’m mentioning this record, in part, because I feel like practically nobody has acknowledged its existence. And those that have generally think it’s trash. But I have a soft spot for Julian Casablancas’ bonkers side project, where he gets to indulge in his most stoned and least coherent ideas. Hence Like All Before You, a sorta-political and quasi-philosophical treatise on Buddhist texts and religious cults and other such miscellanea conveyed via a confusing mishmash of discount synths and shredding Megadeth-style riffs. Is it good? As always with The Voidz, I honestly don’t know. But I can’t stop listening.