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Post Barney and long before Only Murders In The Building (and that first acting Emmy nomination), Selena Gomez became a household name while starring in four seasons of Disney Channel’s Wizards Of Waverly Place as smart-aleck sibling Alex Russo. Somewhere in between, she also bested Adam Sandler on the red carpet, but on a more serious note, Selena previously lamented losing touch with her Wizards co-stars after rising to global superstar status, and now, she’s making up for lost time by helping to launch the revival series, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place.

How big is Selena’s updated role as Alex Russo? Not too terribly huge. She is, after all, in the midst of her own incredibly busy acting career, which could yield an Oscar nomination for her Emilia Pérez performance, and Only Murders was renewed by Hulu for a fifth season of murder-comedy shenanigans.

Still, expect to see Selena in the series premiere alongside David Henrie, who portrays older brother Justin Russo, this fall on Disney Channel and Disney+. From the show’s synopsis:

The series follows an adult Justin Russo, who has chosen to lead a normal, mortal life with his family, Giada, Roman and Milo. When Justin’s sister Alex brings Billie to his home seeking help, Justin realizes he must dust off his magical skills to mentor the wizard-in-training while also juggling his everyday responsibilities — and safeguarding the future of the Wizard World.

Wizards Beyond Waverly Place co-stars Janice LeAnn Brown, Alkaio Thiele, Taylor Cora, Mimi Gianopulos,and Max Matenko. The series lands on Disney channel on October 29 and Disney+ on October 30. Take a peek at Selena’s guest appearance (she is also executive producing) here:

Unlike Bright Eyes albums, I’m gonna try to keep the intro short and just get right into the action.

With the release of Five Dice, All Threes, Conor Oberst’s discography now spans nearly 30 years. Or, from 1995’s “The Invisible Gardener” to Five Dice closer “Tin Soldier Boy,” Oberst triples in age. In that time, Oberst has been a confounding, charismatic and always restless songwriter, the cover shot of his 2008 solo album notwithstanding. On the same day in 2005, he released the timeless indie wedding staple “First Day Of My Life” and the self-explanatory, self-exculpatory f*ckboy manifesto “Take It Easy (Love Nothing).” Within a few minutes of Lifted, he’s too depressed to get out of bed, ready to take on the world, welcoming the apocalypse, but not before getting in one last night of drunken camaraderie. It’s a lot, and that’s not even including his solo work, the caustic agit-punk of Desaparecidos, the wooly Americana of Mystic Valley Band, his Phoebe Bridgers collaboration Better Oblivion Community Center, the Millennial Wilburys of Monsters Of Folk and countless Saddle Creek splits and side projects.

While most of that music is worth seeking out, it’s also not Bright Eyes, Oberst’s most popular project and the one that best encompasses his many, mercurial moods. For reasons that will soon be apparent, I can’t call this a ranking of his albums from worst to best in good conscience. But I can say they’re in order of my least favorite to favorite. So can I get a g*ddamn timpani roll? To start this g*ddamn list?

11. A Christmas Album (2002)

Sadly, not a Bright Eyes album about Christmas, with Read Music/Speak Spanish-era Conor Oberst going off on the emptiness of consumerism. Also, not Lifted-era Conor Oberst extending Yuletide classics to seven minutes with timpani rolls and doomsaying strings. Rather, quite literally a “Bright Eyes Christmas Album,” but one that nails a sort of frosted-over, The Holdovers-esque ambience where a bunch of kids try to make the best of being stranded during the holidays.

10. A Collection Of Songs Written And Recorded 1995-1997 (1998)

Surely, people who stumbled across Saddle Creek’s nineteenth release in January 1998 were happy to grade on a curve, or saw Oberst as something of a novelty — he’s 15 and writing songs with names like “The Awful Sweetness Of Escaping Sweat”! He’s from Omaha! Not all of the songs on this nearly-70-minute compilation are good, and in fact, some are borderline unlistenable, an opinion that Conor Oberst himself holds. Yet, in its unruly, very mid-’90s DIY indie sprawl, most of what constituted the core of Bright Eyes music had already been established: the volcanic emoting, the five-dollar words spilling out of overstuffed melodies, the bandcamp-in-a-basement orchestration.

On the off chance that someone reading this has never heard Bright Eyes and never heard of Bright Eyes before, I’d recommend they start here. And also, hit me up with your review — I’d love to hear from someone who hasn’t evaluated the output of a 15-to-17-year-old Conor Oberst relative to what came ten months later on Letting Off The Happiness.

9. I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005)

I imagine there’s a demographic of people who’d also rank I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning this low, maybe women between the ages of 35 and 45 who were subject to dozens of boys in college and/or grad school trying to impress them by playing “First Day Of My Life” on acoustic guitar. But this demographic is dwarfed by the one that would immediately put it right at the top. After all, this is the most popular and most critically acclaimed Bright Eyes album, the only that Apple Music calls “essential.” The one that followed him sharing a stage with Michael Stipe and Bruce Springsteen during a MoveOn.Org event in 2004 and ostensibly made good on the “next Dylan!” hype. And the last reason is exactly why I cannot stand I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning: it’s the album where Conor Oberst stopped being the First Conor Oberst and tried to be someone else.

I don’t blame him for wanting to escape the Myth of Conor Oberst, but that describes most of his work after 2005. Rather, Oberst rummaged through the boomer canon for pandering playacting — it’s his “New York” album. It’s his “political folk album.” He commissioned harmonies from Emmylou Harris, as if her credibility in this realm would transfer by osmosis. When I hear “Landlocked Blues,” I think of the dudes you see on Rap Twitter talking about how, I dunno, they won’t take 21 Savage or Playboi Carti seriously until they rap over soul beats.

The weird thing about I’m Wide Awake is that everything that people dismissed about Oberst on earlier albums — expressing emotion almost entirely through a quavering pitch, the overblown and undercooked politics — were laid bare rather than being matched by Lifted‘s grandiosity or the righteous rage of Desaparecidos’ Read Music/Speak Spanish. Praise for I’m Wide Awake was typically prefaced by some variation of “the Bright Eyes album for people who don’t like Bright Eyes.” I couldn’t agree more.

8. Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was (2020)

The first Bright Eyes album in nine years was likely going to be a “return to form” by default. And Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was did not disappoint on that front, doing buffet-style fan service that encompassed the past 20 years: there was Cassadaga-esque psych-pop (“Mariana Trench”), the hauntology of Digital Ash (“One And Done”), inscrutable word puzzles a la The People’s Key (“Persona Non Grata”) and Lifted stein-swinging (“Dance & Sing”). Plus, you know, Flea playing slap bass and the drummer from Mars Volta, because 2020 Conor Oberst is in much different group chats than he was in the aughts. And then, after years of (understandably) avoiding the press, there was the surprisingly exhaustive interview circuit that Oberst endured, hitting the same points ad nauseum about climate apocalypse, divorce, and the passing of his brother.

And yet, the subject matter reveals how Down In The Weeds fell short on a true “return to form,” because… well, imagine Fevers And Mirrors-era Oberst getting a crack at these topics. Instead, Down In The Weeds was “accomplished” and “professional,” rather than truly overwhelming, an unexpected source of comfort food at a time where quarantine felt like it might never end.

7. Cassadaga (2007)

A personal favorite of my Indiecast co-host and fellow Bright Eyes listmaker Steven Hyden, and I get it: Cassadaga is probably the most “porch music” album they’ve ever made. “Four Winds” and “If The Brakeman Turns My Way” boast robust, heartland rock choruses, the production is slick and string-laden, reflecting the status of a band who will debut in Billboard‘s top 5, and Conor Oberst tries to defy his image with a newfound interest in spirituality and vaguely Eastern percussion, a la No Code. Plus the cover really does look like a ’70s Grateful Dead joint.

Anecdotally, Cassadaga is “the most underrated Bright Eyes album,” and it’s an opinion I see so often that it can’t totally be true: For all of its charms, the politics grew ever heavy-handed despite the music’s lighter touch and “Soul Singer In A Session Band” is somehow more smug than Oberst claiming on “Bowl Of Oranges” that he has magical healing powers. A fascinating, flawed fork in the Bright Eyes catalog, but still the one that sounds best at a barbecue.

6. Five Dice, All Threes (2024)

Elvis Costello once quipped that you get 20 years to write your debut album and six months to write your second, and it’s been used ever since to explain “the sophomore slump,” “the darker, more introspective follow-up,” or the Max Power-esque “more of the same, but faster” mindset that gave us Room and Fire or Antics. Yet, that adage gets flipped whenever I talk to a band about their comeback album — they tend to be way more excited about the next one, even if it isn’t written yet, because they know it’ll take far less time to get done.

Five Dice, All Threes is only a quickie turnaround by latter-day Bright Eyes standards, but it nonetheless feels more urgent, more organic, more fun than Down In The Weeds, Where the World Once Was. The galloping strums and distorted acoustics of “El Capitan” and “Rainbow Overpass” prove that Bright Eyes is still a Saddle Creek band in spirit, if not in name, while “I’d never thought I’d see 45 / how is it that I’m still alive,” proves that he can still set an album’s narrative with a single line (especially since he isn’t 45 just yet). No longer burdened by any particular agenda, Five Dice, All Threes is perhaps the first Bright Eyes album that simply aspired to be “the new Bright Eyes album” and is all the better for it.

5. Digital Ash In A Digital Urn (2005)

While it’s not necessary to overrate Digital Ash In A Digital Urn to make a point about I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, these companion albums had similar aims and inverse strengths: since Lifted couldn’t possibly be topped by doing more of the same, Conor Oberst made smaller, sensible genre albums that would inevitably be described as “his most focused yet.” But rather than emulating the past masters to which he had already been compared and shearing off his more unflattering lyrical turns, Bright Eyes went for a gothic, synth-pop makeover that recognized “Lover I Don’t Have To Love” as the fan favorite from Lifted.

I suppose I’m telling on myself when I say prefer Oberst’s bleak, hermetic songs about substance abuse and cheap sex feel over his Greenwich Village cosplay, but “Hit The Switch” and “Down In The Rabbit Hole” are more interesting and more idiosyncratic than “Lua,” even if I can’t prove they’re more honest.

4. The People’s Key (2011)

A four-year gap between proper LPs once would’ve been unimaginable for Conor Oberst, but after Cassadaga, he got the sense that people were about as tired of Bright Eyes as he was. And so by the time they returned — and I do mean they, as Oberst truly considered him, Mike Mogis, and Nate Walcott as a democracy — The People’s Key was as distant from Bright Eyes 1.0 as anything could be while centering Oberst’s voice. To the same degree Cassadaga bulked up I’m Wide Awake‘s rabble-rousing folk-rock, The People’s Key detoxed Digital Ash and brought out the striving, New Wave synth-pop at its core. “Shell Games” and “Jejune Stars” make for some of the most outright catchy Bright Eyes singles, yet due to Oberst’s pan-religious musings — on AI and Rastafarianism and lizard people — The People’s Key earned the reputation as the band’s most impenetrable work; not for nothing is the first song called “Firewall.”

And yet, this is the album I find myself returning to most often these days, if not loving or even enjoying more than the albums that rank higher on this list. Oberst (or more accurately, the Faint’s Todd Fink playing Conor Oberst) once claimed that he liked to feel the burn of the audience’s eyes when he revealed his darkest secrets; ten years later, he learned to appreciate the chill when he withholds.

3. Letting Off The Happiness (1998)

There’s the type of person who will loudly profess their preference of Isn’t Everything over Loveless, On Avery Island over In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, De Stijl over White Blood Cells, Burial over Untrue… you get the picture. Maybe there’s some classic contrarianism, but there’s something to be said about the thrill of genius in chrysalis, the sense that an artist is coming to grips with the potency of their powers, if not their full scope. Such is the case with Letting Off the Happiness, which is both light years away from his raw, early work and still a classic “album before The Album” — a hint of greater things to come, yet fully formed in its own right.

2. Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground (2002)

Let me set the scene for you: it’s August 2002 and I’m 22 years old, living with my parents after finishing college, with no real distinction and no real long-term prospects. I have recently been fired from the kind of summer job which, frankly, nobody should manage to get fired from. I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life, but in the short-term, I have the new 73-minute Bright Eyes CD, a case of Yuengling, and NCAA Football 03 Dynasty Mode. Even as a hardcore Bright Eyes acolyte at the time, I’m still blown away by how much “Method Acting” and “You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.” speak to my experience, or at least the experience I’m imagining in my head. Eventually, I get to “Nothing Gets Crossed Out,” wherein Conor Oberst, also 22 years old, admits that he just wants someone to walk in front, and he’ll follow the leader. That working on the record seems pointless now. That one day, maybe, he’ll get to where he’s going. He’s been called a genius in mainstream publications and is less than a year away from dating Winona Ryder. And the only thing he really wants to do is get drunk with Tim Kasher.

I tend to get extremely cynical when music critics talk about how they cried over certain songs or while they were writing about a certain album, because A: I don’t really believe it, and B: show, don’t tell! But I’m going to be a hypocrite and tell you that I have never cried more profusely over any piece of art than “Nothing Gets Crossed Out.” I had never felt more seen in my entire life and to this day, I can’t listen to it around other people or if I’m on my way to work. It just reflexively turns on the waterworks and I am back in my parents’ basement, wondering if everything good in my life has already happened.

There are plenty of moments on Lifted that come awfully close to matching “Nothing Gets Crossed Out” — “this method acting, I call it living,” “I’ll start drinking like the way I drank before, and I just won’t have a future anymore,” the end the orchestral hip-hop thump of “Lover I Don’t Have To Love,” the feverish Bob Dylan Thomas purge of “Let’s Not Sh*t Ourselves.” 22 years later, I have enough distance to not subject myself to the interminable “Big Picture” or the Irish brogue he takes on to inject some scare-quotes “authenticity” into “Waste Of Paint,” or the “god saves gas prices” verse of the otherwise phenomenal “Don’t Know When But A Day’s Gonna Come” that I’m 99.9 percent positive wasn’t on the original CD. And yet, when I fast-forward through these moments, Lifted somehow becomes diminished. You gotta take the highest highs with the lowest lows to really get the full experience of Bright Eyes’ most extra album.

1. Fevers And Mirrors (2000)

I feel like we’ve got a pretty good idea of how 2024 will be presented a few months from now – Brat Summer, the whole Cindy Lee Thing, the rise of Chappell Roan, dudes rock and the Pop Girlies changing of the guard. And maybe that’s how we’ll still remember 2024 in a decade. But the more effort you spend framing a narrative in real time, the easier it is to lose sight of the bigger picture. As we speak, there are surely some teenage artists speaking directly to other teenagers in ways they’ve never been spoken to before, far out of sight from the mainstream, or to much confusion or credulity from the critics who do engage — and they will be the ones rewriting history and browbeating their elders for not getting it.

So let’s talk about the synth line in the chorus of Bright Eyes’ “The Calendar Hung Itself…” I had never heard Bright Eyes before and I first encountered Fevers And Mirrors in a manner that will burnish my authenticity on the subject and also embarrass me. Some time in 2000, I tagged along with a couple who were driving to see a Dashboard Confessional show, and I was less excited to see Dashboard Confessional than I was to spend time with the woman who lent me her copy of The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most. You know, she just happened to have a boyfriend and all, who was driving. In the midst of hours upon hours of hopelessly pining, she put on Fevers And Mirrors and… at the risk of overstatement, it’s a moment that changed the trajectory of my life. I had no real concept of emo or Saddle Creek or even Jeff Mangum, the artist to whom Conor Oberst was most often compared by that point. Rather, the layering of a shrieking G-funk keyboard over nervy, distorted acoustic strums, while a guy my age quivered helplessly about lust and vengeance and self-loathing and ego… this was it. The atom was split. This was the music I had been waiting for my whole life, to explain what I was feeling at that moment and, frankly, most others throughout college.

I’d soon find moments on Fevers And Mirrors that felt nearly as compelling — those spooky keyboards on “Something Vague,” the frigid cornfield ambience of “Arienette,” Oberst yelling “THIS ISN’T HAPPENING HAPPENING HAPPENING” over plinking piano. I always thought the “interview” at the end of “An Attempt To Tip The Scales” was hilarious, even if I thought it was meant to be ironic and not outright fake, with the Faint’s Todd Fink playing the role of Conor Oberst. But the fact that the original Pitchfork review did think it was real and in astonishingly poor taste just sealed the deal for me. Of course they wouldn’t get it. Twelve years later, I was literally and figuratively settling the score. Most likely while laughing off whatever the next Bright Eyes was going to be.

I have to ask myself, who is this list really for? Hardcore Bright Eyes fans looking to compare notes? Teenagers who haven’t heard Bright Eyes and are looking for a place to start? People in my age group who’ve been Bright Eyes skeptics their entire lives? If the latter was the case, I don’t think I’d put Fevers And Mirrors at No. 1, since so much of that record’s power (and really, the peak of Bright Eyes) lies in its validation of a specific worldview, one to which people lose their access once a crush or a sh*tty day at school no longer becomes the sort of thing an entire concept album can be built around. Once you stop relating to a song called “The Center Of The World.” I don’t know if I get too much new out of Fevers And Mirrors when I listen to it now, but that doesn’t diminish its power to take me there, the same way that adolescent classics like Violent Femmes or Weezer’s The Blue Album do. Maybe it’s a record that gets one shot at you, but it doesn’t miss.

A lot is going right for Charlie Puth these days. He got a laudatory co-sign from Taylor Swift earlier this year. He teamed up with Stray Kids for a song in May and dropped a solo track, “Hero,” not long after. Most importantly, he revealed a few days ago that he’s married now.

The good news just keeps coming in: It was announced today (September 24) that Puth has landed his own Roku Original comedy series, titled The Charlie Puth Show. The six-episode series will stream on The Roku Channell starting October 4.

An official synopsis for the show reads:

“The Charlie Puth Show follows Charlie as he attempts to scale the zeitgeist by going beyond pop stardom to become a multi-hyphenate talent after being told it’s no longer enough to just be a musician.

Featuring artists, comedians and icons from every area of the pop matrix, the famous faces that populate the show help Charlie to navigate his heightened reality where his career neurosis and musical perfectionism often gets in the way of his peace and sanity, ultimately parodying the very zeitgeist that Charlie’s trying to conquer.”

This is conveyed in the new trailer, which also reveals appearances from Will Ferrell, Courteney Cox, John Legend, Wiz Khalifa, and “Weird” Al Yankovic.

Check out the trailer above.

Horror maestros Mike Flanagan and Stephen King go together like, well, you know. The spooky streaming TV king has already adeptly adapted multiple King titles, including the hard-to-handle Gerald’s Game and The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep. Heck, Flanagan even managed to crank out the life-affirming Life Of Chuck movie during recent Hollywood turmoil, and now, he appears to be circling back to The Dark Tower.

That’s an evergreen dream, as Constant Readers know. There has also been no shortage of attempts (including an ill-conceived movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey) to properly adapt The Dark Tower book series. Further, Flanagan has recently jumped ship from Netflix to Amazon, which went through a previous failed pilot experiment with the IP, and Flanagan has noted that Jeff Bezos’ streaming service likely harbors some “institutional PTSD” but remain “very aware” of his King dreams. Recent positive indications have come down the highway, too, so let’s mull over what we can expect from another meeting of their spooky minds

Plot

After what we saw Flanagan recently do ^^^ with Edgar Allan Poe and Fall of the House of Usher, it’s tempting to wonder how he will deviate from a by-the-books adaptation on The Dark Tower, although we know that no matter what he does, Flanagan will remain intensely faithful to the spirit of King’s work. As such, a new series will give the post-apocalyptic gunslinger his proper due while he attempts to protect a tower (which is tied to multiple realities) from the antagonistic Man In Black (Walter Padick/Randall Flagg, who Constant Readers also know from The Stand).

Is there an official synopsis or publicly available road map on breaking down the eight novels by season? Not yet. However, Flanagan revealed that the series would probably require a five-season commitment plus a few movies. He already has “a pilot script I’m thrilled with and a very detailed outline for the first season and a broader outline for the subsequent seasons.”

Should we hit the latest “will this happen?” updates, too? Sure.

Flanagan insists that this series was meant to be, and King is incredibly eager for the same, which should count for plenty after the author seemingly resurrected the WBD Salem’s Lot movie with a single tweet. And King has been tweeting cryptically over the summer while writing, “Mid-world is still there. The tower still stands.” King also “smirk”-ingly admitted (to Dread Central at the Life of Chuck premiere) that The Dark Tower is what he wants to see adapted next out of his works. What of his Twitter goading? “I’m trying to rev myself up.” King then raved about Flanagan’s ability to “respect the material in a way that keeps him from getting too cute with it. And he’s great at what he does; he’s a real craftsman.”

How does Flanagan currently feel on progress? He told Hollywood Reporter, “That thing’s launching an oil tanker. But we’re working on. It was stalled first by me moving from Netflix to Amazon and stalled again by the strikes. It’s progressing, and we’re further along than we’ve ever been on it.” Ideally, he means even further than when, in 2022, Flanagan previewed his opening-shot intent with those fatefully iconic words: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” And this year at Emerald City Comic Con, Flanagan described a scene that he cannot wait to adapt:

“Very late in the story, there’s a scene that takes place in a forest where a character is being buried. And there’s a eulogy being given that made me cry the first time that I read it… [it] just kills me, and I can’t wait for that.”

Sure, this saga has seemingly taken forever to be jump started, but the same goes for King’s ordeal in writing the entire saga. He was even interrupted by a collision with a car while cycling, which led to extended physical recovery, and if King could finish those books, then a deserving TV series can be made.

It sounds like the “go ahead” from Amazon is all that Flanagan to fully throw himself into the project.

Cast

Flanagan frequently draws from the same nourishing well of usual suspects for his projects, and we can expect him to keep that practice alive here. So, we would likely see some of the following actors: Carla Gugino, Annabeth Gish, Rahul Kohli, Mark Hamill, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Victoria Pedretti, Katie Parker, Samantha Sloyan, and/or Kate Siegel. Then again, sometimes Flanagan shakes things up and brings in a show-stopper like Hamish Linklater (of Midnight Mass), who would make a fine Man in Black. Then there’s the casting of gunslinger Roland Deschain, which could be a head scratcher.

Previously, Flanagan fave favorite Henry Thomas declared that he would “love to have a part” in this series. Everybody who could be involved wants this project to happen, so it’s time to get that ball rolling.

Release Date

One more hang-up does exist: Flanagan’s new take on The Exorcist will arrive in March 2026. But if The Dark Tower series is officially greenlit soon (and that would involve Amazon overcoming their previous IP trauma with the title while trusting that Flanagan will not make a mess in his built-in playground there), then it shouldn’t take too long to have a pilot come together. Sure, this project would eventually seek to adapt eight novels, but that won’t happen in a first season, and Flanagan proved himself a master at turning around successive Netflix series at a (mostly) one-year interval. Also 2026? Please.

Trailer

This doesn’t simply feel like a trailer for the Elba-McConaghey movie. It feels like an outline of everything that went wrong.

T.I. and Tiny Harris have prevailed in their copyright infringement lawsuit against toy company MGA over its O.M.G. doll line. They won $71 million after a jury decided the toys did, in fact, infringe on the concept of the pop group OMG Girlz, which was created by Tiny and featured her daughter Zonnique “Star” Pullins.

According to Law360 (via Billboard), the couple was awarded $17.9 million in actual damages and $53.6 million in punitive damages after one day of deliberation following the three-week trial.

The couple first sued the company in 2021, alleging “cultural appropriation and outright theft of the intellectual property” in the design of the O.M.G. dolls, which recreated the look of a group of “young multicultural women.” While MGA argued that few would remember the “short-lived” pop group, the Harris’ case presented side-by-side images of their OMG Girlz, comparing dolls to each of the group’s four members: Pullins, Bahja “Beauty” Rodriguez, and Breaunna “Babydoll” Womack.

This latest trial was the third in the saga; the first, in January 2023, ended in mistrial after inadmissible evidence was presented in court, while the second was overturned on appeal after finding MGA not liable for copyright infringement. MGA can still appeal this latest decision.

The win was the second legal victory for the couple in as many months, after a judge dismissed the sexual assault case against them in August — the second such case to be dismissed.

Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.

Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week, we got new music from Indigo De Souza, Father John Misty, Jamie xx, and more.

While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.

Haley Heynderickx – “Foxglove”

On “Foxglove,” Haley Heynderickx unearths a new side of her music. 2018’s I Need to Start a Garden saw the Portland, Oregon artist steep her songs in a contemplative hush. Listening to it felt like lying down in a moss bed, its strong aromas blanketing you in a nature-induced bliss. While “Foxglove,” off her forthcoming second album, Seed of a Seed, draws from lush, verdant scenery, it’s more rambunctious than it lets on. Shuffling ahead at a train groove, Heynderickx employs bluesy acoustic guitar and lockstep upright bass to guide her along. Nature is more than still calm; it’s also wild. “Tell me, what is your dream? / Tell me, truly, is it the city life,” she asks in the opening couplet, all but answering that second question for you. “Foxglove” reckons with the potency of natural beauty. It’s a reminder that, sometimes, the best balm for life’s ailments is to, well, touch grass.

Fievel Is Glauque – “Love Weapon”

The latest single from Fievel Is Glauque actually predates Fievel Is Glauque as a band. Its genesis dates back to 2011 when bandleader Zach Phillips wrote it for his old group, Blanche Blanche Blanche. Here, it has gained new life as a Fievel song with Má Clement’s airy vocals and a ripper of a closing saxophone solo.

Drug Church – “Slide 2 Me”

Prude, the latest album from hardcore greats Drug Church, is almost here, ready to see the world on Oct. 4. Before then, however, the group has shared one final preview in the form of “Slide 2 Me.” It’s quintessential Drug Church: rowdy, catchy, gritty, and delivered with frontman Patrick Kindlon’s unmistakable bark.

Indigo De Souza – Wholesome Evil Fantasy

Fresh off the release of last year’s album All Of This Will End, Indigo De Souza’s surprise-released EP is full of surprises. Wholesome Evil Fantasy, the EP in question, filters the Asheville musician’s jangly, heart-on-sleeve artistry through a zealous zaniness that contains her most danceable, colorful, and poppiest music yet. The end result is closer to Charli XCX than Wednesday. Opening track “Wholesome” is rife with AutoTune and synth-pop production, and “Evil” and “Fantasy” lean on blown-out, hyper-compressed drums that see De Souza embrace a playful guilelessness despite the bleak lyrics. If anything, Wholesome Evil Fantasy sounds fittingly wholesome.

The Armed – “NEW! Christianity”

The Armed have described Everlasting Gaze, an EP hidden in the vinyl edition of last year’s Perfect Saviors, as a cleansing. It’s an appropriate statement for a project centered on crystallizing the Detroit collective’s trilogy of records into a more succinct package. “NEW! Christianity,” originally written as the lead single for Perfect Saviors (and now the lead single of its companion EP), reflects on false idolatry. “A life so painless / Without flaw,” the chorus ends. On their latest single, the Armed aren’t seeking your praise so much as setting themselves up for a new beginning.

Father John Misty – “Screamland”

Josh Tillman is back with a meandering, sprawling ballad, the type he arguably mastered on 2017’s opus Pure Comedy. With “Screamland,” however, one of the singles from the forthcoming Mahashmashana, matters take a shocking turn. Whereas the typical Tillman ballad seldom strays from a piano-and-string foundation, “Screamland” comes armed with bit-crushed, distorted synths and high decibel levels never before reached on a FJM joint. It’s a captivating new angle on a well-established indie artist.

Hey, ily! – “(Dis)connected”

Being terminally online comes with advantages and setbacks. The main setback? You’re terminally online. The main advantage? You make music that sounds as variegated and colorful as Hey, ily!. Caleb Cordes, the Billings, Montana musician whose amalgamation of digicore, emo, and gaming OSTs has placed his five-piece project Hey, ily! within a distinctly online DIY scene, has leveled up his group’s sound like an astute JRPG player. Hey, I Loathe You!, the band’s second album, revitalizes the lo-fi sugar rush and electrogoth of their 2021 EP Internet Breath with a glossy sheen. “I’m so connected that I’m disconnected,” Cordes sings on the chorus of lead single “(Dis)connected,” speaking to the paradoxical isolation of the world wide web. On their latest song, Hey ily! manage to connect their influences in a thrilling, deliriously fun package.

Jamie xx – In Waves

Nearly a decade after his debut solo album, Jamie xx has finally returned with its follow-up. In Waves takes the xx member’s house-inflected beats and dials up the bass and limns it with a shiny polish. Compared to the more outré stylings on its predecessor, Jamie xx’s latest sounds exquisite, fit for a lavish club where you and a room full of strangers while away the nocturnal hours.

Origami Angel – “Sixth Cents (Get It?)”

D.C. emo duo Origami Angel have always been known for their pun-heavy song titles. They parenthetically acknowledge the running gag themselves on “Sixth Cents (Get It?),” another preview of the forthcoming Feeling Not Found. That playful spirit takes shape in the music itself, too. Ryland Heagy’s sticky-sweet vocal melodies and Pat Doherty’s kinetic, double-bass drumming all but ensure that you get more than just a bit. You get Origami Angel.

Blackstarkids – Saturn Dayz

Kansas City trio Blackstarkids recently shared the news of their imminent hiatus. It’s uncertain how long the break will last, but they’ve given us one more album to tide us over. Given that it’s possibly their last, Saturn Dayz encapsulates the core Blackstarkids sound into a dozen infectious tunes. From the ironically upbeat “Killjoy” to the deep grooves undergirding “Modern Happiness,” this album reminds us why Blackstarkids will be sorely missed.

The wait for LG7 just got a lot easier.

Lady Gaga is releasing a companion album to Joker: Folie À Deux called Harlequin, a nod to the character she plays in the Joker sequel, Harley “Lee” Quinn. The album, which contains 13 songs (many of which are covers), comes out this Friday, September 27, a week ahead of the movie.

For Joker: Folie À Deux, Gaga taught herself to be a worse singer. “People know me by my stage name, Lady Gaga, right? That’s me as that performer, but that is not what this movie is; I’m playing a character,” she told Empire. “So I worked a lot on the way that I sang to come from Lee, and to not come from me as a performer. How do you take music and have it just be an extension of the dialogue, as opposed to breaking into song for no conceivable reason? It was unlike anything I’ve ever done before.”

Find the Harlequin cover art and tracklist below.

Lady Gaga’s Harlequin Album Cover Artwork

Lady Gaga’s Harlequin Tracklist

1. “Good Morning”
2. “Get Happy”
3. “Oh, When The Saints”
4. “World On A String”
5. “If My Friends Could See Me Now”
6. “That’s Entertainment”
7. “Smile”
8. “The Joker”
9. “Folie À Deux”
10. “Gonna Build A Mountain”
11. “Close To You”
12. “Happy Mistake”
13. “That’s Life”

Harlequin is out 9/27 via Little Monsters/Interscope. Find more information here.

Bad Bunny and Lizzy McAlpine each tugged at heartstrings with their latest releases, but in wildly different ways. Nessa Barrett and Kelsea Ballerini continued teasing their respective forthcoming albums, while Alec Benjamin and Keshi treated fans to bonus tracks.

Check that out and more in Uproxx’s Best New Pop Music roundup below.

Bad Bunny — “Una Velita”

Omnipresent phenomenon Bad Bunny will never outgrow Puerto Rico. “Una Velita” features a choir and a slow tempo, underscored by guitar, and appears to shine a light on the lasting impact of Hurricane Maria, which made landfall September 2017. As noted by Pitchfork, Bad Bunny’s lyrical references to palm trees may be a nod toward Puerto Rico’s New Progressive Party ahead of the country’s gubernatorial vote on November 5.

Nessa Barrett — “Dirty Little Secret”

“I’m done playing nice,” Nessa Barrett softly sings as the opening line of “Dirty Little Secret.” The song’s title is self-explanatory. Barrett hushed vocals reflect her simple request: “I don’t have to be the one / We don’t have to be in love / Let’s keep it discrete, sneaking out the back door.” The provocative single and accompanying Aerin Moreno-directed video follows “Passenger Princess.” While “Passenger Princess” explores desperately wanting to hold onto someone, “Dirty Little Secret” explores lustful detachment. Both set the stage for Aftercare, Barrett’s forthcoming sophomore full-length album.

Lizzy McAlpine — “Pushing It Down And Praying”

Lizzy McAlpine released Older (And Wiser), the deluxe version of her April 2024 album Older, and “Pushing It Down And Praying” leads the charge. The painstaking ballad leaves nothing to the imagination. McAlpine is stuck between two people, but she’s more conflicted over how she feels about the whole ordeal. McAlpine co-directed the equally beautiful video with sweetiepie, including a dance sequence with Role Model.

Nelly Furtado Feat. Charlotte Day Wilson — “All Comes Back”

Nelly Furtado’s 7, her newly released album and first LP since 2017, came from a pool of “400-500 pieces of music,” and I’m glad “All Comes Back” made the cut. “All Comes Back” features Charlotte Day Wilson, and while their voices sound lovely together, the piano-laced ballad comes straight from Furtado’s heart. “I was going through major, like, life change — a major breakup,” Furtado told NPR’s Scott Simon. “And it’s so poignant sometimes when the heart is tender, and you’re figuring yourself out.”

Kelsea Ballerini — “Two Things”

Kelsea Ballerini will release Patterns on October 25. With “Two Things,” Ballerini is slowly immersing fans into the album’s all-consuming world. The country-pop singer described the acoustic, emotional song as “the story of learning to break the pattern of fighting with and learning to fight for.” Patterns will follow Rolling Up The Welcome Mat, Ballerini’s Grammy-nominated EP chronicling her divorce. Based on “Two Things” alone, it doesn’t feel hyperbolic to believe Ballerini could win Best Country Album next time around.

Jamie xx Feat. Romy & Oliver Sim — “Waited All Night”

Jamie xx finally released In Waves, his long-awaited solo LP. “Waited All Night” is a lovely touch because it features his The xx bandmates, Romy and Oliver Sim. “It’s wonderful to have the gang back together, working in new ways, working out new lives,” Jamie xx said in a statement, as per Pitchfork. “I wouldn’t be here without them.” It helps that “Waited All Night” is objectively an infectious, rhythmic banger.

Ava Max — “Spot A Fake”

“I’ve been waiting so long to share this record with you,” Ava Max wrote on Instagram. Now that “Spot A Fake” is out, Max is done holding her tongue. The uptempo dance-pop single is an anthem of betrayal. Max compares someone breaking girl code to “a demon blowin’ a kiss” and “a spring rose, but she’s covered in thorns.” Grant Boutin, known for producing for Tate McRae, and Pink Slip co-produced “Spot A Fake,” and Max co-wrote the song with Boutin, LØLØ, and Salem Ilese to write the song.

Alec Benjamin — “The Plan”

All is going according to plan for Alec Benjamin, so it checks out that his “The Plan” chorus finds the multi-platinum-certified singer-songwriter melodically admitting, “And the plan didn’t work, but it all worked out / And what I wanted thеn isn’t what I’ve got now / But if I did it again, wouldn’t change it anyhow.” Benjamin is currently staging his headlining 12 Notes Tour and sweetened the pot by releasing 12 Notes (Deluxe) [16 Notes].

Keshi — “Kiss Me Right”

Keshi released Requiem, his sophomore LP, on September 13, and he didn’t make fans wait more than a week for Requiem (Bonus Edition). “Kiss Me Right” is indeed a bonus, reinforcing Keshi’s continued evolution as a versatile artist. Don’t listen to this dynamic track if you’re on the fence about whether to indulge in a potentially reckless romantic situation because Keshi will convince you to go for it within the first 15 seconds — “Feels so good when you miss me, I / need one night just to get me by / Take it all back if you kiss me right” — which is the utmost compliment.

grantperez & Benny Sings — “Fuzzy Feeling”

Gen Z is in good hands with grantperez. The Filipino-Australian artist has global appeal, which is on display with “Fuzzy Feeling.” The upbeat, melodic song captures the hallucinogenic effect of having a crush. The Babak Khoshnoud-directed video finds grantperez whimsically daydreaming while wearing a racing helmet, and the lyrics find him wearing his heart on his sleeve.

For the past four years, Portugal’s Afro Nation festival has been the biggest Afrobeats festival in the world, and that tradition will continue in 2025. Festival organizers The Malachite Group have announced the dates for the fifth anniversary edition of Afro Nation in Portimão with headliners Burna Boy and Tems. Afro Nation Portugal 2025 will take place from July 9-11, 2025 on Praia Da Rocha Beach, returning to its home for the past four years. The presale for tickets begins on October 2, with the general sale starting on October 3. You can find more information here.

Burna Boy has been a fixture of Afro Nation since its inception in 2019, headlining the fest in 2022 and 2023, and helping to launch extensions of the festival in Miami and Detroit in 2023. While he’s taken a year off to complete his own tour, letting Rema, Asake, and J Hus take the reins for this year’s fest, his return will undoubtedly make a splash.

Meanwhile, Tems will make her Afro Nation debut with her headlining set next year after releasing her debut album, Born In The Wild, this past June to rave reviews and a respectable Billboard showing, peaking at No. 56 on the albums chart and at No. 2 on the World Albums chart.

Jensen Ackles previously told UPROXX that he was game to “show some tush” ahead of Soldier Boy debuting in The Boys‘ third season. Unfortunately for those viewers who enjoyed his view performance, Soldier Boy went on ice for the fourth season (leaving us only with a Blondie cover for the memories), but wait. The bad-daddy Supe did surface in a fourth-season finale scene that showed an emotional Homelander learning that his bio dad (who hates him) was still alive. Can we expect emotions and fists and laser eyes to fly again between these two in the fifth season?

Oh, it is happening. Despite Ackles being a co-lead of the future Vought Rising prequel series, there will be plenty of Soldier Boy in The Boys‘ final season. Sure, the show will make time for showcasing Ashley’s new powers and handling the A-Train situation, too, but those are no obstacles. Showrunner Eric Kripke is a pro at overstuffing this show to the optimal degree, and he assured Games Radar that the Soldier Boy/Homelander relationship will figure prominently into the fifth season:

“You know, what we realized was we really hadn’t explored the father-son relationship much between Homelander and Soldier Boy. There’s a lot of material there, how soldier boy feels about Homelander, how Homelander feels about his dad, and so we really wanted to dig into that relationship.”

And you know that Soldier Boy will make Homelander go through more hell. He’ll likely one-up the “just a cheap f*cking knockoff” remark with taunting about Homelander’s former lover, Stormfront, because those two surely have some sort of history together. Whether it’s strictly platonic or more will not matter if Homelander gets himself worked up with jealousy over mere proximity between Soldier Boy and Homie’s former sky-high lady.

Previously, Ackles signaled his willingness (to Entertainment Weekly) to do anything with his Supernatural chief: “I told Krip, ‘Look, man, put me in anytime. You tell me when to come running, I’ll come running.’” And Kripke was thrilled to publicly make that call (via Deadline) at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con: “We can announce that Soldier Boy will be a regular in Season 5. The motherf*cker’s back.”

The Boys will return in 2026, but Gen V will fill the gap in 2025.