In 2023, the inaugural edition of Darker Waves, a festival dedicated to new wave nostalgia, came to Huntington Beach, California. New Order and Tears For Fears headlined a single-day bill full of ’80s synthpop greats and their spiritual successors. Our buddy Ryan Leas reviewed the show for Stereogum, and he seemed to have a great time. There hasn’t been another Darker Waves since then. But three years later, the festival is coming back, and it’s got two supremely chill headliners: Morrissey and Smashing Pumpkins. What could possibly go wrong?

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The young-looking, Young-affiliated British post-punk band 1000 Rabbits impressed us greatly with their debut single “Virgin Soil.” Today they’ve shared another promising track that “seemed to flow out of us.” 1000 Rabbits built “Rubik’s Cube” out of a previous idea called “The James Bond Song,” and there’s definitely a spy-movie element to its sound. The…

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You might be sick of shoegaze. I wouldn’t blame you. Here at Stereogum, we probably get emails about new shoegaze bands with baffling streaming numbers every single day, and many of them immediately fade into the mists of my memory. But that’s not going to happen with Oklahoma City’s Mad Honey, who just announced their…

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Have you seen MUNA live? It’s a fucking party. The LA trio makes sleek, dancey indie-pop, and their shows are giddy singalongs. I’m used to hearing MUNA tracks with fun, flirty lyrics. I’m not used to hearing them talk like this: “How America gives more than America takes/ We give weapons to dictators in apartheid…

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Last year, we posted “I’m A Pretty Showboy,” a single from the buzzy Brighton band Opus Kink. Opus Kink make brooding, strutting post-punk with accents of jazz and country. They’ve got two horn players and a frontman who knows how to smolder, and they remind me a bit of Morphine, if Morphine were both British…

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I have waited for this day. Richmond, Virginia’s Division Of Mind are among the greatest heavy hardcore bands on the face of the planet right now. They make fiery, metallic mosh ragers with occasional tinges of industrial and experimental music, and they cause absolute pandemonium whenever they play live. I’ve seen them a bunch of…

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We are so stoked for this Friday’s release of Two Wheels Move The Soul, the new album from the electronics-infused Burlington indie band Robber Robber. They’ve released a whole slew of singles already, but who are we to reject one more when the tracks are this good? “New Year’s Eve” sets Nina Cates’ breathy wail…

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If you Google the phrase “commitment fear of,” you will probably have to scroll down a very long way before you encounter the Philadelphia hardcore punk band Commitment or their upcoming debut album Fear Of. Maybe that’s on purpose. Maybe the entire enterprise flies in the very face of search engine optimization. Nevertheless, Stereogum is…

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The phrase “paulmccartney has been banned” is inherently funny and absurd, especially when it comes to his own subreddit. Sir Paul McCartney was never the world’s most active Redditor, but the people running his Reddit account tried to post some photos and videos of a recent show in the r/PaulMcCartney subreddit over the weekend. But for reasons that remain mysterious, that thread was taken down, and McCartney’s account was temporarily suspended.

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Guns N’ Roses were one of the many bands subjected to the great drumpocalypse of 2025 when Frank Ferrer, their timekeeper of nearly two decades, left the band. But that hasn’t stopped Axl Rose, Duff McKagan, and Slash from chugging on: In December they shared the new songs “Nothin'” and “Atlas,” and they played both live for the first time last night at their tour kickoff in Monterrey, Mexico.

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