Ride guitarist Andy Bell announced a new solo album called Pinball Wanderer only last month. Unlike his previous solo efforts, which were mostly comprised of unearthed ’90s songs, this one is mostly new, and Bell recorded and mixed most of it in a single session. We’ve already heard Bell’s lead single: a cover of the Passions’ “I’m In Love With A German Film Star.” Now, he’s sharing a follow-up, the grooving, horn-laced “apple green ufo,” which comes with a video by Chris Tomsett aka Innerstrings.

Porter Robinson, who once peddled EDM festival fare but has since distanced himself from the bass drop (as heard on last year’s more pop-punk-minded Smile! 😀), stopped by TripleJ’s “Like A Version” this week to cover Fontaines D.C.’s “Favourite.” As a result, the Romance single sounds like something straight out of a Jimmy Eat World or Something Corporate catalog.

Like many hyper-online rappers today, the UK’s fakemink is incredibly prolific; he released dozens of new songs last year, cultivating a distinctive “luxury and dirty” sound. But “Easter Pink,” the new fakemink single out this week, represents a pivot. As Pitchfork points out, the Suzy Sheer-produced track is a blend of “late-aughts bloghouse” and “early-2010s cloud rap,” two sounds that really Take Me Back to a golden era of music blogging. On “Easter Pink,” our limber London emcee deftly rides a tidal wave of surging synths and thumping kick, as if carried along by fog (or foggy memories of Crookers and Gold Panda). I can’t wait to see him perform it at the Fader Fort.

Two years ago indie rock veterans Nina Nastasha and Jeff MacLeod teamed up for a self-titled album under the name Jolie Laide. They’ve got a new LP called Creatures in the queue, now with bandmates Clinton St. John, and Morgan Greenwood in tow. (Kathryn Calder of the New Pornographers also plays keyboards on a few tracks.) Lead single “No Shape I Know” is an eerie and spacious track that shines a spotlight on Nastasha and MacLeod’s impassioned vocals. Listen below.

Former Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy is arguably the original goth overlord, and all later generations of goth overlord must show their fealty. Murphy has been on a bumpy road lately, and the most recent Bauhaus reunion ended abruptly when Murphy checked into rehab in 2022. But Murphy is back in action now, and he released the Boy George duet “Let The Flowers Grow” last year. Today, Murphy has a new song with his fellow goth overlord Trent Reznor.

In 1975, the studio-happy British art-rock band 10cc released their sophomore album The Original Soundtrack. That record is best-known for “I’m Not In Love,” a spacey and eerie six-minute anxiety-reverie that became an unlikely worldwide hit, reaching #1 in the UK and #2 in the US. The group broke up in 1983 before reuniting in different incarnations over the years. Now, two key members of 10cc have gotten back together to perform a special 50th-anniversary rendition of “I’m Not In Love” with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

This winter, after a lengthy wait that had superfans like SZA losing their minds, Severance returned for its second season on Apple TV+. Season two is still in the process of airing (if you haven’t caught up yet, do it, Seth!), but now that production is finally finished on the Severance front, executive producer Ben Stiller is moving forward with other projects. Specifically, he’s starring in a new HBO series called The Band.

Peter Gabriel and Sia are two of the more outwardly strange and arty pop stars ever to land #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Today happens to be Gabriel’s 75th birthday, and Sia is paying tribute to her art-pop forebear by releasing a charity cover of one of his most enduring classics.

Cross Record’s first Crush Me single “Charred Grass” was only slightly off-kilter. On its follow-up, “God Fax,” out today, UK-based singer-songwriter Emily Cross takes the sinister energy to the max.