In February, Robin Kester released the majestic tune “Departure” featuring Rozi Plain. Today, the Dutch chamber pop artist is announcing her new Ali Chant-produced album Dark Sky Reserve and unveiling the enveloping single “Happy Sad (It’s A Party).”
Last month, Jane Paknia announced her new EP, evocatively titled Millions Of Years Of Longing, and shared the glitchy lead single “Solace,” which she dedicated to SOPHIE and Alice Coltrane. Today, the electronic artist is back with “Waiting Pt 1.”
Jeffrey Runnings, the vocalist, bassist, and founder of indie band For Against, has died. Independent Project Records confirmed he passed away on Mar. 3 after a battle with Stage 4 cancer. He was 61.
Washington, DC’s Arena Stage invites you to go chase some waterfalls next year. The company’s 75th season will feature the premiere of Crazysexycool, a musical (loosely) based on the story of the trailblazing hip-hop trio TLC. Kwame Kwei-Armah (One Love: The Bob Marley Musical) wrote the jukebox musical and will direct the premiere, featuring choreography by Chloe O. Davis to hits like “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg,” “Waterfalls,” “Creep,” “Unpretty,” and “No Scrubs.”
A new Bill Fox album does not come along every day, but today, one has.
Justin Vernon is in the middle of a promo blitz for the new Bon Iver album SABLE, fABLE. Today it continues with a Zane Lowe interview for Apple Music. During the chat, Vernon offered new details about how he ended up collaborating with Taylor Swift on the songs “exile” and “evermore.” We all already intuited that it was related to her work with the National’s Aaron Dessner, Vernon’s bandmate in Big Red Machine, but now we have some more concrete background details on how it played out.
In 2019, Tay-K was sentenced to 55 years in prison for his role in the murder of 21-year-old Ethan Walker during a 2016 Texas home invasion. Today, in a separate case, the rapper born Taymor McIntyre was found guilty of murder in the 2017 death of 23-year-old photographer Mark Anthony Saldivar.
“You shake my hand! Say pleased to meet you! Look my in the eye! I don’t believe you!” That’s the part. That’s where I get stuck every time. Can’t get past it. I hear that, and I’m mentally headbutting a turret off a tank. For me, Trapped Under Ice’s “Pleased To Meet You,” from the 2011 album Big Kiss Goodnight, is an absolutely perfect piece of music. Justice Tripp shouts about being nothing like you, and then you want to yell along because you, too, are nothing like you. When TUI play in a big room, everyone in that room, including you, is nothing like you. If I could shoot 10 songs up into space to teach aliens that we’re nothing like you, that would be one of them. Last weekend, I saw a couple dozen hardcore bands at Richmond’s United Blood fest, and I enjoyed all of it. But in the back of my mind, I was really just waiting for the moment that Trapped Under Ice would play “Pleased To Meet You.”
When Circle Jerks put out their 1983 song “Coup D’Etat,” Donald Trump had not yet sicced his supporters on the US capitol building. Attitudes can change after you’ve watched an incumbent president attempt to overturn election results on live TV! And so when the LA hardcore punks performed the song at Coachella Sunday evening, frontman Keith Morris disclosed afterwards: “That song, that last line, ends with ‘kill all.’ That’s a pretty fucking ugly statement… In ugly times. Do not think that we encourage that.” His idea instead: “What we do encourage — what would be totally fucking happening — would be an army of Luigis.”
In the big book of songs about the profession of being a songwriter, few are more candidly bleak than Molly Burch’s “Baby Watch My Tears Dry.” In the track from her 2023 album, Daydreamer, Burch croons, “I overthink like it’s my job/ Trying to please everyone/ So many times I feel I’ve failed to/ Create the things I’m told I’m meant to.” The chorus picks up, but the mood doesn’t, with Burch begging helplessly for “a little reassurance” to keep her from crying an ocean’s worth of tears.