You don’t have to live in New York City to know that Zohran Mamdani should absolutely become the city’s next mayor. Case in point: During the first show of MJ Lenderman’s three-night stand at Brooklyn Steel Monday night, the North Carolina musician invited the state assembly member onstage to give a brief speech about why you should vote for him in the fast-approaching mayoral election.

One recurring bit of engagement bait circulating on social media this year has been a prompt asking users to name their Mount Rushmore of rappers: essentially the four greatest of all time. This led to hilarity like Machine Gun Kelly griping about his exclusion from an AI-generated white rapper Mount Rushmore (which, in a note-perfect summation of the AI slop experience, included Russ, who is notably not white). Now the trend has also led to Ben Affleck weighing in.

Takashi Miike has made some of the goriest films you can find on standard North American streaming services, and according to Charli XCX’s Letterboxd profile, she’s a fan. Now, as part of her grand pivot to film, she’s teaming up with the prolific Japanese filmmaker to star in and produce his next movie, Variety reports.

Bill Orcutt’s urgent, improvisational guitar music radiates inexplicability. Initially inspired by the blues, the Miami-born, San Francisco-based artist rose to cult legend status as a member of the noisy, experimental punk band Harry Pussy in the 1990s. After that act dissolved in 1997, following Orcutt’s divorce with romantic and creative partner Adris Hoyos, he moved to the Bay Area and shifted focus to filmmaking. Orcutt returned to music towards the end of the 2000s, rolling out dozens of confrontational instrumental solo records and collaborations at a steady clip, in addition to running the groundbreaking label Palilalia Records. He also designed the software Cracked, a live coding program that yields glitchy electronic textures. Across partnerships with the likes of Chris Corsano, Circuit des Yeux, and Okkyung Lee, Orcutt has emphasized an ability to straddle provocation and surrealism — his output is typically aurally demanding, while always evoking the beautiful chaos of flower petals blowing in spring wind.

Jack Black has broken a record. A Minecraft Movie came out earlier this month, and its soundtrack features a 34-second song called “Steve’s Lava Chicken.” That is now the shortest song to ever chart on the Billboard Hot 100, closely followed by Kid Cudi’s 37-second “Beautiful Trip.”

Last week, Kneecap said that they’ve been facing a “coordinated smear campaign” since their advocacy for Palestine during their Coachella set to bring awareness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The UK government has now condemned the Northern Irish rap trio, and today Kneecap made a statement in response.

Cameron Winter is offering salvation. The Geese frontman stole indie rock fans’ hearts with his idiosyncratic solo debut Heavy Metal in December, garnering praise from Nick Cave and performing on Kimmel in the meantime. Now he’s back with “LSD.”

The #3 single in America, slowly climbing out of the looming shadows of “Die With A Smile” and the still-charting “Pink Pony Club,” is a pop-rock song called “Ordinary.” The track sounds instantly familiar: a towering edifice of sound with multitracked, devotional-coded vocals in a perpetual rousing chorus, lyrics that equate the wife-guy lifestyle to breathless religious surrender, and a voice that projects more gravitas than the fratty-looking zoomer that’s intoning it. It pointedly aspires to couples dances and wedding tributes — there’s a separate “Wedding Version,” for the besotted among you.

Following a string of some promising new singles, Haim are celebrating the June release of their forthcoming album I quit by… going to work. They’ve announced a big run of 2025 tour dates today that’ll kick off in the spring and go through October, primarily in North America and the UK. They also have some previously announced festival appearances at Primavera Sound in Spain and Portugal and Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. Dora Jar will be supporting some of their headlining shows in the US.