LUX — the fourth studio album from brazen pop star Rosalía — is a spiritual opera that dares to see how many more genres, doors, realms the Spanish auteur can break through. From its outset, she is caught somewhere between life and death. In the overture “Sexo, Violencia y Llantas,” she imagines an existence ascending to heaven and then back to earth. “How nice it’d be to live between them both/ First I’ll love the world then I’ll love God,” the Spanish pop star sings, her spiritual dreams fortified by a magnolious choir. With piano trickles that fall like teardrops and somber strings, we’re already miles away from (or in this case above) the skid-marked revelry of 2022’s MOTOMAMI. On that album’s closer “Sakura,” she compared the glamorous lifestyle to the fleeting life of the Japanese flower: “Being a pop star never lasts.” Over shrieks of fans, her live vocal delivery presented a chilling parable that she was reaching for more than swerving around fame’s potholes. LUX does more than take Rosalía to transcendent new heights. If MOTOMAMI was the sound of a pop star rejecting calcified fame, LUX is that star diffusing into myth.

Last year, Ogbert The Nerd frontman Madison James locked down the URL for taylorswift.bandcamp.com and used to release the kind of thrashy, discordant music that one does not necessarily associate with the name Taylor Swift. It makes sense to me! “Taylor” and “swift” are both words in the English language. (Well, “tailor” is a word. I guess “Taylor” is just a name.) If the other Taylor Swift isn’t going to release music on Bandcamp, then why shouldn’t someone else employ that name?

Back in July, Paramore leader Hayley Williams dropped 17 new tracks on her website. In August, she organized all those tracks into the excellent solo album Ego Death At The Bachelorette Party and added one more song, “Parachute.” In October, Williams added another song, “Good Ol’ Days,” to Ego Death. Physical editions of Ego Death are out today, and Williams has just shared another new track, her 20th of 2025. Is she done? We don’t know!

Storied classic rock battleship Journey has finally reached the end of its… wait. Shit. How do I get out of this one? Its… journey. Fuck! I fucked it up! Whatever. No time to stop now. Let’s just keep going. I bet nobody noticed anyway.

Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of The Universe Smiles On You, the debut album from the chilled-out, mostly instrumental Texan soul-funk trio Khruangbin. Since that album’s release, Khruangbin have racked up tons of streams and played high up on the bill at vast numbers of music festivals. Last year, they got a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist and performed on the telecast. Today, Khruangbin mark the anniversary of that first LP with the surprise release of The Universe Smiles Upon You ii, a re-recorded version of the original.

Shudder To Think are in the midst of their first tour in 17 years, and they teased new music. Now the DC art-rock crew is sharing “Thirst Walk” and “Playback,” their first new songs in 27 years.

AI musicians are here. They are among us. In a recent article, Billboard called attention to a number of AI artists across a bunch of different genres who have appeared on various different niche Billboard charts — inhuman creations with names like ChildPets Galore, Unbound Music, Enlly Blue. Breaking Rust, and BOI WHAT. (A lot of them seem to operate in the contemporary Christian space, which is sort of interesting when you consider that these things are inherently godless just by virtue of their existence.) The most prominent of those artists is the fake R&B singer Xania Monet, who appears to be the first AI-generated artist to appear on any Billboard airplay chart. Yesterday, Xania Monet’s creator appeared on CBS This Morning to discuss her enterprise.

Radiohead are in the midst of playing their first shows since 2018. The band kicked off their reunion tour yesterday at Madrid’s Movistar Arena, and they performed at the same venue tonight and brought out some deep-cuts and tour debuts.

Do you ever listen to the film podcast Blank Check With Griffin And David? You really should. It’s consistently one of the best things on the internet. One might even say that it’s consistently one of the only good things on the internet. If you are reading this website, it’s safe to say that you are into deep popular-culture nerdery, and Blank Check does that with movies in a way that I hope we do with music. The current series on the Coen Brothers is a blast. I don’t really like writing about podcasts, and Blank Check doesn’t often has a ton of crossover with our world even though they keep booking my friends as guests, but the Slow Xmas series is a good opportunity to bring it up.

Shout out Rupert Giles. That guy really did his best to look out for Buffy and her friends, and he rarely got any credit for it. Instead, he kept getting beat up by vampires and demons and whatnot, and the people he loved kept getting killed. Maybe he died in the end? I can’t remember. I hope not. But now, he’s at least getting some shine, since he’s the namesake for a new song from the young Manchester fuzz-pop band cruush.