The two members of the duo Still Blank come from Hawaii and Manchester, and they started collaborating while on opposite sides of the planet. These days, they’re based in LA, and they’re getting ready to release the self-titled debut album that they recorded with producers Joel Pott and Flood. We’ve posted their singles “Ain’t Quite Right” and “Cut Slack.” Today, they share a nicely blurry piece of alt-pop called “Same Sun.” It sounds like something that you might’ve discovered in the second hour of 120 Minutes in 1996, and you can hear it below.

A few weeks ago, I took my daughter to see Lucy Dacus headline the All Things Go Festival at Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. As someone who watched Dacus play a whole lot of small rooms in her earlier years, that was a trip. While touring behind her recent major label debut Forever Is A Feeling, Dacus has been indulging in a sincere stage gimmick: She’s been seeking out couples who want to get married and then officiating mass weddings while singing her love song “Best Guess.” Dacus did that with a big group of couples at All Things Go, and she did it again when she was the Jimmy Kimmel Live musical guest on Thursday.

John Lodge, bassist and vocalist for British rockers the Moody Blues, has passed away. According to The Guardian, Lodge’s family broke the news in a statement, writing that he died peacefully at home while listening to Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. No cause of death has been reported. Lodge was 82.

Boldy James has already put out a bunch of new albums in 2025: Murder During Drug Traffic with RichGains, Permanent Ink with Royal House Recordings, and Conversational Pieces with Real Bad Man, just to name a few. In July the Detroit rapper teamed up with the Montreal producer Nicholas Craven for the album Late To My Own Funeral, and believe it or not, they’re already gearing up for another one together. Although it doesn’t have a release date yet, Boldy and Craven’s new album Criminally Attached is coming soon, and they announced it today with lead single “No Blemishes.”

When we last heard from R.A.P. Ferreira in December, the poetic and elliptical underground rapper was releasing last OUTSTANDING UNDERSTANDING, an album that directly addressed his custody battle with his estranged ex. He’s got another new album on deck, a full-length collaboration with the prolific producer Kenny Segal.

David Byrne and Hayley Williams have been closely aligned lately. Last year Paramore covered “Burning Down The House” as part of the promo campaign for A24’s reissue of the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. Byrne, in turn, covered “Hard Times,” the single from 2017’s After Laughter on which Paramore channeled Talking Heads, and those covers were packaged together for a Record Store Day 7″. More recently, Williams guested on “What Is The Reason For It?” from Byrne’s new solo album Who Is The Sky? Now they’ve got another song together.

Mediocre white guys are trying to become stars. Have you been getting cringeworthy videos of a dude called sombr pushed onto your feed for some reason? Have you been hearing about a guy called Role Model, wondering who the fuck he is? You almost don’t even need to listen to the music to know it’s bland algorithm fodder; it’s so inoffensive that it’s offensive. sombr treats his shows like opportunities to clip-farm. Role Model has a gimmick of inviting a celebrity to be his “Sally” onstage for his unremarkable viral song “Sally, When The Wine Runs Out”; he’s had Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray, and many more. There’s an increasing amount of “artists” who seem more interested in being influencers.

Almost exactly one year ago, Chubby And The Gang, the great British punk band that became a solo project, released And Then There Was…, which turned out to be the last of their three albums. Earlier this year, frontman Charlie Manning Walker, otherwise known as Chubby Charles, announced that Chubby And The Gang were no more. But now Chubby is back with a new gang, and they’ve already got music out.

London septet the Orchestra (For Now) are the latest breakout stars of the city’s vaunted Windmill scene, the community orbiting the Brixton venue the Windmill, which has nurtured arty and ambitious indie rock bands like Black Midi, Squid, Shame, and Black Country, New Road. On Halloween, they’ll release their Plan 76 EP. They introduced it with the loud and jarring “Hattrick.” The second single is different.

Pusha T and Malice still talk about the Knitting Factory show. I still talk about it, too. If you were there, then I bet you still talk about it. It was a special night — a moment when you could see potential turn into cold, hard reality. It felt like everyone I knew was in that room that night, like we were all levitating. The Knitting Factory was not necessarily supposed to be the venue for that kind of night. I knew the room well, worked the door there for a few months in 2000. It wasn’t a big room. 400-cap. Tribeca. Rich neighbors calling in noise complaints all the time. It wasn’t the place for the most exciting rap show in the world, until it was.