The big dogs are back! It has been nearly nine years since U2 released Songs Of Experience, their last proper studio album of new music. This fall they will return with a 16th LP called Carnaval de Luz. It was announced today, one day before their 50th anniversary of forming in Dublin under their original name Feedback. The first thing that you need to know about the new U2 album is that Bono wears a fucking top hat on the cover.

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Spencer Radcliffe is back as Blithe Field. The Midwestern musician is releasing his new album Soft Core Hard Wear, the follow-up to 2023’s Grits Kissed, next month via Orindal Records. The first preview of the project is the single “Milked Rainbow,” which is an incredible title alone. But the song itself is also mystifying and weird. It’s fuzzy like a VHS tape that you haven’t unearthed in decades.

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Electronic producer Anthony Naples come from New York (not Naples) and makes tastefully bangin’ dance tracks. His album Scanners came out last year, and now he’s got two more jams on a new single. I don’t know what the title of “BBT” stands for, but it’s got a booming house beat and a whole lot of mini-hooks. “Seven” lasts for exactly seven minutes and gets kaleidoscopic with it. Hear both tracks below.

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Under the moniker Yangze, his nickname since birth, Jakob Littauer is the latest avant-pop upstart to emerge out of Copenhagen. In November, he’ll release his debut album Heartbreak Stew on the esteemed Escho label. It includes the previously released “Stew” and “Heart-Shaped Eyes,” and it opens with today’s new stunner “Okay.”

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18 years ago, Scarlett Johansson released Anywhere I Lay My Head, her unexpected debut album made up of Tom Waits covers. Now, the actress is co-starring in the new animated Netflix movie Ray Gunn with the legendary singer-songwriter.

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Chad Gilbert, founding guitarist of New Found Glory and vocalist for Shai Hulud, died this week due to complications from brain cancer. Today, his ex-wife, Hayley Williams, has posted a written tribute to Gilbert.

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I was stunned when Ezra Collective drummer Femi Koleoso told me he’s just 31 years old. (He’ll be 32 in October.) I’ve been listening to him for a decade, since the group’s 2016 debut EP, Chapter 7, and two albums he played on the following year, Nubya Garcia’s Nubya’s 5ive and Camilla George’s Isang. The bassist on those latter two releases was Daniel Casimir, but in Ezra Collective, Koleoso is joined by his brother TJ, as well as keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones, trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi (who replaced Dylan Jones on 2022’s Where I’m Meant To Be), and saxophonist James Mollison. 

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Hardcore is a universal language, and a new three-way split brings together practitioners from three different continents. The new United Nations EP has three tracks from New York’s Combust, two from Tokyo’s Blow Your Brains Out, and two from Brighton’s Imposter. All three bands build on the blueprint of New York hardcore from the late ’80s and early ’90s, and it’s cool to hear the differences in the way the three of them approach the form.

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If you’ve ever seen the name Ovrkast, you probably thought you were reading the word Outkast for a second. The Bay Area rapper and producer, born Silas Wilson, has chosen a stage name that’s radically similar to one of the most popular hip-hop groups of all time. They’ve noticed.

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The Chicago instrumental combo Yr Knives includes Tortoise/Eleventh Dream Day member Douglas McCombs on bass along with other local post-rock mainstays. They introduced their debut album Begin Yr Singing with “Fear&Trimbling,” a study in muscular intellectual noodling that surprisingly built to an emotionally devastating orchestral finale. It was tremendous.

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