World News released one of our favorite EPs of last year with Escape. The London post-punk band is back today with their first music of 2025, which is a great jangly tune called “Don’t Want To Know.”

Lucrecia Dalt kicked off this year with “cosa rara,” a collaboration with former Japan frontman David Sylvian. It turns out the song comes from her new album A Danger To Ourselves, which was co-produced by the art-rock legend. The Colombian artist is releasing the second single “divina” today.

In Flames’ latest album was 2023’s Foregone, though since then they released a deluxe edition and some collaborations. The Swedish heavy metal band announced today that they’re departing with their drummer.

In March, Sufjan Stevens announced a 10-year anniversary edition of his beloved album Carrie & Lowell featuring bonus tracks and demos. That’s out this Friday (May 30), and the singer-songwriter did a heavy interview with NPR to reflect on the record.

The last American Music Awards took place in 2022, but the awards show is back tonight, happening in Las Vegas for the first time and hosted by Jennifer Lopez. The fan-voted event includes Janet Jackson’s first televised performance in seven years. The star sang “Someone To Call My Lover” and “All For You.”

Grimes was supposed to perform at DC’s World Pride Music Festival in a couple of weeks, a decision that drew some complaints because of her relationship with current Trump senior advisor Elon Musk. As the mother to three of Musk’s 14 total children, Grimes is probably somewhat accustomed to “family issues,” and now she’s saying those have made her have to cancel her festival appearance.

Over the weekend DIIV played Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom and did back-to-back live debuts of two songs: “Fender On The Freeway” from last year’s Frog In Boiling Water and their new single “Return Of Youth,” one of the 5 Best Songs Of The Week and the first song the band released since frontman Zachary Cole Smith lost his house in the LA wildfires. In the press release for the new song, Smith compared the two tracks, saying: “Where ‘Fender On The Freeway’ found peace in the patterns of a gigantic macro, this one finds it in a mundane and simple micro.” Now, DIIV can also find peace in the $1 million oversized novelty check they received from ExxonMobil during that show.

Over the weekend, twenty-plus bands of the post-hardcore and screamo ilk took over the Bellweather in Los Angeles for Your Renaissance Fest. Initially planned for the Teragram Ballroom before being moved to the higher-capacity venue, the two-day festival had Portraits Of Past’s first show since 2009 and Kind Of Like Spitting’s first show since 2015. The Spirit Of Versailles were on the lineup, too, after playing their first show since 2005 in their Sioux Falls hometown last month. (Kite Flying Society were supposed to play their first show in 21 years, but had to drop out last month.)

Royel Otis are a pop-rock duo from Sydney who are popular enough to be performing at Glastonbury and touring with Halsey. Earlier this month they shared a new single called “Moody,” a song where singer Otis Pavlovic complains about his girlfriend not seeing his “good intentions” and putting him “in the doghouse again.” On the chorus, he sings: “Last time, she said she would kill me/ My girl’s a bitch when she’s moody/ But she’s my everything.”

Drake seems to be plotting. The Canadian rapper made a surprise appearance at Central Cee’s show in Toronto last night. From a balcony, he performed “NOKIA,” which recently reached #2 on the Hot 100, off his joint album with PartyNextDoor’s $ome $exy $ongs 4 U and proclaimed his love for Central Cee.