In a couple of weeks, Helen Ballentine’s hazy-reverie project Skullcrusher will follow 2022’s Quiet The Room with the new album And Your Song Is Like A Circle. We’ve already posted her songs “Exhale,” “March,” and “Dragon.” Now, just before the LP drops, she’s dropped another sad-lullaby bomb on us. This one is called “Living.” L-I-V-I-N, man.

Earlier this year, Circuit Des Yeux unveiled the extravagant album Halo On The Inside. Now the art-pop musician is back with an expanded edition called Halo On The Inside: Director’s Cut.

You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but you should really go see Nine Inch Nails live. Earlier this year, Trent Reznor’s long-running band headed out on their first proper tour in a few years, and it was fucking incredible. I saw the show in Baltimore, and that shit blew my wig back. Reznor and his stripped-down band have enlisted the best sound and light people that you could possibly imagine, and they have constructed a spectacle that allows them to dig into the nooks and crannies of NIN history and to play around with iconic tracks while still bringing the full-force anthems that launched a million high-school image reinventions. Last month, NIN finished their tour in Los Angeles and released their Tron: Ares soundtrack. If you missed the tour, you now have another chance. They’re bringing it back next year.

“Dozer,” the new single from UK trio Plantoid — drummer Louis Bradshaw, vocalist/guitarist Chloe Spence and lead guitarist Tom Coyne — opens with bright bursts of guitar, a steadily strutting drumbeat, and icy high-pitched vocals. But it ends in a different galaxy. It’s an ostensibly post-punk introduction that takes us on labyrinthine alien adventure. In 2025, “Dozer” is proof that prog-rock is alive and thriving.

Denver’s Destiny Bond make fast, mean, anthemic hardcore punk, and their sophomore album The Love is coming out in a few weeks. I thought lead single “Peace As A Punchline” was an absolute ripper. Today, Destiny Bond follow that one with two more, “Out Loud” and “Mind To The Mirror.” Both songs are short, hard, and direct. Both of them are just a tiny bit more than one minute long. The two tracks, the last ones that Destiny Bond wrote for the LP, appear in the tracklist as a one-two punch. Listen to both of them below.

The latest music video from LA-based indie-pop singer-songwriter Jordana threads an interesting needle. In the Alex LaLiberte-directed clip, she plays a news personality type who visits a local hype house to learn the latest dances from a team of influencers. In the process, Jordana manages to make fun of TikTok dances as an institution while introducing a few moves that could potentially become TikTok dances themselves — a very right-now version of both having and eating cake.

I was at last week’s Turnstile show in Richmond, the one where a sheriff’s deputy apparently pepper sprayed some kid in the face. I didn’t get pepper-sprayed, though. I didn’t even see it happening. That’s probably because I started heading for the merch tables as Turnstile were finishing their last song. I really, really wanted to get a Speed football jersey. I got one, and it looks sick as hell.

Some songs make a fool out of time. Such is the case of “50s song,” the debut single from newly formed UK trio Dorothy, which calls back to a bygone era while also feeling otherworldly. While there’s a romantic, doo-woppy air to “50s song,” there’s also intergalactic synths, man-made rocket(?) wave(?) noises, and a grunginess that unfolds as the song fades out. It’s a little eerie, like a Caspar David Friedrich painting, but overall striking with pop whimsy.

The thing about mythmaking is, it’s a lot cooler when other people do it for you. Except for maybe when it’s a state attorney aiming to send you to prison until Barron Trump’s re-elected president. Staring into the judge’s eyes during Young Thug’s RICO trial a few years ago, a Georgia state prosecutor was doing just that as he told a fantastical tale of Thugger’s crime boss alter ego. It was an opening statement fit for Spike Lee’s The Slimefather starring Denzel Washington: “This is the most of them. This is the one that you see the shadow in the back of the room. He’s the one directing traffic. He is the one that we’re all afraid of. He’s the one that’s King Slime.”

Ultra-theatrical punk rock stars AFI have been through many different phases in their long career, and their new album Silver Bleeds The Black Sun… represents a new one. For one thing, Davey Havok has that crazy mustache situation now. For another, they’ve signed with Run For Cover, a label that’s never taken on a band this hugely famous before. On top of all of that, AFI seem to be going full old-school goth-rock for this record, which is arriving right in time for the spooky season.