Bar Italia rose out of the London rock underground with their own seductive guitar buzz, three criminally cool types at home in the dark. They made their big splash in 2023 with two ace albums for Matador, Tracey Denim and The Twits. But their terrific new Some Like It Hot …
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Power to the People is a portrait of John and Yoko as a young married couple splashing down in New York City, making friends with the local radicals and con men and boho scenesters. In October 1971, John Lennon is turning 31, coming off his first post-Beatles success with Plastic …
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BIA’s long-delayed official first album, Bianca, hardly feels like a real debut. The rapper and singer-songwriter has hovered around the industry for more than a decade, from her stint on T.I.’s reality TV series Sisterhood of Hip Hop while being mentored by Pharrell Williams to landing a Top 20 chart …
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In late August, María Zardoya began posting a series of quiet voice notes for fans on Spotify, guiding them gently toward Not for Radio, a project she formed outside of her breakthrough band, the Marías. She wanted to welcome people into an entire world she’d built — an “alternate reality,” …
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Madi Diaz has a talent for brief, yet devastating observations: “Looking at who you are and what I can live with/I can imagine myself as a picture of something different,” she whisper-chokes on “Hope Less,” the situationship-rationalizing opening track to her seventh album. The lyric’s power is heightened by the …
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Taylor Swift has stood atop the pop world, glittering in a sequined midnight-blue bodysuit with rainbow confetti falling at her feet. She has mesmerized stadiums packed with fans, whose screams and cheers registered on the Richter scale. She’s broken streaming and chart records she herself has set. She’s released a …
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“You’re the pick of the week/You’re the editor’s hot pick/For the third week in a row,” sings Joseph Arthur on Arthur Buck 2, his second collaboration with former R.E.M. jangle master Peter Buck. If anyone should know about the highs and lows of showbiz life, it’s Arthur. For the past …
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Two weeks before the arrival of UY Scuti, Young Thug’s first release since he took a plea deal from state prosecutors for his involvement in the YSL racketeering case, he dropped “Miss My Dogs.” It’s a meandering and wounded apology to the sundry friends and industry associates that he criticized …
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Euro summer isn’t over if you don’t want it to be. Just ask Zara Larsson, whose fifth album, Midnight Sun, keeps the good vibes, long days, and late nights going. From start to finish, Larsson’s latest refuses to ever slow down, instead trafficking in high-energy dance-pop joy. Hailing from pop …
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What more is there to say about love? It has been painstakingly dissected and enshrined for centuries in the written word, films, and songs that both shatter and mend hearts. Olivia Dean says it herself on “I’ve Seen It,” the closing track from her second studio album, The Art of …
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