In August, Clairo released her first-ever official music video for the beloved Charm track “Juna.” Now, the indie-pop darling is back with one for “Sexy To Someone.“

The British rock band Sports Team were robbed at gunpoint halfway around the world from their London home base.

C2C Festival has been a staple of Italy’s dance music scene for quite a while now, and after over two decades of operating in Europe, the fest is expanding to the US. The inaugural American C2C Festival has been scheduled for May 9 at Knockdown Center in Queens, New York, with a lineup boasting Oneohtrix Point Never, Nala Sinephro, Two Shell, evilgiane, and John Glacier, with more to be announced.

Gibson made headlines last week by hitting Donald Trump with a cease-and-desist, but the esteemed guitar company is back in the news today for other reasons. A year ago, Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian launched a new project called the Gibson Band, featuring rock stars Tony Iommi and Serj Tankian. Now Gueikian is back with another famous-people collab, this time for charity.

Big Ears Festival — Knoxville’s shapeshifting, multi-dimensional, genre-defying celebration of music and arts — returns March 27-30, 2025 with another iconic gathering of many of the world’s most influential and visionary musical creators. Stereogum wants to offer you the chance to see Beth Gibbons in her first solo appearance ever in North America, be among the first to see Julien Baker’s new collaboration with TORRES, experience the dark transcendence of Ireland’s Lankum, and generally immerse yourself in the 4-day musical Utopia that is Big Ears.

Brian John McBrearty’s music blurs together ambient jazz and post-rock to gorgeous effect. Or at least that’s what he does on the lead single from new album Remembering Repeating. The lineup on the new LP is McBrearty on synths, bass, and vocals; Matt Douglas on sax (also, tenor, and soprano) plus clarinet and flute; and the great Ryan Jewell on drums and percussion. On “Repeating,” they weave illuminating tones and textures around a thoughtful groove, letting the music unspool from its plaintive beginnings toward somewhere warm and joyous. Listen below.

Nathy Peluso was born in Argentina, but she mostly grew up in Spain, where she’s now a big star. Earlier this year, Peluso released her sophomore album Grasa, and it won the Latin Grammy for Best Alternative Album last month. Last night, Peluso was the musical guest on The Tonight Show, and she put on an absolutely gorgeous, with some help from her recent collaborator Blood Orange.

This year’s Kilby Block Party was a great time, and now the Salt Lake City music festival has revealed its lineup for 2025. The headliners include New Order, Beach House, Weezer doing the Blue Album, and Justice.

Underground legend David Grubbs never stops making music — less than a month ago his new experimental supergroup, Squanderers, dropped their debut album — but the Gastr del Sol/Bastro/Squirrel Bait veteran has not released a solo album since 2017’s Creep Mission. He’ll change that in February with the new LP Whistle From Above. It’s also his first Drag City release in over a decade and his first all-instrumental release for the label.

In December 1994, the Duluth, Minnesota band Low released their debut LP I Could Live In Hope on Vernon Yard Recordings. In an increasingly loud and blustery rock underground, Low stood out by being quiet and minimalist, driven by the spectral harmonies of young married couple Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. That album helped establish that subgenre known as slowcore. In the decades that followed, Sparhawk and Parker kept Low going — first with a series of different bassists, and then all on their own — and they moved into different sounds and styles. The band ended in 2022, when Parker passed away of cancer at the age of 55. Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of I Could Live In Hope, and Sparhawk took the opportunity to reflect on it.

Here’s how blogging is supposed to work: There’s a catchy headline that gets you to click on the link, and then some chump writes a few paragraphs of context for what the headline actually means, and then there’s the actual piece of media that you clicked to find. But this is one of those cases where the context won’t really help you. What do you want from me? Keira Knightly played “Believe” on her teeth for Cher.

Lately when I go see my parents, I’ve started joking with my mom that the first thing she does is update me on all the devastating things that have happened to people she knows, knew, or thinks I might have known since the last time I saw her. Kids I sat next to in band class who were killed in motorcycle accidents, brothers of classmates of my mom and my aunt who had heart attacks, the son of a sister of her friend who has been diagnosed with cancer – these people a couple degrees of separation away from us who are experiencing a worst-case scenario. It’s more compassionate than gossipy, and it’s a window into the life my mom has lived outside of being my mom; she remembers members of family trees from her tiny hometown in a way I could only dream of remembering anybody I’ve ever known.

In between the Misfits and his eponymous band Danzig, Glenn Danzig served as the frontman for the short-lived but incendiary goth-punk-metal band Samhain. Long before he found fame as the idiosyncratic roots-music singer-songwriter Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Will Oldham was a Louisville punk and a big Samhain fan. Years ago, Oldham wrote a Pitchfork article about his experience going on the first Samhain tour as a photographer. Evidently, he’s been tight with former Samhain drummer London May ever since, and he’s got a new song named after the man.

The RICO trial surrounding Young Thug’s Young Slime Life organization, the longest trial in Georgia history, is finally over. The two remaining defendants, Deamonte Kendrick (aka Yak Gotti) and Shannon Stillwell (aka SB or Shannon Jackson), were sentenced today in a Fulton County courtroom, both of them avoiding the worst.

Los Angeles’ Cheekface have a new single out today. It’s called “Hard Mode,” a punky indie rock number punctuated by lots of hi-hat hits and some sweeping background vocals. And like all good things Cheekface, it’s got a good amount of snark: “Did you enjoy the novelty and then move on?/ I, of course, love that for you/ What are you moving on to?” Vocalist/guitarist Greg Katz explains:

We almost certainly won’t get a new boygenius album next year, but all three members of that supergroup did get together to produce an LP that’s coming out next month. Jasmine Cruickshank, the Manchester artist who records under the name jasmine.4.t recorded her full-length debut You Are The Morning at LA’s famed Sound City Studios, with Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and new label boss Phoebe Bridgers as producers and occasional bandmates. We’ve heard the early tracks “Skin On Skin” and “Elephant,” and now jasmine.4.t drops the new LP’s title track.

The Texan outlaw country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley lived a chaotic life and didn’t get around to releasing much music while he still walked the mortal plane. The 39-year-old Foley was shot to death in 1989, and he’s achieved cult-favorite status since his passing. Merle Haggard and John Prine covered his songs. Lucinda Williams wrote “Drunken Angel” about him. Ethan Hawke directed a movie about his life. And now Why Bonnie has shared her version of Foley’s song “Rainbows And Ridges.”

Kendrick Lamar and SZA are tight. They used to be Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates, and they’ve continued to collaborate since Kendrick launched his own pgLang label, including two tracks on his new zeitgeist-seizing GNX LP. They did one of those celebrity-on-celebrity interviews recently for Harper’s Bazaar. And now they’re heading out on a co-headlining stadium tour.

Welcome to Stereogum’s inaugural Best Songs Of The Year list. Typically in December, our staff members share 10 personal favorite tracks each — which we will still be doing, don’t worry — but after 23 years, we felt it was time to do a collective countdown. This year was stacked with memorable releases: legendary rappers dropped exciting records fueled by heated feuds, beloved bands returned with game-changing singles, and once-underrated pop singers became cultural fixtures with irresistible earworms. We had opinions and, since we kept track of the the best songs every week, we were prepared.

Dutch Interior come from the greater Los Angeles area, and they specialize in a bleary, thoughtful, textured form of indie rock. Back in the summertime, Dutch Interior signed to Fat Possum and released the shoegaze-leaning single “Ecig.” Today, they’ve got another new track, and it shows a very different side of what they can do.

Angel Deradoorian has a long history of collaborative projects, going back to when she sang for Dirty Projectors and extending all the way to Decisive Pink, her duo with Kate NV, who released a really good album last year. In her solo work, Deradoorian sometimes gets assistance from other vital artists, but she always comes off as a DIY auteur, controlling her own dense and exploratory sound. That definitely comes through on the new single that she released this morning.

In 2020, Village People first approved of Donald Trump playing their music at his rallies, then changed their minds, and then changes their minds again. Today, Victor Willis of the disco group thanked the 47th American President for his campaign’s use of “Y.M.C.A.” in a new Facebook post.

Last year, Sky Ferreira’s sole album Night Time, My Time turned 10. Since 2015, she’s been teasing its follow-up Masochism, then addressed the delay last year, which led to a “Free Sky Ferreira” banner flying over her label Capitol Records’ building. Now, she’s returning to release a new song for the upcoming Halina Reijn-directed A24 film Babygirl, and told Vogue more about the situation with Capitol.

Last week, Knocked Loose — who just received their first Grammy nomination — brought hardcore mayhem to Kimmel with a ferocious performance with Poppy full of screaming and moshing. Shortly after, a Facebook comment went viral — after getting picked up by The Mirror — for demanding an apology from the late-night television host. Now frontman Bryan Garris has responded.

Saturday Night Live just announced its hosts and musical guests for December. As revealed during the show’s recent Charli XCX extravaganza, Gladiator II star Paul Mescal will host with musical guest (and thwarted record-breaker) Shaboozey this Saturday, Dec. 7. A week later, Mescal’s girlfriend will make her SNL debut.

Four years ago, Deamonte Kendrick, the rapper known as Yak Gotti, joined his YSL compatriots Young Thug and Gunna on a song called “Take It To Trial.” That sentiment became quite real for all three artists in 2022 when the YSL braintrust was indicted on RICO charges. After historically lengthy legal proceedings, Gunna and Young Thug have accepted plea deals and gone free, but Yak Gotti remains on trial, in the custody of Fulton County, and apparently at risk of violent attacks.

Last week, Shaboozey tied the record. The Virginia artist’s out-of-nowhere crossover-country smash “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” spent its 19th non-consecutive week at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. That’s the same span of time that Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus spent at #1 when “Old Town Road” went supernova in 2019, and it’s three weeks beyond what any other hit has managed in the chart’s 66-year history. But Shaboozey won’t break the record, at least not this week. Kendrick Lamar made sure of that.

Last year, Jesse Malin — the beloved New York singer-songwriter who also played in punk bands like Heart Attack and D Generation — suffered a spinal stroke that left him paralyzed from the waist down. But things have been looking up over the past couple of months; he’s made progress walking again, he’s performed on CBS Saturday Sessions, and his musical peers and friends released a tribute album in his honor. On Sunday night, he also performed his first public concert since the stroke at New York’s Beacon Theatre, accompanied by guests including Steven Van Zandt, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, and more.

Earlier this year, the great underground lifer Steve Albini passed away suddenly. Over his long career, Albini engineered hundreds, or possibly, thousands, of records. When he died, Albini was in the middle of working on another one. That album was Wish Defense, the latest work from the veteran Chicago post-punk trio FACS, and it’ll come out early next year. They’ve already shared its title track. Today, we get to hear another song from the last album that Steve Albini engineered.

Early next year, the big-deal British rocker Sam Fender will release his new album People Watching. Fender recorded part of the LP with the War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel, and the advance tracks definitely sound like something that a big-deal British rocker might make with the War On Drugs guy. Last month, Fender shared the new LP’s title track. Today, he’s got two more.

Your kid loses a tooth, and you don’t have a one-dollar bill to put under their pillow, so you leave them alone to go get change. That’s the premise of “The Tooth Fairy,” the latest song from Owen Ashworth’s Advance Base project. The song is short and simple, and Ashworth delivers it with his usual hangdog deadpan, but it’s still enough to send you into an emotional tailspin. If you’re up on Ashworth’s work, you should be used to that by now.

For the past three years, the Cruel World festival has been bringing the stars of ’80s goth, post-punk, and new wave to Southern California. The greater Los Angeles area has long been a stronghold for gloomy British rock, and the festival has been a hit. Next year, Cruel World is coming back, with New Order and Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds as headliners. Now, the event producer AEG Presents has teamed up with the people behind Cruel World to announce a sister festival called Forever Now that’ll happen in the UK, the homeland of so many of these bands. The first edition is coming to the English city of Milton Keynes next year, and it’s got a lineup full of legends.

If you’ve never seen AC/DC live, you should absolutely see AC/DC live. The ancient Australian hard-rock institution is still out, even though all of its classic-era members are either dead or extremely old. Nevertheless, their live show remains an absolute blast, and you really need to be in the building at least once when the “Hell’s Bells” intro rings out. Now, those of us in North America will get at least one more chance at it.

The death of the album has been proclaimed many times, and after decades of piracy and point-and-click listening, cohesive bodies of work have indeed lost some of their cultural stature. Yet the long player remains a meaningful art form, the gold standard breathlessly anticipated by fan bases across the genre spectrum. Even the most brainless stans are always screaming at their idols to “drop the album.”

Kacey Musgraves has been on tour for a minute now promoting her March album Deeper Well. I saw her in Brooklyn and she was good! During the show, there’s a part where Musgraves walks past the standing area of the crowd to get between the main stage and the B stage. From what I could tell, the audience was excited to see her walk by, but they were all cool about it. On Friday, however, someone was not cool about it.

Aerosmith have had an extremely successful decades-long run, but 2024 has not been a great year for the band. After postponing their farewell tour multiple times, the band finally canceled it outright, citing singer Steven Tyler’s vocal chord injuries. Tyler is also facing multiple lawsuits for sexual assaults that he allegedly committed in the ’70s. Last week, we learned that Disney World’s Aerosmith-themed Rock ‘N’ Roller Coaster is rebranding as a Muppets ride. Now, even the band’s drummer’s coffee brand is shutting down.

For some time now, Elton John has had serious problems with his eyesight, and he now says that it’s gone completely, to the point where he can’t read or watch anything. He’s working on ways to repair it, but the eyesight issues are bad enough that he can’t record new music. Earlier this year, John posted on Instagram that he’s lost most of the vision in one eye because of a “severe eye infection”:

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

Another year of Morrissey playing shows, canceling shows, and not releasing an album is coming to an end. His self-proclaimed “best album” Bonfire Of Teenagers has been in the works since 2020, but he’s said no one will release it because of its controversial title track and because free speech is “criminalized.” He’s also been marding with Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, as the former bandmates exchanged statements about the notion of a reunion tour and a reissue. He also fired his management. And today Morrissey’s mad at Wikipedia.