Since the early 2010s, the shadowy British collective Snapped Ankles has been raging against 21st-century malaise with harsh electronics and urgent beats. Clad in ghillie suits—outfits designed to resemble moss-covered foliage and other curios of nature—that seem more suited for hiding in a post-apocalyptic landscape than the present day, they create cracked anthems that feel like dispatches from a ruined future. Their fifth album’s title, which is borrowed from a 2010 collection of American author Alice Walker’s poetry, sums up how Snapped Ankles defy what they view as a complacent world. *Hard Times Furious Dancing* is not just their latest manifesto, though; it’s a noisy, up-front invitation to join the group’s pseudonymous members on the dance floor as they bellow big, society-shaping questions like “How we gonna pay the rent?” and “What happened to humanity?” Snapped Ankles combine the fitful rhythms of post-punk with a battery of synths that flutter and strobe, offering a glaring reflection for the confusion and unease outlined in the group’s sloganlike lyrics. At times, they echo their forebears from the ’70s and ’80s, updating the musical tracts of then with added noise and maximized vexation that’s appropriate to the present day. “Personal Responsibilities” tilts a crooked finger toward “very large corporations” amid a clamor that recalls British art-rock legends The Fall, while the grinding arpeggiated synths of the tech-skeptic call “Smart World” bring to mind Tubeway Army’s existentially bothered 1979 single “Are \'Friends\' Electric?” “Hard times require furious dancing,” Walker wrote in the preface to her poetry collection 15 years ago. “Each of us is the proof.” Snapped Ankles bear out that declaration with music that is furious in both intent and execution, fueled by wrath and ready to command an audience to seethe and spit alongside them.
Though Jason Singer has been making music under the Michigander moniker since 2014, the Kalamazoo-bred songwriter’s self-titled effort from 2025 marks his first full-length endeavor. Early releases like 2018’s *Midland* EP and “Misery” from the following year helped establish Singer’s emo-leaning folk compositions. His songs center his passionate, yearning vocal performances against hard-charging drum grooves and shredding guitar melodies. It’s a style he updates on his first full-length, presenting his sound in its most polished state yet. “Breaker Box” is built around a morose piano line that accents Singer’s longing lyrics and drum fills that reverberate against the swelling string runs. Elsewhere, on “Episode,” the band lightens the mood, incorporating playful vibraslaps and hand percussion that neatly juxtapose Singer’s declaration that all might not end well: “I think I know/How this is gonna go,” he sings.
“How can I ever write anything again?” That was Self Esteem—aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s—first thought when it came to following up her second album, 2021’s *Prioritise Pleasure*, with its five-star reviews and album of the year accolades. But after she followed an exhausting bout of touring in 2023 with almost six months of playing Sally Bowles in West End show *Cabaret*, Taylor packed herself off to Margate and got down to business. The result is *A Complicated Woman*, a massive album full of joy, anger, and humor which is made to be blasted out of stadiums. Except Taylor opted for an intimate theater run in London to showcase it to fans. Complicated, indeed. “I’m proud of how it’s come out,” Taylor tells Apple Music. “It’s dense and it’s complicated, because this time in my life is dense and it’s complicated.” The sound is big and unapologetic. “This is the first time I’ve had access to a proper choir and string arrangement, which was amazing,” she says. “I’m not one of those people who goes into the studio and jams, but if you leave me alone to think I can do it. Back in the day, I would try and write from nine to five, but it doesn’t work like that for me.” *A Complicated Woman* is a collection of songs that stop you in your tracks, from uplifting anthems (“If Not Now, It’s Soon”) to pounding electronica (“69”) and vulnerable confessions (“The Deep Blue Okay”). Eating cheesy chips and rewatching *Gladiator* gave Taylor an unlikely moment of inspiration: “The way he \[Oliver Reed’s character Proximo to Russell Crowe’s Maximus\] goes, ‘Win the crowd and you’ll win your freedom’—with *Prioritise Pleasure* doing how it did, and then that Glastonbury show (her 2022 performance at a packed-out John Peel Stage), that felt like I’d won the crowd. Before that, it always felt like you needed a moment on TikTok or you need this or you need this ad campaign or you need...all these things. Then I was like, ‘Oh, it was all here already. It’s your people.’” A lot of positivity sits alongside the anger on the album and Taylor is conscious she doesn’t have all the answers. “Women are still meant to be this one thing,” she says. “You can have everything, but you have to stay in line. It’s a kind of collection of national anthems for that idea.” Read on as Taylor takes you through it, track by track. **“I Do and I Don’t Care”** “The point of the album is that things are shit, but you have to just keep finding those little pockets of resistance, even if they’re tiny, and then try and be OK. This lyric came when I went home to Sheffield and someone asked how I was and I probably was whinging. But I thought, ‘Of course we’re complaining. What else are we going to do? You would be too if the system wasn’t moving for you in the way that it does.’ I suppose my ethos is I’m a complainer, I’ll always whinge, even when I’ve got what I want. But I’ll always meet it with some action. Whinging and doing nothing about it: bad. Whinging and trying: good.” **“Focus Is Power”** “‘Focus Is Power’ is a bit feel-good and I’m trying to say, ‘Keep going, keep trying, keep your eye on the prize.’ Not in a cheesy way. But I do wonder, ‘Am I a modern-day M People?’ For so long I wanted to be in the middle of the stage with the lights on me, I wanted to wear the clothes and have the shit and be invited to all the things. Then obviously I’ve learned that that’s all bollocks, and the best bit by a mile is helping people and having them go, ‘Oh, I feel like that too.’ I felt so alone until I was 35, and now I get to feel less alone by doing this. People have really responded to this song and been like, ‘Fucking hell, I needed to think like that again.’ And so do I.” **“Mother”** “This isn’t just about men and women, but it’s about the way that in heteronormative relationships it’s so often you teaching the man, and then you break up and some other fucker benefits from them being better dressed and not as much of a twat. It’s just so annoying. A lot of gay men are really responding to the track as well. It’s just relationships, isn’t it? One person is mother. I don’t want to be in control—I would absolutely fucking love to be some swooning, looked-after thing, but it’s not going to happen unless I fundamentally change everything about myself.” **“The Curse”** “I didn’t want to get bogged down in singles but then, for me, ‘The Curse’ could be one. It’s about when I was partying after *Prioritise Pleasure* came out. I was having to go to these red carpet dos and I’ve never had a problem with booze, but it’s the first time I realized I was drinking to be able to do things. Since writing that song, I’ve had a really good relationship with alcohol. I feel like if I’d have heard it a couple of years ago that would have made something click. So again, it’s another song where I’m like, ‘This helped me so it might help you.’” **“Logic, Bitch!” (feat. Sue Tompkins)** “I’m really proud of this song—it’s about realizing just because love is no longer romantic doesn’t mean it’s not valid. I hate hearing and being a woman that’s like, ‘I just can’t find a relationship and that means I’m sad.’ I love watching *Love Island* and *Love Is Blind*, but then I’m like, ‘Why is having a relationship still front and center to everyone’s existence?’ The song features Sue Tompkins from Life Without Buildings, who I think is really cool. We’ve never met, she did it on her phone from Scotland—it started out as a long-form piece but we couldn’t fit it all on there.” **“Cheers to Me”** “This is about skinny indie boys who make women feel crazy and unwanted. I’m worried about people saying, ‘Why are you mentioning body type?’ But it’s about those men who are like, ‘I’m not the problem because I read’ or ‘I watch arthouse films.’ And it’s about how the word ‘lonely’ is overused. Being on your own is fucking brilliant. Alone time is wonderful. But it’s on the tip of people’s tongues to be like, ‘I’m lonely.’ And it’s like, ‘I don’t think you are. You’re having a nice time, but you just don’t have a boyfriend.’” **“If Not Now, It’s Soon”** “You know that Elbow song, ‘One Day Like This’? I wanted to make something like that, with a Team GB feeling. It was definitely a conscious decision to make it feel hopeful, but trying to make a video for it was really hard until I figured it out. It’s basically a very big group hug of women who are like, ‘Same time next week?’ And it’s personal and political, so when I’m at my lowest, it’s a reminder to be patient and persistent. The speech originally comes from Julie Hesmondhalgh \[Coronation Street, *Happy Valley*, and *Mr Bates vs The Post Office* actor\] at an NHS rally saying, ‘Change is in the air’. She and I spoke through it and wrote it together, then she recorded this powerfully rousing speech in her kitchen.” **“In Plain Sight” (with Moonchild Sanelly)** “I hate being like this, but it does feel like women are judged to such a different standard to men. And men’s behavior gets explained away—and so much more easily than women’s. I did feel like a lot of things in my life have been harder because I’m a woman and I didn’t realize it—I grew up not knowing there was any difference. This song is special to me. Moonchild Sanelly wrote the poem in 10 minutes, and what you hear is the first time she read it out loud. She cried, I cried. It was a really special moment in my life. We’d done ‘Big Man’ together and obviously she was comfortable in that space, and I don’t fully know her story and she doesn’t know mine, but it’s that feeling-seen thing.” **“Lies” (feat. Nadine Shah)** “I’ve been a fan of Nadine Shah for years and then met her and we became buddies. And I wanted to start a girl band with her and Florence, but obviously, no one’s got any time. I do have an ambition to make a version of ‘Lies’ with 20 women doing a verse each. It’s one of those songs that has polish, but then you undercut it with the hardcore lyrics. None of the songs are meant to be background music—you can’t work to them, you have to stop and listen. I don’t want to be making music unless it’s like that.” **“69”** “I’d like to write Christina Aguilera’s ‘Dirrty’ for today, but ‘69’ isn’t that. The lyrics just fell out of me. I’d had an idea for ages to do a dance song that is just listing sex positions and rating them out of 10, then it augmented into what you now see before you. A lot of people have been like, ‘Oh, it’s very brave to put that out.’ I was like, ‘I didn’t even notice.’ It’s pretty political to do a sexy song, but it’s instructive and it’s inherently not sexy. I’m saying it without the MO being to turn men on. So many overwhelming responses have been like, ‘Finally, someone said it.’ What else are we mass nodding along to and pretending we like here? Like heels.” **“What Now”** “This is an idea I’ve had in my head for such a long time of getting everything you want and then it still not being all right. Disney created happy ever after and that’s a fallacy. Worse than that, I really do still adhere in my soul to feeling like, ‘Oh, well, when I’ve got that, I’ll be all right. And when my hair’s down to here, it’ll be better.’ And then you realize, you get somewhere and then it’s just more and then you’ll die. So it’s more dense than that. I don’t think the album is all female-based issues, it’s finding the world a bit tough and not getting everything as seemingly as quick as everyone else does, and no one admits it. We’re all still faking it.” **“The Deep Blue Okay”** “This is one of the most important songs I’ve ever written. It had to be the final track on the album, so it might suffer from people not bothering to listen to it. When I was writing this, I thought, ‘What’s my version of LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends”?’ I wrote it in about 10 minutes and it’s insanely emotional. It’s so personal to me, but everyone is finding their own journey in it. I’m conscious that people-pleasing felt like it kept me safe and I’d love to be able to have more conflict and say what I mean more. The songs sound like they do, but in my actual life you wouldn’t believe how scared and shy I am about saying what I want.”
“I’ve been realizing that I really made the album that I needed to heal myself,” Kali Uchis tells Apple Music about *Sincerely,* perhaps her most liberating work yet. The Colombian American singer-songwriter’s catalog has never felt slight or frivolous, whether in English or in Spanish. Yet this full-length follow-up to her 2024 *ORQUÍDEAS* dyad presents as something truly unique, arriving roughly a decade after her promising EP debut *Por Vida*. The majority of the songs here began simply as voice notes, fortuitously captured in inspired moments outside of the confines or pressures of a studio setting. “Messages would just feel like they were directly coming through me, and I just had to get them out,” she says. Given such natural creative origins, it should come as little surprise that the actual process behind the album eschewed industry norms altogether, favoring home recording and unconventional settings. And despite the demonstrated level of guest vocal talent at her fingertips, she opted out of features, too. “When you’re making emotional music, you have to actually dig into difficult subjects,” she says, marking a clear distinction between this piece and its star-powered predecessor. As a result, *Sincerely,* feels disarmingly intimate for what is ostensibly a pop album, even one from as consistently adventurous an artist as Uchis. The evocative moments of opener “Heaven Is a Home…” and closer “ILYSMIH” speak on love in grand and sweeping gestures, the passing of her mother and the birth of her son making understandably profound impacts on the work. Influences like Cocteau Twins and Fiona Apple can be felt in all that comes between those bookends. “There’s a lot of grief, but there’s a lot of joy,” she says, describing what seeps through the veil of “Silk Lingerie,” or the vamps of “Territorial.” Excess punctuation on titles like “Lose My Cool,” and “For: You” hint at the flowing prose of her lyrics as it contributes to an even greater whole. “I think it is a celebration of life in its own way,” she says, “in the sense of finding beauty in the pain and taking the good.”
The *Little House* EP finds Rachel Chinouriri still a month shy of celebrating the one year anniversary of her career-accelerating debut album, 2024’s *What a Devastating Turn of Events*, an anthemic, Britpop-inspired chronicle of her turbulent early twenties. With her star in rapid ascendance—critical acclaim, two BRIT Award nominations, a sold-out headline tour of her own, and an A-list guest spot opening for Sabrina Carpenter—the London-born singer-songwriter’s 180-degree pivot from devastation to satisfaction marks this four-track EP. It’s out with the self-doubt and second-guessing that shrouded her previous works and in with sunny optimism and an unassuming confidence, amplified by the heady rush of new love. Chinouriri is an expert when it comes to channeling boundless levels of unchecked feelings into potent shots of ear-snagging indie pop and while the tenor of her emotions has shifted, it’s clear from the effusive one-two punch of “Can we talk about Isaac?” and “23:42” that she has ample raw material at her disposal. The former recalls Chinouriri’s meet-cute moment in a burst of barely suppressed excitement propelled by surfy guitar riffs and finger-snapping percussion; on the latter she pinballs between delight and disbelief at her romantic luck over a cheerful, jaunty beat peppered with sci-fi synth stabs. Later, “Indigo” slows all the gushing to a measured pour, echoing the refrain “You make love feel like...” and letting an atmospheric swell of harmonic vocals fill in the blank. Sandwiched in between, “Judas (Demo)” is somewhat of an outlier, but the simple combination of Chinouriri’s anxious late-night musings backed by the soft strum of an acoustic guitar offers a familiar flash of haunting vulnerability—a reminder of the strong foundations *Little House* is building on.
“This has been a healing album to make,” Chris Davids tells Apple Music. “It’s a collection of hopeful music made from a dark place.” For Davids and Liam Ivory, the British production duo better known as Maribou State, the road leading to their third album, *Hallucinating Love*, has indeed been a dark and tricky one. First coming to prominence with the emotive melodies and electronic warmth of 2015’s debut album *Portraits*, the duo went on to make their trademark a distinct blend of soulful vocals and dance-floor-filling songwriting. Yet, in 2021, following a triumphant European tour for second album *Kingdoms in Colour*, Davids’ physical health began to decline, culminating in a serious operation for a rare brain condition in 2023. As he awaited his procedure and during his recovery, *Hallucinating Love* took shape, resulting in 10 tracks of resolute optimism that traverse everything from the swelling strings melody of opener “Blackoak” to the cabin folk stylings of “Peace Talk” and the driving electronic drum groove of “Eko’s.” “The experience of making the record was one of overcoming hopelessness,” Ivory says. “The music projects a brighter future.” Read on for Maribou State’s in-depth thoughts on the album, track by track. **“Blackoak”** Chris Davids: “This is one of the first tracks we finished for the record and it became a benchmark for what we wanted the rest of the album to be. It began when we went on a writing retreat to Somerset and decided to make demos in two hours only, so we wouldn’t overthink the process. One day, we came up with this idea on a little Casio with our bassist Jonjo Williams, we sampled an Andreya Triana vocal that we loved and had the form of the track really quickly.” Liam Ivory: “We wrote it in a day and then it took something like a year and 25 demos to finish! Andreya thankfully tweaked and changed some of the vocals on a later session and then it was perfect.” **“Otherside” (with Holly Walker)** LI: “We came up with this idea on the same day as ‘Blackoak.’ We made a basic loop that we loved and then struggled to find a vocal that would work with it. Initially, it was a pop vocal sample as the hook but when we revisited the idea two years later on another writing trip, we took a vocal that the incredible singer Holly Walker had laid down for a song that didn’t make the cut on *Kingdoms in Colour* and that seemed to fit much better.” CD: “Two weeks before we had to hand the album in, I reworked the take of that vocal with Holly and then it all came together. It’s a beautiful last-minute addition.” **“II Remember”** CD: “When we were coming up with ideas for the album, we recorded lots of drum breaks on to tape with our drummer, and one of them became the basis for this track. A month later, I found a vocal sample that sat perfectly over the beat and that’s also when the middle eight came to me, which is actually just the reversed string part from ‘Peace Talk’—a track that comes later in the album.” LI: “The finishing touches came from some field recordings we made while walking around our local area in Walthamstow. You can hear someone talking from the market there before the middle eight comes in.” **“All I Need”** LI: “Another thing we did at the start of the album is a ‘sound harvest,’ where we went into the studio and recorded as many experimental and unique sounds we could to add texture to future tracks. One of the sounds we recorded was an Omnichord, and it formed the basis for ‘All I Need.’ Initially, we paired the track with the same Andreya Triana vocal sample from ‘Blackoak’ until we recorded with Andreya the following year and she laid down this perfect new part.” **“Dance on the World” (with North Downs)** LI: “This is the ultimate Frankenstein tune on the record! It spans the entire three years that we were working on the album, since it started on our first writing trip to Somerset as a piano-led bluesy track, then we took it to New York and it became a track that ended up feeling really out of place with our sound, so we admitted defeat. Later, though, we discovered another demo Chris had made that was more electronic and along the lines of a track like ‘Turnmills’ from our second record. Ultimately, we mashed them up together, rewrote the vocals and it all came together.” **“Bloom” (with Gaidaa)** CD: “We had a vocal session with the amazing singer Gaidaa in Amsterdam, and I chopped up one of the tracks we came up with to form the vocal melody for ‘Bloom.’ We were unsure if it should go on the record, though, until the end of the writing process when we scrapped quite a few tracks last minute and this idea resurfaced. We went back into the studio, rerecorded the parts and suddenly it was working really well.” **“Peace Talk” (with Holly Walker)** CD: “This first came from an idea that didn’t make it on to *Kingdoms in Colour* but that we always had an affinity for. We sent it to Holly Walker, and she put down the first vocal idea that came up and me and Liam loved it. It’s one of our favorite tracks she’s done with us. The incredible strings arranger Matt Kelly then recorded the strings parts and we fleshed out the end of the song with an experimental Aphex Twin synth part on the Moog Matriarch. We both really love the track because it merges lots of our favorite genres like folk, electronics, and heavy distorted guitar. It feels like the most original or accomplished track on the album.” **“Passing Clouds”** LI: “In the studio, while we waited to get set up in the live room, we played around on a Hammond B3 and piano and really liked what we spontaneously came up with. We then went on to make versions where we built the track up, or we left it as a quiet interlude, but finally we decided to go for something in between. It’s a moment to breathe on the record and the only idea on it that we played fully live and together.” **“Eko’s”** CD: “This was probably the first thing we wrote for the album back in 2020. We had just gotten some new bits of kit like a drum machine and laid down this idea, but then we didn’t work on it for three years until we started finishing the album and our drummer recorded the final drum part. It’s the first track I’ve ever sung on that we have used on a project.” LI: “Before ‘Blackoak’ this was the benchmark for the album, since as a demo it felt so forward-thinking and fresh compared to *Kingdoms in Colour*. It still stands out on the album.” **“Rolling Stone”** CD: “We began ‘Rolling Stone’ at the end of 2021 and it was completely different. It was fast-paced, like a lo-fi IDM, Burial-type track with vocals and when I showed it to Liam he was sure it should be the last track on the album. We hit a brick wall when it came to finishing it, though, until we worked with the producer North Downs and he said it felt much more like a tune for sitting around the campfire. As soon as he said that it made total sense, so we went away and slowed it down, put new drums on and got a choir of 20 of our friends involved to give it that campfire feel. It creates a lovely energy to end the album on.”
As a college student in the early 2000s, Kelela Mizanekristos used to rent a car and make the four-hour drive from D.C. to see Amel Larrieux sing at the Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC’s West Village. She’d tape the set on her recorder, then study it on the drive home. Two decades later, in May 2024, she told the story from the iconic venue’s stage, where she and her band performed unplugged selections from her catalog. Since her debut mixtape, 2013’s *Cut 4 Me*, Kelela has stood at the vanguard of the intersection between R&B and forward-thinking electronic music. But on *In the Blue Light*, captured during her Blue Note showcase, she translates futuristic cuts like “Bankhead” and “Take Me Apart” into timeless-sounding jazz and neo-soul numbers. Alongside tracks from *Cut 4 Me*, 2015’s *Hallucinogen* EP, and her two studio albums (2017’s *Take Me Apart* and 2022’s *Raven*), she throws a curveball—an ethereal cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Furry Sings the Blues.”
Lili Trifilio began Beach Bunny as a solo indie-pop project in her bedroom in 2015. A decade later, the Chicago band (now a three-piece with drummer Jon Alvarado and guitarist Anthony Vaccaro) has gone viral on TikTok, rocked huge festival stages, and inspired female-dominated mosh pits with their angsty anthems about broken hearts and bruised egos. Their third album, *Tunnel Vision*, sees the band shifting their focus away from love and towards what some might call a full-blown existential crisis. “The world is changing for the worse,” Trifilio sings bluntly on the deceptively chipper “Mr. Predictable” (whose chorus doesn’t not give “MMMBop,” with all due respect). She’s crying at the DMV on “Clueless,” winkingly extolling the powers of self-delusion on “Big Pink Bubble,” and on “Violence,” she rattles off a list of news items (“Mass extinction, fascists gloating, microplastics in our clothing…”) that are enough to make you want to chuck your phone off of a bridge. The world’s on fire, sure, but Beach Bunny lays it down with enough verve that you may as well mosh anyway.
Listening to *MAD!*—the 28th studio album by Sparks, the fraternal duo of Ron and Russell Mael—it can be difficult to remember that they have been a band for more than half a century, with both brothers now on the doorstep of 80. Pairing aggressive programming and vivid electronic textures with sharp rock-band backing, these 12 songs are edgy, canny, and electrifying, eternal trademarks of Sparks’ music that have only sharpened with time. And that has been intentional, confirms Russell. “When you’ve had 28 albums, you want to impress yourself, that you can still do things that are modern-sounding, not like a band with a 28-album history,” he tells Apple Music. “We work hard at trying to do things that are provocative, lyrically and sonically.” The Maels talk about the process behind and inspiration for each track. **“Do Things My Own Way”** Russell Mael: “‘Do Things My Own Way’ is probably the mantra that Sparks has pursued for our entire career, from day one, when Todd Rundgren was the only person to acknowledge Sparks’ capabilities. We were turned down by a million labels, but he said you should always do things your own way. He said that, even on our very first album, we’d created our own universe, and we should continue on that way.” Ron Mael: “This is really the first song written for the album. We don’t carry over older, unused material onto a new album, so we start from scratch. After we recorded all these songs, it seemed fitting that it be in first place, because it is an overall statement of the album and Sparks.” **“JanSport Backpack”** Ron Mael: “We realize the practical uses of a JanSport, but we were in Tokyo and saw quite a few fashionable young ladies who were wearing JanSport backpacks. That isn’t a luxury brand, but they were wearing it as a style statement. That image stuck with us, and we tried to work backward to see how we could use it in a song. So, there’s a girl who’s breaking up with a guy, and the image he has is her walking away with a JanSport backpack. We have much confidence that, on Apple Music, you won’t find another song about JanSport backpacks.” **“Hit Me, Baby”** Russell Mael: “This is someone hoping it’s a nightmare, but the reality is that they are living this nightmare that we all are. We’re in Paris now, so it’s refreshing to not have “that man” in your face all the time, like when you’re in the States. The song obliquely references the hopelessness of the situation all around, but we didn’t want to be so blatant as to spell it out exactly. It can be about anyone else’s own situation, where they’re having a bad time that they hope goes away.” Ron Mael: “It was written in a more general sense before the election, but it became obvious that, even subconsciously, it had a more specific meaning. We like details in songs, but it’s important for us to have lyrics that don’t only reflect a particular subject, that they have a broader subtext. But it still took on a more specific meaning after the election.” **“Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab”** Russell Mael: “It’s a guy who is trying to impress his partner by taking her to this fine hotel and running a tab in hopes of swaying her. But the guy doesn’t have the means to pay for the extravagant tastes, so he gets thrown into prison at Rikers Island. But he says it’s all worth it, because he’s hoping she’ll come to visit him there.” Ron Mael: “In the distant past, we only wrote a song, then brought it in to record. We still work that way, but we also have the luxury, since Russell has a studio at his place, of just going into the studio and starting without any kind of preconception. We get a more varied approach, and this is one song that was done from the studio standpoint, then working backwards to figure out a melody and lyrics.” **“My Devotion”** Russell Mael: “Some people have tried to look deeper into it and say, ‘Well, surely it can’t just be a really nice love song.’ But, no, it’s just a really nice love song. We hope that, lyrically, it’s charming, with the guy’s devotion being so strong that he’s written her name on his shoe and is even thinking of getting a tattoo. It’s one of my favorite lines on the album.” **“Don’t Dog It”** Ron Mael: “With the line ‘Shake it thusly and you’ll see the light,’ we like having words from two different worlds. ‘Shake it’ is a cliché in a million songs, but ‘thusly’ is such a formal word. They are in conflict as far as the tone, but it’s a formal way to suggest something carnal. We like butting up together, so to speak, words. It’s a Shakespeare thing applied to hip-hop expression. We’re also encouraging movement as a way to fight. The person is seeking help, and the advice that they’re given isn’t something deep and intellectual. It’s ‘shake it thusly.’” **“In Daylight”** Ron Mael: “For most of us, darkness is more advantageous to our opportunities for romantic advancement, let’s say. In so many of our songs, the instrumentation and singing are very direct, even if it’s musically complex. We often attempt to make songs aggressive, but this one was a little more diffuse. There’s an atmosphere here, and it feels blurred, which is the feeling of being between daylight and darkness.” **“I-405 Rules”** Russell Mael: “There’s some sincerity to the image of the I-405 having a beauty in its own way, especially if you look at it at night, when thousands of cars are bumper to bumper, and you see the red taillights. It’s a sea of red, especially if you’re above the freeway, say, at the Getty Center. Lots of other major cities in the world have this beautiful river—the Seine, the Thames, the Sumida. But we don’t have that, except when, once a year, it rains in LA, when it even starts to look like a river. The I-405 is our contribution to the great rivers of the world. This song is also so sonically in your face that it’s overly dramatic for the subject matter, and we like that it goes counter to what we’re singing about.” **“A Long Red Light”** Russell Mael: “We like this song a lot, because it’s not a typical song structure. It’s a piece that evolves over time with a simple subject—waiting for a red light to hopefully turn green someday. Over time, it shifts musically, and, toward the end of it, you can sense the frustration that the light is still red. It turns into this big chorale, with a lot of voices and orchestral drums coming in. The situation becomes really urgent, and we like that in a song that deals with a small situation, a red light that everyone’s been to. That was challenging for us in a positive way.” **“Drowned in a Sea of Tears”** Russell Mael: “It is a devastating relationship breakup song. There’s been pop songs throughout history that have had the theme of drowning. We wanted to find another way of doing that. This one is really melodic, and, in contrast to ‘A Long Red Light,’ it’s a verse and a chorus kicking in a big way.” **“A Little Bit of Light Banter”** Ron Mael: “We see it as this couple that feels that they’re different from other couples that do need all these in-depth discussions. This couple is happy to do something that’s the opposite of that, and they feel a closeness because they just share this love of light banter. They don’t care what the neighbors think, and hopefully it comes across as charming, for a couple that feels they’re outside of the world of heavy-duty discussions. The advice that we’re given is that we’re supposed to read and discuss Kafka at night, but it’s not always wise advice.” **“Lord Have Mercy”** Russell Mael: “It is another take on a relationship. While this woman is asleep, her partner hears her singing this melody, and it’s so beautiful for him to hear. He’s heard melodies from buskers on the street that were OK. He’s heard melodies from various times and periods. But this melody he’s overhearing from this woman in her sleep becomes something so striking and profound for him.” Ron Mael: “He’s not necessarily a believer, but the beauty of her singing while she’s half-asleep has captivated him so much. He hears what she’s singing not in a lyrical sense about religion and being converted, but he just finds beauty in what she’s singing and hopes it continues forever.”
Gigi Perez pours her life experience into her work. After the viral success of her 2024 single “Sailor Song”—an open plea for queer romantic connection that topped the UK singles chart and went platinum in several other countries—her self-produced debut album plays like unabashed memoir. “Sugar Water” opens with a nod to Perez’s birthplace of Hackensack, New Jersey before recounting schoolyard taunts and even the texture of her childhood Barbie’s hair. Her sister Celene’s death in 2020 sits at the center of “Fable,” with both that song and the closing title track featuring voicemails left by Celene. Perez also unpacks that family tragedy on the darker “Survivor’s Guilt,” while the album’s title was inspired in part by Perez sleeping on the beach after her sister died. The emotive singing and busker-style folk balladry of Perez’s earlier releases is very much at play, though lilting strings interweave with the acoustic guitar on “Crown” and the especially surprising “Twister” adds Auto-Tune and a programmed beat. But again, the lyrics are most often the star here, with the singer-songwriter revisiting her intense religious upbringing alongside love, loss, and other weighty themes.
Lifeguard’s *Ripped and Torn* is an impressive and indelible debut in a long legacy of rock bands making noise sound like an energizing good time—from British post-punk greats Wire and American legends Sonic Youth to 2010s lo-fi heroes like Women and Male Bonding. The Chicago trio of Asher Case, Isaac Lowenstein, and Kai Slater (who also makes music as the buzzy indie-pop project Sharp Pins) have been making music together since junior high, and *Ripped and Torn* sounds suitably locked-in even as its creators channel brash, challenging avant-rock sounds that equally recall the 1980s NYC no-wave scene and post-rock forebears This Heat. If that sounds intimidating, rest assured: Lifeguard is as tuneful as they are tormented-sounding, as evidenced by the peppy and caffeinated punk rock of “It Will Get Worse”—a song title that’s droll, cheeky, and the exact opposite of what to expect from these upstarts as they continue their ascent.
With a Basia Bulat album, you know exactly what you’re going to get, but you’re never really sure of how you’re going to get it. Once the autoharp-plucking folk phenom of the mid-2000s Montreal indie explosion, Bulat has since applied her heartfelt songcraft to ’60s girl-group gold sounds (2016’s *Good Advice*) and string-quartet reimaginations (2022’s *The Garden*), but her stylistic explorations are always anchored by a radiant voice that projects equal amounts of strength and sensitivity. Her seventh album was largely born from solo songwriting sessions and MIDI experiments conducted in her apartment in the dead of night and embraces the sort of free-spirited approach that results when you’re liberated from the demands of the waking world. With the opening duo of “My Angel” and “Baby,” Bulat takes a shot of “Espresso” and embraces her inner disco diva, while the song that actually references “disco” in its title—”Disco Polo”—is a loving tribute to the namesake dance/folk hybrid popular in her ancestral homeland of Poland. But the exquisite string arrangements—courtesy of Dua Lipa collaborator Drew Jurecka—serve as the connective tissue between the album’s mirror-ball-twirling highs and its calming comedowns, like the elegant piano ballad “Right Now” and dreamy country odyssey “The Moon.”
The central theme running through the beguiling third album by Shura is stripping everything back and starting over, no matter how daunting that feels. *I Got Too Sad for My Friends* marks a complete artistic reset for the London-born, Manchester-raised singer-songwriter, one that grew out of a period of emotional turmoil. Moving away from the sad banger synth-pop of her first two records, 2016’s *Nothing’s Real* and 2019 follow-up *forevher*, it’s a record steeped in an Americana-ish sway and folky reassurance. Shura found that the way out of the gloom that enveloped her during lockdown, where she was increasingly cutting herself off from her inner-circle, was to return to how she’d written songs as a teenager: alone in a room with an acoustic guitar. It gave her a path back, the route that led to the hazy, wistful warmth of *I Got Too Sad for My Friends*. It opened up a dramatic overhaul in how she made music. Working with a new producer (Foals and Depeche Mode collaborator Luke Smith), Shura got down the majority of the record in live takes that were tweaked and honed further down the line, constantly daring herself to try new things. It has taken her to the defining album of her career so far, a record full of rich melodic hooks and a soothing melancholic glow, from the country longing of “Richardson” via the expansive ’80s pop of “Recognise” to doe-eyed campfire ditties (plaintive closer “Bad Kid”). It’s a fresh start in all the best ways, a third album that feels like a startling debut. Her pals would surely agree—it was all worth it in the end.
The cover art for the sixth album from indie-pop dynamo George Lewis Jr.—aka Twin Shadow—features the handwritten signature of his father Georgie, who passed away from cancer in 2024. It’s a poignant visual cue for what is undoubtedly the most nakedly personal and reflective album of Twin Shadow’s career. Where so much of his discography exists in a never-ending summer of ’84 where Prince and Springsteen are jostling for the top of the charts, *Georgie* strips Lewis’ songcraft down to the core. The glistening guitars and neon-tinted synth textures remain, but the tracks are almost entirely devoid of drums or beats and left to freely float in a sea of melancholy and simmering resentment—the bittersweet serenade “Good Times” is really a chronicle of the bad ones and an indictment of fair-weather friends who never seem to be around when you need them the most. But on tracks like “You Already Know” and “Permanent Feeling,” Lewis’ intimately soulful voice displays a Bon Iver-esque ability to transform even the most skeletal songs into full-blooded, heart-pumping hymns.
