It was a big deal when #KushandOrangeJuice became the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter upon the release of the eighth Wiz Khalifa mixtape in April 2010, back when “hashtags” and “trending topics” were cutting-edge promotional tools. Back then, it was practically unheard of for a rapper with no major-label deal to be making such big waves (he’d left his former label, Warner Bros., in 2009). But there was something comforting about the red-eyed Pittsburgh rapper’s laidback mode of rapping about the staples of college dorm-room chatter: weed, women, cars, parties… Did we mention weed? Today, *Kush & Orange Juice* is considered a “blog era” classic—a throwback to a chiller, simpler time. Almost exactly 15 years later, its sequel arrives like a visit from a friend from long ago who’s grown up and gotten richer, but otherwise mostly stayed the same. The 23 terminally chill tracks of *Kush + Orange Juice 2* feature more of the Taylor Gang touchstones you know and love: jet-ski races, beach picnics, fat joints, drop-tops, crab rolls, hot-boxing Ferrari F8s. He’s joined by a loaded roster of guests who haven’t changed much in the past decade and change, either: Curren$y, Smoke DZA, Chevy Woods, Terrace Martin. “I been doing the same thing since I was 19,” Khalifa crows on “I Might Be,” which might be tragic were those things not so timelessly appealing. Throughout the tape, a radio DJ (broadcasting on a station known as W-E-E-D) offers salient advice: “Don’t stay in the house, man. Jump in the car. Ride around with the homies and the homegirls, and put on some of that Wiz Khalifa, y’all.”

Graham Johnson’s music as quickly, quickly has always retained an intimacy even as the project has grown in scope. His homespun brand of psych-infused bedroom pop began evolving with 2021’s *The Long and Short of It*, remixing the DIY spirit of his catchy lo-fi tunes to include technicolor instrumental bursts and some of his clearest vocals to date. On its follow-up, 2025’s *I Heard That Noise*, Johnson imbues these vast soundscapes with moments of spontaneity and experimentation. His voice is more powerful than ever before, and he mirrors the whimsy of his instrumentals with his unpredictable melodic inclinations. Take “Enything,” a guitar-driven, folk-leaning track with spindly guitar melodies and a propulsive drum part. Johnson’s vocals build alongside the groove, which hints at a resolution that never comes. His ability to conjure and resolve tension is effortless and seamless. “Raven,” on the other hand, is an acoustic campfire jam, a track unlike anything else on the album. Here, Johnson performs the role of storyteller, his voice raw and vulnerable, matching the gravitas of the moment—whatever it may call for.

When you have a voice as pure as Cleo Sol’s, you can sing about nearly anything and have it sound otherworldly. Sol, however, doesn’t take lightly the responsibility of her instrument, treating each opportunity—both in and outside of her role as lead vocalist for Sault—as an opportunity to spread joy, foster hope, and offer up praise to the most high. Sault’s mission across *10*—actually their 12th full-length project—lies squarely inside those ramparts, with Sol working alongside the group’s production engine, Inflo, alongside a slew of other collaborators (dancehall singjay Chronixx, legendary bassist Pino Palladino, rising pianist NIJE) to offer a balm for increasingly trying times. The titles alone—“The Healing,” “Know That You Will Survive,” “We Are Living”—telegraph their psalmic intention. So does Sol’s voice, which sails over Ohio funk in “Power,” recalls the radiance of disco queen Donna Summer on “Real Love,” and anchors uptempo jazz on “The Sound of Healing,” breathing life into relentless optimism. Sault has been nothing if not celebrated over the course of their elusive career, but that adulation notwithstanding, *10* reminds us there’s still hope for us all.

The third Melvins 1983 album sees that year’s version of the band—guitarist/vocalist King Buzzo and his childhood friend/original drummer Mike Dillard—collaborating with electronics wizards Void Manes and Ni Maîtres. As such, *Thunderball* simultaneously booms with towering slow-motion riffs and crackles with interstellar noise. With its squalling intro and soaring chorus, “King of Rome” might be the catchiest Melvins tune in over a decade. Then noise interlude “Vomit of Clarity” erupts into centerpiece “Short Hair With a Wig,” a bleak funeral dirge with a triumphant solo from Buzz. That triumph extends into the first half of “Victory of the Pyramids” before dissolving into the introspective space odyssey “Venus Blood.”

Long before shoegaze and grunge became the rock music favored by young listeners in the mid-2020s, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, quartet Superheaven were reimagining the ’90s genres for a more modern age. The band quickly built an audience with their 2013 and 2015 albums, *Jar* and *Ours is Chrome*. After a lengthy hiatus, they reemerged with 2025’s self-titled third album, a project that finds them in the middle of a shoegaze renaissance, though with a newfound perspective. “Cruel Times” plays with the crunching guitar fuzz of alt-rock giants like Dinosaur Jr. and Built to Spill, while “Humans for Toys” is a heavy headbanger built around chugging chords mostly heard on metal ballads. As the band’s once-preferred sound became a fan favorite among a new crop of musicians, Superheaven cleverly adjusted their POV, creating a wider landscape of rock stylings than ever before.

Justin Vernon has never been shy about bearing the weight of his instantly mythical origin story and his fast, unlikely trajectory into global stardom. Four albums and 18 years after *For Emma, Forever Ago*, *SABLE, fABLE* is a document of finding peace—joy, even—and a testament to the work it’s taken to get there. “This record, as much as that first record, if not more, was really just a keystone for healing and growing away from this time period where I felt trapped,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. Once COVID wiped out the tour plans for 2019’s *i,i*, Vernon, like pretty much everyone, used the time to take stock, and he came to understand, among other things, that touring might not be the healthiest thing for him. So he made songs. “It really was like, ‘Okay, I’m not well and I won\'t make it if I don\'t do something to change this pretty drastically and stop the whole touring engine,” Vernon says. “There was a sense of relief and an incredible grief to say goodbye to the team that we built. I was like, ‘Let me just get these songs done and just sneak them out there so I can just get them off my chest,’ because that’s what I really needed: to finish them, to learn what was inside them.” The first of these songs, written at the beginning of lockdown, “THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS” is a snapshot of that lonely, uncertain time, but it feels bigger and more hopeful than that to Vernon with five years of hindsight. “In the short term, it makes you feel better, but it’s also a way to lean into your grief and lean into your pain and lean into your guilt,” he says. “I think eventually when I hear that song now, I feel clean from everything that I was dealing with when I had to write it and after I wrote it. But it takes years for things to take shape and for internal things to budge.” From there, the album begins to let more light in with songs like the evidently more hopeful “Everything Is Peaceful Love” (“It’s just all about celebrating this moment right here and just sort of trying to express that heart-leaping-out-of-your-chest feeling”) and “If Only I Could Wait,” featuring vocals from Danielle Haim of HAIM, which Vernon considers nothing less than his favorite American rock band. The album splits the difference between the immediacy of *For Emma* and the often inscrutable maximalism of *22, A Million* and *i,i*. It was during the album’s long gestation that Vernon’s profile was boosted by his work with Taylor Swift, even as his own project remained in the shadows, Vernon exercising a patience and restraint and creating a healthier perspective that was nothing less than career-saving, if not life-saving. “We are insanely beautiful creatures,” he says. “And so I think where I’ve got to with the simplicity of this music, it was just like, I just want to give it to you. I just want to have it be my version of Bob Seger’s ‘Against the Wind’—just boom, here it is. We’re not going to hide, we’re not going to put it behind any drapery. We’re going to just give it to you as much as humanly possible.”

At the bleeding edge of the 2020s’ rage rap movement is the Opium collective—the Atlanta-based cabal of brooding rappers and producers led by Playboi Carti who favor powerful distortion, belligerent energy, Satanic imagery, and gratuitous angst. If the scene’s high-water mark was Carti’s pandemic-era paradigm shift, 2020’s *Whole Lotta Red*, just behind it was Ken Carson’s third album, 2023’s *A Great Chaos*, whose maximalist squall delivered on the title’s promise while fitting into the long lineage of blustery Atlanta rap. “I’m the lord of chaos! I’m the lord of the mosh!” Carson declares to open *More Chaos*, his fourth album and *A Great Chaos*’s feverishly anticipated follow-up. If its predecessor cranked the mayhem and distortion to 11, here the 25-year-old rapper/rock star turns the knobs to 12, running vintage ATL trap through the 2025 deep fryer. Tried-and-true motifs appear by way of abstract singsong blurts and yelps: Rick and Balenci, goth women, rock star shit. Anyway, it’s not about the lyrics—it’s about catharsis.