In the six years since Jay Som’s critically acclaimed sophomore album *Anak Ko*, Melina Duterte has kept the kind of schedule that would strike fainter hearts with exhaustion. There’s been collaborations with Troye Sivan, beabadoobee, and Lucy Dacus; production credits across scores of indie records; a whole album with Palehørse’s El Kempner as Bachelor; and extensive touring as part of boygenius’ live band. With all this palling around, it’s not surprising that her third album as Jay Som features some high-powered collaborations: Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins joins in for the surging emo-pop of “Float,” while the chugging alt-rock anthem “Past Lives” features contributions from Paramore’s Hayley Williams. But *Belong* also finds Duterte picking up exactly where she left off with Jay Som’s recorded catalog, her trademark sense of intimacy and intricate arrangements left fully intact. From the tick-tock guitars of “Casino Stars” to the open-air wistfulness of “Appointments,” Duterte continues to develop her own brand of close-mic’d emotionalism even as her star has grown ever brighter across the 2020s.

In hip-hop’s more than five-decade history, Queensbridge stands firmly as one of the genre’s foundational, load-bearing pillars. The same outer-borough NYC locale where MC Shan laid down the rap gauntlet with his seminal single “The Bridge” got reinforced further in the 1990s and 2000s by two more sons of the namesake housing development, Havoc and Prodigy. Their run as Mobb Deep hit its stride with 1995’s *The Infamous*, with the pair remaining a force to be reckoned with both lyrically and musically for another two decades. Were it not for Prodigy’s untimely and tragic passing in 2017, it stands to reason that they’d still be repping QB as a unit today, something the release of *Infinite* demonstrates. More than a decade after their presumed swan song, the double-disc *The Infamous Mobb Deep*, this posthumous collaboration not only honors the duo’s legacy but aims to advance what they cultivated as an enduring, relevant art form. With production duties divided between The Alchemist—Prodigy’s second-most-prolific co-conspirator—and Havoc himself, *Infinite* makes their case with beats and rhymes that feel downright timeless. Whether nodding to golden-age hip-hop heroics on “My Era,” cruising from the crib to the casino on “Taj Mahal,” or shrewdly menacing the opposition on “Gunfire,” their thematic bars seamlessly capture the rap veterans’ mindset. Nostalgia certainly has its place here, and the appearances by Big Noyd on the grimy “The M. The O. The B. The B.” and Nas on the more celebratory “Pour the Henny” keep that classic Queensbridge presence in prominent view. Indeed, most of the features come from artists who were aligned with the Mobb in the *Infamous* days, with Wu-Tang Clan spitters Ghostface Killah and Raekwon reprising their “Right Back at You” roles on “Clear Black Nights.” Yet there’s also a genuine vibrancy here so rarely found on albums released in this particular fashion, the unmistakable interplay between the core duo enlivening moments like “Against the World” and “Score Points” and further imbued with that improbable reunion spirit via the Clipse collab “Look at Me.”

A few days before the release of *Fancy Some More?*, PinkPantheress posted a teaser video which starred her animated alter ego scribbling the names of 23 artists on a cartoon whiteboard. The list of names spanned genres, generations, and the globe: the Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue, Swedish rap mystic Bladee, and K-pop supergroup SEVENTEEN were just a few. The artists were revealed as the featured guests on a sprawling, 22-track expansion of the British singer/producer’s second mixtape, *Fancy That*, which landed in May 2025 as her highest-charting album in her home country. Here, PinkPantheress adds two discs’ worth of high-end bonus versions to the original nine tracks, the first of which leans fully into cool, left-of-center pop, including a Spanish-language flip of “Illegal” from Brazilian reggaeton star Anitta and French electro-pop auteur Oklou’s dreamy reimagining of “Girl Like Me.” Disc two features remixes from a decade-spanning range of PinkPantheress’ dance-music favorites—from jungle revivalist Nia Archives to British house heroes Basement Jaxx, whose big-beat euphoria inspired several of *Fancy That*’s original tracks.

What’s a girl gonna do after the record-smashing Eras Tour? Well, its success sparked the flame inside Taylor Swift that led to her reunion with former collaborators Max Martin and Shellback for her 12th full-length *The Life of a Showgirl*. “I’ve never been more proud of anything than I am of the Eras Tour,” Swift says. “And I just thought, ‘I want to make an album that I’m that proud of.’ And that was the catalyst for this record and calling up Max and saying, ‘Do you guys want to do this? I’ll come to you.’” Indeed, in a very showgirl manner, Swift flew back and forth to Sweden between stops on her European leg—remember, the singer-songwriter believes “jet lag is a choice”—to join Martin and Shellback, Swift’s co-writers and producers on some of the most memorable and popular hits of her career (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “22,” “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” “Don’t Blame Me,” and “Delicate,” to name a few). The result? A confident, dazzling, at times elegant, at times cheeky, at times sensual pop explosion that examines Swift’s relationships and her fame, which is both deeply personal yet extremely relatable...mostly. (The struggles of “Elizabeth Taylor”—with its thumping rock vibes—can understandably be reserved for the uber-famous showgirls in the room.) On the album’s first single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” Swift dips back into the Shakespearean well that earned her crossover success and adoring fans. And once again, she turns the Bard’s tale into a romance rather than a tragedy. But this time, it’s more mature and fierce—as the acceptant heroine resigns herself to solitude before the hero ever comes around: “I swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I/Right before you lit my sky up.” Her muses, of course, will be well-dissected. The aforementioned savior in “Ophelia” is most likely Swift’s husband-to-be, the three-time Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce. (She did, after all, announce the album on his podcast.) And he *probably* has a few more cuts dedicated to him—the most direct being the saucy, ’70s-funk-infused “Wood” and its “new heights of manhood” revelation. Surprisingly, “Actually Romantic,” with its semi-stripped-down production, deals not with a lover but with a certain hater. “You think I’m tacky, baby/Stop talking dirty to me/It sounded nasty but it feels like you’re flirting with me/I mind my business, God’s my witness that I don’t provoke it/It’s kind of making me wet,” Swift teases. And “Father Figure” pays homage to George Michael with Swift’s breathy vocals, ending with a menacing act of betrayal by a protégé: “You made a deal with this devil/Turns out my dick’s bigger/You want a fight, you found it/I got the place surrounded.” Importantly, though, remove Swift’s own potential inspirations and you get what she does best: making dizzying and vibrant songs that speak to universal emotions through her storytelling. The buoyant “Opalite” shows two people finding each other at the right time; baroque-pop “Wi$h Li$t” portrays someone who knows what her heart desires. And “Eldest Daughter,” the famous track 5—generally one of Swift’s most vulnerable on each of her albums—reveals a promise of devotion. Swift ends the record on its title track, an epic duet with Sabrina Carpenter where the women volley back and forth about a girl named Kitty, perhaps alluding to their own places in the world. “And all the headshots on the walls of the dance hall are of the bitches who wish I’d hurry up and die/But I’m immortal now, baby dolls, I couldn’t if I tried,” Swift sings proudly. In other words, as she’s proven time and time again, she’ll never go out of style.

Snõõper’s birdbrained synth-punk is both a sign of our screen-addled times and a callback to a long history of weirdos who use punk as a portal to childlike, almost alien states, from Devo and The B-52’s through Butthole Surfers and Brainiac to contemporary artists like Prison Affair. *Worldwide*—their second album for Jack White’s Third Man Records—boils down their style to its essence: brief (12 tracks, 28 minutes), noisy, catchy, bright; endlessly entertained (“Company Car”) but deeply fried (“Blockhead”)—all your favorite notifications, all at once. As with the Ramones before them, the real radical idea is that maybe all this getting dumber stuff isn’t so bad.

The band members of Los Angeles’ Rocket were just youngsters when many of their idols were in the primes of their careers. Even though they weren’t around to witness the glory days of alt-rock, they spent the first years of their career touring with the luminaries that inspired them to start a band in the first place: The Smashing Pumpkins, Ride, Silversun Pickups, and Sunny Day Real Estate. It was those formative touring experiences that helped shape their debut LP, *R is for Rocket*, which marks a significant sharpening of their sound from their first EP, 2023’s *Versions of You*. Produced by the band’s guitarist Desi Scaglione, *R is for Rocket* is crisp and precise, anthemic, punchy guitar rock bolstered by the electrifying vocals of Alithea Tuttle. There’s the propulsive odd-meter rhythm of opener “The Choice,” the Nirvana-esque drum fills and crunching guitars of “Crossing Fingers,” and the Radiohead-inspired balladry of “Number One Fan.” Whoever proclaimed that rock is dead clearly forgot to alert Rocket.

AFI is no stranger to goth’s dark arts, from the tortured hardcore anguish of 1999’s classic *Black Sails in the Sunset* and the smeared-guyliner sound of 2003’s commercial breakthrough *Sing the Sorrow* to the inky rock music of 2021’s *Bodies*. But on the California legends’ 12th studio album *Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…*, Davey Havok and company journey further into the shadowy sounds of 1980s rock than ever before. The anthemic “Blasphemy & Excess” is immediately reminiscent of Siouxie & The Banshees’ dark-clothing fantasias, while spring-loaded guitar lines bounce around “Ash Speck in a Green Eye” in a manner not unlike Joy Division’s singular sonic miserabilia. Splashy drums abound courtesy of longtime sticksman Adam Carson, whose machine-gun rhythms have mutated into pounding heartbeats—but the biggest change apparent is Havok’s voice, which has taken on a distinctly dramatic timbre after decades of howling into the void. AFI is still reinventing itself more than 30 years in, and longtime fans of this group would never expect anything less.

Thrice’s 12th album is both a sequel to their 2021 release *Horizons / East* and part of the same body of work. Originally conceived as a double album, *Horizons* was split into two separate releases when the band decided to rerecord their 2003 breakthrough album *The Artist in the Ambulance* for its 20th anniversary. Still, vocalist/guitarist Dustin Kensrue and his bandmates tried to stay in the same headspace as *East* when they revisited the material for *West*. The result is a compelling rock album led by the infectious single “Albatross,” the snarling “Gnash,” and the moody churning of “The Dark Glow.”

Orbit Culture guitarist, vocalist, and founder Niklas Karlsson likens the band’s fifth album to a rebirth. “It’s the first album we’re doing on a big label like Century Media, so that by itself feels like a new chapter,” he tells Apple Music. “But we also put in so much hard work doing all these support tours for a bunch of years to finally someday become steady headliners of our own. So everything feels way bigger and fancier than it’s ever been, with way more responsibility. But we’re ready.” On *Death Above Life*, the Swedish band has taken their hybridized style of modern metal—part groove, part industrial, part melodic death metal—and cinematic soundscapes into new territory. The mechanized and abrasive “Bloodhound” was inspired by the expletive-laced delivery of Slipknot, while “Inside the Waves” kicks off with a big chorus in the style of LINKIN PARK. Elsewhere, “The Storm” rides a triumphant riff in direct reference to fellow Swedes Amon Amarth, while closer “The Path I Walk,” Orbit Culture’s first true ballad, is dedicated to guitarist Richard Hansson’s late father. Below, Karlsson comments on each track. **“Inferna”** “This has the classic Orbit Culture formula, and we wanted to open the album with that to not scare away the old fans. But also, it just felt right because it acted like a bridge from what we’ve done in the past. This album is kind of new when it comes to experimenting with stuff and taking in some different elements that we have never touched before, and even some touches of different genres, too. Putting ‘Inferna’ as the opening track with classic intro, verse, and this big chorus, I guess we played it a bit safe. But we did it to ease the fans into the album.” **“Bloodhound”** “That\'s really where our tour with Slipknot came in, I would say. We thought about putting ‘Bloodhound’ first, because it is kind of like a baseball bat to the face. But then again, we might scare people away. So instead we put ‘Inferna’ first and then ‘Bloodhound’ to create contrast. In terms of the lyrical content, we’ve never used curse words in a song before. But seeing how Slipknot can be with their lyrics, you don’t have to have fancy metaphors all the time. It can be just raw and almost childish lyrics. So that’s where we went—more with feeling rather than the words themselves. It’s the most raw, honest lyric that we’ve written.” **“Inside the Waves”** “This one came from how I’ve been listening to music these days. I get very obsessive with certain stuff. I rediscovered LINKIN PARK during the time I wrote this. I knew they’ve always been this massive, massive band, but it was something that was more in the Walkmen of people when they’re growing up. So I had to discover it with a grown-up ear, if that makes sense. And I was completely sold by LINKIN PARK, so I think naturally I wanted to take some inspiration from how they did their choruses with Chester Bennington back in the day. Also, we have never done a chorus at the first second of a song, so we tried that here.” **“The Tales of War”** “It has this long-ass cinematic intro, which is also one of the reasons it became the first single: We wanted to open the shows with this song. Before, we would always use long cinematic scores as openers—Hans Zimmer or whatever—but this time around, we wanted to incorporate it into the song itself. But this also kind of serves as a bridge from the old material to what we’ve done on this new album, because we also follow the typical Orbit Culture formula.” **“Hydra”** “This came from just trying out guitar sounds. I only had one hand free because I had to keep my left hand on the mouse while chugging, basically for hours, just to find a good sound. And so that marching rhythm was born, and then I just started to add all these soundscapes. During that period of time, *Dune: Part Two* had just come out and I went to the cinema twice to see it, just taking all the sounds in and trying to replicate the soundscape in my computer. That was the birth of ‘Hydra.’” **“Nerve”** “The skeleton of this song was born during the *Nija* days, and I think it’s kind of noticeable too. Our guitarist Richard always loved the demo, but we never knew what to do with it until now. It’s also one of the songs where we switched things around, having the verses completely with raspy vocals rather than growls. So that was a new thing, but of course it has an Orbit Culture twist in the end, because we get too bored to just listen to the same shit.” **“Death Above Life”** “We played more with a horror kind of soundscape and just letting the main riff repeat itself over and over because we felt the ID of the song was in that riff. The rest of the song just lives in the back while this very down-tuned riff goes on and on. The reason it’s called ‘Death Above Life’ is because it feels like a very marching type of song, and this new album is us marching into a new era. It just felt right. And the chorus works with the title, so that helped.” **“The Storm”** “This one is a bit of a wild card. With this album being as dark as it is, we felt like we needed an uplifting, almost comical song just to break the darkness up a bit. The problem we had doing it was that we thought it was way too similar to Amon Amarth, because they have these heroic riffs all the time, and this has a very heroic riff too. But then again, it was made to be uplifting, and Amon Amarth does that so fucking well. So we call this the Amon Amarth song. It’s catchy. It’s rather short to be an Orbit Culture song, but we love it.” **“Neural Collapse”** “It’s a chaotic track with a very mechanical, industrial sound that I always loved so much. To me, it’s like Cyborg mixed with Static-X in some weird way. And Meshuggah is also present in that track for sure. Lyrically, it’s about getting dementia, a pretty tough topic. I imagine getting dementia would be very chaotic, so it is a very chaotic song.” **“The Path I Walk”** “This is my personal favorite of the album. That might sound weird because it’s so far away from the usual metal that we do, but this song has been with us for years. It always was in our computers as a kind of movie soundtrack that we made back in the day, but we never knew what to do with it until we put the lyrics down. It’s a very tough subject because it’s about suicide, so we had to be very careful with our words and have a lot of respect for that. But then Richard said we should dedicate this to his father, who passed by suicide. Then it made more sense for us to have as an Orbit Culture track—it became a very personal and important song for us. Sonically, we have never put our vocal tracks this much in front of your face. It has barely any heavy metal drums or heavy metal bass. It’s just a cinematic track that became our ballad, and I’m super proud of it.”