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No one can tear TikTok scrollers away from their cherished dust bunny shoegaze—not fatigue, not the U.S. Senate. Gen Z loves the ashen ’90s rock subgenre as dearly as a worn pair of Uggs, and through TikTok, they’ve helped facilitate its contemporary revival. But if every teen were suited to spreading the good word, there’d be fewer paintings of Joan of Arc. Not everyone can have the reach of 19-year-old Natalie Lu, known as Wisp, whose 2023 debut single “Your face” led to thousands of TikTok plays and, now, Interscope releasing her first EP, Pandora.
We Belong
On his new album, Ahmed Gallab, the Sudanese-born, New York-based multi-instrumentalist behind Sinkane, embodies the sense of deep pain and great joy that powers the sound of Black liberation. From the earliest spirituals to the first civil rights songs, the uplifting power of gospel to the cathartic energy of funk, Black music resonates with this profound duality, serving as a fundamental tool of resistance—a loud, proud refusal to comply with the expectations of a world that seeks to oppress. On We Belong, Sinkane uphold this legacy, smashing through constraints with revolutionary exuberance. The fact that so many civil rights anthems remain as relevant today as they were in the 1960s could be cause for sorrow, but Gallab chooses to celebrate the beauty in the struggle—most of all, the role of community and togetherness in driving it forward.
The Great Fire of Beatenberg
There was an admission implicit in the title of the South African trio Beatenberg’s 2022 EP On the way to Beatenberg: The group had yet to arrive at a sound. Over 19 minutes, they experimented with baroque guitar and Auto-Tune; they flirted with EDM uplift and Balearic haze. But Beatenberg’s core remained indie pop, refracted through guitarist and lead singer Matthew Field’s lifelong love of maskandi and mbaqanga. Their serene rumbas can make the group’s music feel out of time, not just in America (where a dusty mental shelf might hold them alongside Dirty Projectors, Paul Simon, and Vampire Weekend) but also at home, where amapiano and its many varieties are the hot pop export. When Beatenberg dabble in dance, it’s generally to add Zulu folk flavor to someone else’s production. A decade ago, they collaborated with fellow countryman DJ Clock on the tropical-house smash “Pluto (I Remember You).” In 2021, Beatenburg popped up on RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE—the continent-spanning collaboration between producers Scorpion Kings and Tresor—to get pensive on the Afropiano song “Dust in the Wind.”
Keith LeBlanc, Drummer on Grandmaster Flash and Sugarhill Gang Songs, Dies at 69
Keith LeBlanc, the Tackhead drummer, producer, and session musician best known for his work on classic hip-hop songs by Grandmaster Flash and Sugarhill Gang, died on Thursday (April 4) due to an undisclosed illness, his wife Fran LeBlanc told Variety. He was 69. “All of us at On-U Sound are...
Watch Mandy, Indiana’s New “Idea Is Best” Video
Mandy, Indiana are following their 2023 debut, I’ve Seen a Way, with a new single. The new track, “Idea Is Best,” arrives with a music video featuring live footage of the band, filmed at Hitness Club and edited by Harry Steel. Watch it below. On Sunday, April...
Billie Eilish Announces New Album Hit Me Hard and Soft: Watch the Trailer
Billie Eilish has officially announced her long-teased third studio album. The new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is out May 17 via Darkroom and Interscope. Watch a trailer for the LP below. Scroll down for the album artwork. Eilish wrote Hit Me Hard and Soft with her brother, Finneas,...
Caribou Shares Video for New Song “Honey”: Watch
Dan Snaith is returning to his Caribou moniker for his first new music in nearly three years. “Honey” is a dancefloor-ready single that comes with a trippy music video directed by Richard Kenworthy. In the clip, viewers travel through a series of flamingo photographs in a never-ending optical illusion. Watch the song’s video below.
Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier Announces Debut Solo Album, Shares Video for New Song: Watch
Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier has announced his debut solo album: We Sang, Therefore We Were arrives on April 26 via Joyful Noise. Saunier has shared the new LP’s lead single, “Grow Like a Plant,” on which he handles vocals, guitar, and bass over the exact type of maniacal drum work on which he’s built his name. The song comes with a music video featuring dancer Sophie Daws moving along to the beat in a wig; watch it below.
Anitta to Tour North American for the First Time
Anitta has announced her first tour of North America. The Brazilian superstar’s Baile Funk Experience Tour will come to Los Angeles on May 21 and stop in Brooklyn, Chicago, and other cities. Dates in South America and Europe are also on the calendar; check out the itinerary below. Anitta’s...
Watch Moses Sumney and Halsey in First MaXXXine Trailer
Ti West’s upcoming A24-distributed horror film, MaXXXine, has a new trailer. The movie, which takes place in Hollywood in the 1980s, is the third installment of West’s X franchise, which kicked off with 2022’s X and its prequel, Pearl, released the same year. Soundtracked by Laura Branigan’s 1984 single “Self Control,” the trailer features Mia Goth, Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Debicki, and Giancarlo Esposito, plus musicians Moses Sumney and Halsey. Check out the trailer for MaXXXine, which arrives in theaters on July 5, below.
J. Cole, at Dreamville Festival, Calls Kendrick Lamar Diss Track “the Lamest Shit I Ever Did in My Fucking Life”
J. Cole headlined his annual Dreamville Festival last night (April 7) at Dorothea Dix Park. The performance happened just days after Cole dissed Kendrick Lamar on the new song “7 Minute Drill,” and Cole took time during his set to address the track, explaining that he felt conflicted about making and releasing it.
Missy Elliott Announces First-Ever Tour of North America
Missy Elliott will embark on her first-ever headline tour this summer, enlisting Ciara, Busta Rhymes, and Timbaland for an opening slate of two dozen dates across North America. Dubbed Out of This World — The Missy Elliott Experience, the tour kicks off on July 4 in Vancouver and wraps August 22 in Rosemont, Illinois. Check out the dates below, and find the announcement video on Instagram.
Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, and More: This Week’s Pitchfork Selects Playlist
The staff of Pitchfork listens to a lot of new music. A lot of it. On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we’re sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff’s favorite new music. The playlist is a grab-bag of tracks: Its only guiding principle is that these are the songs you’d gladly send to a friend.
Delight
What does yearning sound like? A composer versed in Hindustani classical music might reach for Raga Bageshri, a melodic framework meant to stir longing for reunion with one’s lover. Bageshri dictates the melody of a slew of romantic film soundtracks, including “Aaja Re Pardesi,” theme to the mystical meet-cute amid the misty pines of northern India that opens the 1958 film Madhumati. Just like that film’s protagonist, electronic musician and vocalist Arushi Jain turned to Bageshri in a landscape filled with wildlife, using the raga to compose the nine tracks on her latest record in a makeshift studio on the shores of Long Island. What Jain yearns for on this record, however, is not a lover but an emotion. On Delight, Jain grasps for a joy that lies tantalizingly out of reach, bringing melodies informed by Raga Bageshri into dazzling contact with modular synthesis and digital manipulation.
All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade
In Carol Reed’s classic film The Third Man, Orson Welles’ slippery anti-hero Harry Lime justifies his descent into criminality by comparing the cultural output of Renaissance Italy during the turbulent rule of the Borgia family with that of Switzerland. The Swiss, he concludes, “had brotherly love and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” It is a reference that the Libertines, with their love of fading Albion, would surely appreciate, though perhaps not when directed at All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, their second album since reforming in 2010.
Beyoncé Earns Eighth No. 1 Album With Cowboy Carter
Beyoncé has topped the Billboard charts once again. Cowboy Carter debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, marking the biggest sales for an album so far in 2024, and No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart, making Beyoncé the first Black woman ever to debut at the summit, reports Billboard. This is the eighth time Beyoncé’s had a solo album reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Raye Performs “Escapism” and “Worth It” on Saturday Night Live: Watch
Raye was the musical guest on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by freshly robed five-timer Kristen Wiig. For her musical performances, Raye sang ornate, orchestral versions “Escapism” and “Worth It,” from her debut album, My 21st Century Blues. Watch her performances, and her SNL promo video with Kristen Wiig and Bowen Yang, below.
CrazySexyCool
The original concept for CrazySexyCool was simple: Women contain multitudes. The title, an amalgamation of their personalities, was a way to subvert the public’s perception of each member: Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins as the “cool” one, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas as the “sexy” seducer, and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes herself supposedly “crazy.” She figured, rightfully, that each of them was all of those things at once. Straightforward enough—and yet some of the album’s male producers initially missed the point about the self as a many-layered construct. “They’d do a crazy song for me, a sexy song for Chilli, and a cool song for Tionne,” Left Eye told Vibe in 1994. “We had to explain that CrazySexyCool doesn’t just describe us individually. It describes all the parts of every woman.”
Erbil
It’s been a turbulent few years for dabke-techno king Omar Souleyman. In 2021 the Syrian singer was arrested in Urfa, the city in southeastern Turkey where he had been living and running a bakery since escaping Syria’s civil war in 2011. Accused of being a member of the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which authorities in Ankara consider a terrorist organization and an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Souleyman was held for a little over 24 hours before being released without charges.
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