Music Videos
Mykki Blanco Unveils New Song “Free Ride”: Stream
Mykki Blanco has released their first new song of 2021, “Free Ride”. It marks the rapper’s debut on Transgressive Records. Watch the accompanying music video below. “Free Ride” is co-produced by FaltyDL and Hudson Mohawke. Originally recorded in spring 2018, the song was set aside until the summer of 2020, when Mohawke added his contribution to the track. Carried by Blanco’s playful flow, the song combines elements of retro soul and trap sounds. In a press statement, Blanco reflected on being inspired by the music on which they grew up: “Some of the most intimate moments and conversations I have ever shared were with my mother on long drives in the Southern countryside when I was a teenager. The music that soundtracked these memories on our daily journeys was the stuff of my mother’s ...
Posthumous Tony Allen Album to Feature Damon Albarn, Danny Brown, Skepta & More
Last year, legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen was working on a new album when he suffered an aortic aneurysm and passed away at the age of 79. His collaborators have finished what he began, and the posthumous release There Is No End will arrive on April 30th, the anniversary of his death. You can catch a preview with lead single “Cosmosis”, which was co-written by Damon Albarn and features Skepta and Ben Okri. Allen pioneered the Afrobeat sound, drawing influences from American jazz, Ghanian highlife, and Yoruba polyrhythms to develop new grooves that continue to resonate today. He built his towering reputation by collaborating on over 30 albums with Fela Kuti, and his skills were so advanced that when he left to pursue a solo career, Kuti hired four drummers to replace him. Allen ...
Purity Ring Announce Fall 2021 Tour Dates, Share “sinew” Video: Watch
With President Biden determined to get the majority of American adults vaccinated by summer, bands are earnestly beginning to look forward to the return of live music. Purity Ring are the latest to announce 2021 tour dates, which they’ve shared alongside the video for their track “sinew”. The song comes from WOMB, the synth-pop duo’s first album in five years that was released just before the pandemic struck. Directed by Toby Stretch, the clip brings back the abstract graphics and costumes that featured in the “stardew” music video, continuing the enigmatic story of the domed bicyclist and their sun-headed sidecar companion. Check out the “sinew” visuals ahead. The clip is sure to get fans hyped for more of Purity Ring’s crystalline sounds, and the band hopes to share them in person again ...
Kenny Mason Announces Angelic Hoodrat: Supercut Project, Shares “Pup”: Stream
Kenny Mason turned Atlanta hip-hop on its ears with last year’s debut album, Angelic Hoodrat. The genre-mashing artist is now set to keep his momentum going with a new project dubbed Angelic Hoodrat: Supercut, which features the new single “Pup”. Due out April 16th, Supercut consists of 12 new tracks and a quartet of features. Denzel Curry, a frequent collaborator who has emerged as something of a mentor to Mason even though he’s only a year older, appears on “A+”, while Freddie Gibbs drops in on “Much Money”. Alongside those heavy-hitters, Mason welcomes a pair of fellow risers, with Dallas’ Angel White featuring on “Titan” and bi-lingual New Jersey singer-songwriter contributing to “Breathe”. The new collection was first teased last month with “Partments”, a low-key track that further pe...
Jorja Smith Releases New Single “Addicted”: Stream
Jorja Smith is back with an irresistible new track called “Addicted”. The song comes with a music video filmed entirely in isolation, which you can watch ahead. Following last year’s “Come Over” with Popcaan, “By Any Means” of Roc Nation’s Reprise compilation, and The Eddy contribution “Kiss Me in the Morning”, “Addicted” marks Smith’s first single of 2021. Musing in the atmosphere of a hazy beat punctuated with live guitars, the song is as alluring as a siren. Which is fitting, since the lyrics call for a lover to recognize how good they have it and “be addicted to me.” In a press statement explaining the track, Smith noted it’s about “focusing on wanting the full attention of someone who’s not giving enough (or any) when they should be.” “Addicted” comes with a self-directed video (...
TEKE::TEKE Unleash New Song “Yoru Ni”: Stream
Montreal’s TEKE::TEKE have unleashed the new song “Yoru Ni” from their upcoming debut album Shirushi. The surf-psych seven-piece originally formed as a tribute band to Japanese guitar icon Takeshi Terauchi. But from that singular purpose, TEKE::TEKE have developed an expansively off-kilter identity, layering on the beauty of Japanese folk and the ferocity of UK punk into the perfect soundtrack for dropping acid at the beach. “Yoru Ni” means “At night,” and as guitarist Serge Nakauchi-Pelletier said in a statement, the song had a spookily nocturnal inspiration. He explained, “‘Yoru Ni’ (which translates from Japanese to ‘At night’) was literally written in the middle of the night. I woke up suddenly and had this melody in my head, as if it had come to me from another world. It really felt l...
Hiss Golden Messenger Announces New Album Quietly Blowing It, Shares “If It Comes in the Morning”: Stream
Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C Taylor will find out this weekend if his last LP, 2019’s Terms of Surrender, takes home the Best Americana Album at this year’s Grammy Awards. Even with that anticipation looming, the ever-prolific Americana artist has already set his sights on his next effort, as he’s today announced Quietly Blowing It. As a preview of the June 25th release, Taylor has shared “If It Comes in the Morning”. Arriving via Merge, Quietly Blowing It was written during the spring and summer of the tumultuous 2020. Even before that year “rolled up on us like an existential mugger,” as Taylor himself puts it, he was feeling burnt out. He’d canceled an Australian tour in 2019, and left the road ready for “the time and space to mourn something, though I wasn’t sure what.” When h...
Skullcrusher Announces New Storm in Summer EP, Shares Title Track: Stream
Helen Ballentine has announced the next project under her Skullcrusher banner. The Storm in Summer EP drops April 9th via Secretly Canadian, and has released the title track as an early preview. The five-track follow-up to her 2020 Skullcrusher EP finds Ballentine reeling from the spotlight after experiencing some unexpected success. As she explained in a statement, “I wrote ‘Storm in Summer’ after releasing the first Skullcrusher EP. Over that summer I thought a lot about what it means to really put myself out there and share something personal. I felt so vulnerable and overwhelmed by the fact that these songs I had written in private were exposed and likely being misinterpreted or disliked. I think the song really tries to communicate these anxieties in a cathartic way whi...
SZA Shares “Good Days” Video with “Shirt” Teaser: Watch
SZA scored her first Top 10 hit as a solo artist with “Good Days”, and now the Top Dawg Entertainment singer has released the song’s self-directed music video. The five-minute clip features a preview of her next single, “Shirt”, at the end. In the fairytale-inspired clip, the New Jersey native alternates between performing the song in a field surrounded by mushrooms, a la Alice in Wonderland, and twirling around a stripper pole in a library reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast. Released on Christmas Day 2020, “Good Days” features additional vocals from Jacob Collier. It is expected to appear on SZA’s long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Ctrl alongside her Ty Dolla $ign collaboration, “Hit Different”. Watch the “Good Days” music video below. Editors’ Picks [embedded content] Rel...
Dirty Honey Announce Debut Album, Share “California Dreamin’”: Stream
Hard rockers Dirty Honey have announced that their self-titled debut album will arrive April 23rd. The L.A. band has also shared the music video for the opening track and lead single, “California Dreamin’”. Not to be confused with the ’60s pop hit of the same name by The Mamas and the Papas, Dirty Honey’s take on the Golden State is a darker portrayal. Vocalist and lyricist Marc LaBelle said the track and its video explain that the Cali dream is just that: a dream. It doesn’t always come true. “Lots of people come out to California, chasing a dream, and sometimes, people just don’t make it,” LaBelle said in a press release. “California isn’t always the ‘land of milk and honey,’ dreams don’t always come true here, and that’s the perspective this song and video take. The video is a dream thr...
Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, and Jon Randall Announce The Marfa Tapes, Share “In His Arms”: Stream
Country superstar Miranda Lambert has teamed up with songwriters Jack Ingram and Jon Randall for the new album The Marfa Tapes. It drops May 7th, and to preview the release, the group has unveiled the lead single “In His Arms”. Lambert, Ingram, and Randall are hardly strangers; the trio previously collaborated on Lambert’s twice Grammy-nominated single “Tin Man” (2016), as well as the fan favorite “Tequila Does” (2019). Fresh takes on both of those songs will appear on The Marfa Tapes, but the majority of the 15-track effort has never been heard outside of Marfa, Texas. The small town is home to only about 1,800 people, but for five days last November it also hosted three musicians, two microphones, and one acoustic guitar. The stripped-down recording session tried to capture the stark bea...
Fijian Rapper Jesswar Releases Debut EP TROPIXX: Stream
Three years after she set out to write and record her own music, rising Fijian rapper Jesswar has just released her debut EP TROPIXX via Inertia Music/PIAS. Stream it below via Apple Music and Spotify. TROPIXX is a six-track EP meant to introduce listeners to Jesswar’s range of skills. On the previously released singles “Medusa” and “Venom”, she shows off a verbal tenacity and community-driven storytelling that seeks to empower fellow marginalized people, and that remains true for the other tracks on the EP. The way she sees it, holistic independence doesn’t have to mean you’re estranged from kinship or unity. “When I first started writing TROPIXX, I was tired of being overlooked, and I knew I had a lot to say. It was really upsetting to wake up every day and see how women of color are con...
