Having survived both the wild winds of the pandemic and the wild swings of the music industry, the Pacific Mambo Orchestra remains grounded and surprisingly invigorated. Led since 2010 by co-founders trumpeter Steffen Kuehn and pianist Christian Tumalan, the Grammy-winning, 20-piece ensemble recently released a new MP3 single, “Suite Tito Puente.” In the track's 12:33 minutes can be heard the unexpected mix people ironically expect from PMO: modern arrangements of classic Latin jazz music, traditional salsa tunes and boleros, covers of American jazz standards and R&B hits, and classical music such as Tumalan's mambo arrangement of Rachmaninoff's “Concerto #2 for Piano and Orchestra.”
Since its release in early March, the song has soundtracked nearly 150,000 videos on the platform. For Nimino, that doesn't just mean more exposure for his music. It means money. A lot of the sports-world accounts that have used his track are businesses-Atlético de Madrid, the "Men in Blazers" podcast, Major League Baseball, the LPGA, and the Philadelphia Eagles-that accessed the song via TikTok's growing Commercial Music Library (CML), which ensures artists are paid when their music is used commercially.
Globally influential Afro house tastemaker Joezi launches his brand new label Butterfly fx with a new single alongside Rbør & Berin. Joezi brings soulful, uplifting grooves and crafts immersive soundscapes that connect deeply with listeners. With over 60 releases on top labels, including the global hit 7 Seconds which has been streamed over 40 million times, Joezi's infectious beats ignite dance floors worldwide. His music reflects his life experiences, spreading joy, connection, and the euphoric energy of Afro-house wherever it plays.
Smythe died Saturday at 53 after suffering a cardiac emergency on a hiking trail, according to the coroner's online database. His cause of death was atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, in which plaque builds up in arterial walls and can lead to a heart attack. The Sierra Madre Police Department said Saturday that a man - at that point unidentified - died after having a medical emergency on the trail and that no foul play was suspected.
Route 66 was 20 years old and World War II had just ended when Bobby Troup, an aspiring songwriter from Pennsylvania, decided to go west. As it turned out, that drive in early 1946 did more than anyone could have imagined to establish the road as a symbol of footloose American freedom.
“Coconut Water” is all about the staccato fairy smacks and the pools of latent energy around them. Things go in cycles, ratchet music included. But when I watch that Rolling Loud clip, I don't see nostalgia bait; I see a rising regional rap star in a sea of awkward, brainrotted kids, bringing her local flare to our feeds.
One of his visions was to upgrade the game experience make it feel bigger, more like an NBA broadcast. Part of that meant adding music. In what I can now recognise as both practical thinking and classic family logic, he turned to me. The outlier was drafted in. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads In many ways, this was a family operation, so I never officially applied for the role.
It takes less than 10 minutes in the first Galaxy to set up the series' central leitmotifs, which convey the games' character, story, and scope through sound alone. Upon booting the game up, a swift run of horns plays the main theme, a magnificent game-spanning refrain which appears during the mightiest moments, from title screen to credits. When the gameplay starts, the jaunty woodwinds that score the intro level's joyous "Star Festival" are almost immediately brought to a devastating halt by the now-iconic choral chants that shout Bowser's new villainous leitmotif, "Catastrophe," which reappears throughout the various fights with him in both games.
Quick understands firsthand the struggle of independent artists trying to make their way in a society that heavily values mainstream artists. A lack of resources, accessibility, and finances can prevent indie singers from getting opportunities that more commercial artists may receive. Small artists are the backbone of the music industry, Quick said. Most of the time, smaller artists are left to do the songwriting, producing and promoting alone.
Over months of hard gigging, their handmade papier-mache masks had gone soggy from the musicians' laboured breathing. When I looked at mine, I was like: Jesus Christ, did I really play that much with this? says Klek. It was falling apart. It was like putting a Christmas box outside when it's raining. But when the masks disintegrated, it was important that their more robust replacements still looked lived-in.
For the first time, we hear Roxanne's lovely, wispy voice in lucid detail, as she contemplates loss and desire over slow and stripped-back compositions. The album artwork for Poem 1. Photograph: Lyric Shen The record opens with a collection of mournful ballads which draw more on pop songwriting than Roxanne's usual amorphous style. Her yearning is tangible in the simple yet evocative lyrics, but also beyond: the tense vibrato of the strings in The Age of Innocence; the sustained keys in Keepsake.
I feel like I can spiritually stand by the list. But if I want to trouble the entire process, I don't think our task was making a list. I think our task was expanding and re-examining the notion of American songcraft. That, to me, was the root of all the arguments that we made in that room. To the extent that we disagreed with each other, or to the extent that we gave grace to each other, or to the extent that we agreed with each other, I feel like everybody in that room was willing to think expansively about what songwriting is.
Rain Music started as a session combining Timothy's prepared piano and Niño's percussion at the former composer's south London studio. Work continued remotely, at their homes in London and California, at which point Niño brought in the extra players-also including double bassist Michael Alvidrez, saxophonist Darius Jones, and woodwind all-rounder Aaron Shaw-and sequenced the record.
The mp3 blog aggregator was, theoretically, taste-agnostic, but there was a general vibe to the music that got big there in the site's heyday: The songs that flourished were both pretty and edgy, often tapping into the primal pleasures of hearing a radiant pop melody atop bassy, Limoncello-scented club music.
Rashad renders even the most harrowing scenes with levity and warmth. He recounts his traumas and triumphs in largely the same register-his scratchy sing-song flow that slides and swings over beats that draw as much from '90s neo-soul as they do from the annals of Southern rap.
Justin Bieber's music received a massive streaming spike following his headlining Coachella 2026 performances, peaking at roughly 431 million global Spotify streams during the week ending April 23rd.
