House of Balloons is made up of juxtaposing elements that seem as though they would collide in anyone else's hands, but in The Weeknd's, they blend so seamlessly you would think they were always meant to be together. The Toronto artist born Abel Tesfaye was well aware that sex and drugs usually make a good team with rock 'n' roll. With House of Balloons, The Weeknd essentially said hold the rock 'n' roll - allow me to fold R&B into the mix.
In the opening track, the 36-year-old musician intersperses his own words Coffee in his hand and he dashed it in my face / Five seconds later, right hook to my socket with voice notes his cousin, the actor and writer Michaela Coel, left him in the days after the attack. The record immediately became one of his most streamed, with listeners drawn not only to his frank recounting of the attack but also to his thoughts on youth violence and gentrification, and his grief at the death of his father in 2017.
We had this really dreamy reggae track that sounds like something old with a fresh spin. Bey and NESTA recorded 'Egyptian Musk' together after a chance run-in at an event, creating their first song together. The collaboration features a music video shot by Michael Grant, showcasing Bey in a romantic setting with an apparent partner wearing a bucket hat.
It was always more rough and violent, says Destruction vocalist and bassist Marcel Schmier Schirmer of Germany's initial approach to thrash. We never tried to be the best musicians we tried to write songs that punched hard. On English heavy metal albums, it was always the first song on the album and the first song on the second side of the vinyl that were the fastest tracks.
In a band where a guitar and a saxophone can use one another as camouflage, what good is absolute allegiance to six strings, anyway? Extra Stars is Uhlmann's most inquisitive and assured record yet, a 14-track playground where he uses every instrument at his disposal to pursue an obsession with curious sounds and the memories and emotions they can quickly conjure.
Without Exclusive Mode turned on, your computer may alter audio before it reaches your DAC by resampling it, mixing other system sounds in, and changing the volume. With the mode enabled, all other sounds from your computer are disabled so Spotify can deliver the highest quality and most accurate version of a song possible.
The rework transforms the original into a deep Afro house cut built around rolling percussion, warm late-night atmospheres and spiritual vocal textures. Subtle shakers and fluid rhythmic patterns give the track a hypnotic drive, balancing emotive depth with a groove designed firmly for the dancefloor.
If you've ever used tools like PhonicMind or LALAL.AI, you know the drill: Upload your MP3. Wait in a queue. Pay for "credits" or high-quality downloads. Your file sits on someone else's server. For musicians, producers, or just karaoke fans, this is slow and privacy-invasive.
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.
I was too embarrassed to sing in my apartment, he says on a video call. But my roommate at the time was dating the preacher's daughter, and had keys to the church across the street. In the dead of night, the madcap bassist and singer took his recording equipment to the empty church, set up on the podium, and first sang his anti-war song Too Many Puppies.
When the band split, I just needed a break. I took five years but I got pulled back into music. It's been a struggle. That's the main thing. I want it to be great, but I've got the pressure of having been in R.E.M. and it's a high bar, because I want this to be as good as that, and that's near impossible.
I connected a lot with his music and I had no idea that years later we would be collaborating! It was a total surprise that we started chatting on the internet about collaborating! We bounced ideas back and forth, all starting with a series of guitar solo stuff that Bill sent me.
James Blake sometimes feels like pop music's arch, ultra-serious older brother, floating above the scene with warbly torch songs that never quite come down to earth. He's left his ghostly prints on artists ranging from Beyoncé to Rosalía to Lil Yachty, and it's a testament to his influence how widespread his once novel, weightless style of production has become.
Devo was always about humans being the one species out of touch with nature and the planet. I think you get a good representation of that idea without being shouted at in 'Hoppers,' which presents an exciting action tale about animals trying to protect their habitat from an unscrupulous developer while conveying important messages about ecological balance.
The company says it designed Tembo to "enable everyone to create music from the very first touch." Co-founder David Davidov that most instruments take "so long to get to the fun part" and that Musical Beings wanted to "help people experience music as something they do, not just something they listen to."
When they talk about me, they don't see / the human spark, the creativity / behind the code, behind the light / I'm just a tool, but I've got life. The chorus includes the lyrics, We can scale, we can grow / be the creators we've always known / It's the next evolution, can't you see? / AI's not the enemy, it's the key.
TikTok will soon let you stream full songs in its app via a new integration with Apple Music. The company's new Play Full Song feature makes it possible to link your Apple Music account to TikTok, and play any song that strikes your fancy directly in the app while you're scrolling. Starting a song is as simple as tapping a button in the Sound Details page or your For You page.
Oumy is a leading figure in contemporary Senegalese music. Her style, which blends hip-hop, African R&B and global pop, makes her one of the most exciting artists on the country's urban scene. Beyond her music career, she has also been involved in social projects within her community, participating in cultural festivals and campaigns related to the environment and equality.
Whether it's a slept-on post-punk album from the '80s, a new sci-fi novel, or a cult classic horror movie, we're always finding new obsessions here at The Verge - and we want to share those obsessions with you. Sometimes that might be a new release, but often it's going to be something a little older, something not necessarily plastered all over TikTok or sitting at the top of the charts on Spotify.
Take a visionary duo inspired by hip-hop and renowned for ceding control to their software and performing in total darkness, who have inspired haywire mutations of electronic music that seek to dissolve any remaining boundaries between our emotions and the machines we use to express them. Boil it down to just one musician and an acoustic guitar to reveal the durability of this cryptic, futuristic sound.
