REVERYA have a new single out and it hits with the kind of emotional directness that defines their best work. “Envy” tackles the psychological weight of comparison, self-image, and the pressure of perceived perfection, moving between vulnerable atmospheric passages and explosive heavy sections without losing momentum. The Tampa trio, formed in 2022, have built their sound around that dynamic range, and “Envy” is their most personal release yet, lyricism unfiltered, music to match.
Nadine’s vocals anchor the track with genuine presence, while Travis and Kaleb drive the heavy sections with the precision the band has sharpened since their debut EP ‘Melinoe’ and their 2024 full-length ‘Affliction In Bloom’. Drawing from the sonic territory of Spiritbox, Jinjer, and Evanescence while carving their own path, REVERYA continue to build something distinct in the modern progressive metal space. “Envy” is out now.
Nearly thirty years after first crossing paths at the Chicago Blues Festival, Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Guy Davis are back together. ‘Fight On! True Blues Vol. 2’ arrives April 17 on Yellow Dog Records, a nine-track collection that moves between traditional material and original compositions without ever treating the past as a museum exhibit. Recorded separately in Virginia, Mississippi, and New York, the performances are raw, direct, and grounded in deep personal investment. Harris reimagines a Jimmy Strother banjo song in Piedmont-style guitar. Hart pulls out the first Charley Patton piece he ever learned, played on a 1950s Sears Silvertone-branded Kay flat-top. Davis reworks Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree” through the lens of Blind Willie McTell. The results are striking.
The stakes behind the music are clear. Harris frames it plainly: “The thematic tie of the record lies in the fact that we are three African-American bluesmen who are fighting to maintain our cultural legacy and heritage. Each of these nine tracks represents a contemporary image of traditional Black lifeways.” Davis adds: “The fight we are waging is to keep this precious music form alive.” Hart connects it all back to that original 1996 photograph: “It was destiny that we’d end up doing something like True Blues.” ‘Fight On! True Blues Vol. 2’ is available for pre-order now.
Wille and the Bandits have released “Reina Del Mar,” the latest single from their album ‘Salt Roots’, out now. Following “Trouble Round the Bend” and “Wheal Jane,” which won Classic Rock’s Track of the Week, the new single takes the band somewhere distinctly different. Latin-rock influenced and steeped in coastal atmosphere, the track was shaped by time on Spain’s Atlantic coast and a riff Wille first sketched a decade ago while travelling Cuba and absorbing the sounds of Buena Vista Social Club musicians still playing in Havana. Harry Mackaill’s double bass anchors the track with real depth, Stevie’s piano brings rich Latin texture, and Wille’s slide guitar does what it always does, which is hold the whole thing together with unmistakable authority.
Wille traces the song’s origin directly: “It wasn’t until I was on tour with a few days off in Galicia, Spain, knocking around and waiting for some surf to appear, that the idea of Maria came about. With its strong association with the sea, and Reina del Mar meaning ‘queen of the sea’ in Spanish, the song started to develop.” That connection to the ocean runs through ‘Salt Roots’ as a whole, and has led the band to partner with Surfers Against Sewage, putting their music behind a cause that matters to them personally. Produced by Wille alongside long-time collaborator Josiah Manning, the ten-track album moves confidently across styles without losing the thread of strong songs and sharp musicianship. The UK tour is underway now.
‘Salt Roots’ UK Tour Dates:
March 28 – Carnglaze Caverns, Liskeard (w/ Martin Harley, True Strays, Echo Town, James Dixon)
Ty Freeman’s debut EP ‘One Way Love’ is out now, and it arrives with the kind of raw, lived-in energy that no amount of studio polish can manufacture. Recorded at Kempston Street Studios in Liverpool with producer Chris Taylor (The Coral, Bill Ryder-Jones, She Drew The Gun) and featuring Ian Skelly and Paul Duffy of The Coral on rhythm duties, the four-track collection draws deep from the blues-rock well. Deep Purple, Zeppelin, Sabbath, The Black Keys, early Kings of Leon, all present, all filtered through Freeman’s own ragged-edged voice and a production approach that kept click tracks out of the room entirely. The title track hits hard and direct, a throttle-down blues-driven track about unrequited love with genuine emotional weight behind every note.
Freeman’s path to this record is anything but straightforward. Raised in foster care in Merseyside, he found his footing through music, grinding through guerilla gigs on Liverpool streets before taking his craft to bars and clubs from Hamburg to Zurich, where he now lives. In 2025, childhood heroes Ian Skelly and Paul Duffy became studio bandmates. Of the sessions Freeman says: “I’d show them a song and within a few takes, no rehearsal, they’d nail it live in the room. Paul kept things anchored with melodic bass lines while Ian and I spoke our own language.” That chemistry is all over ‘One Way Love’. The EP is available digitally and on limited edition vinyl.
Venus Grrrls have a new single out, a new label home, and a statement to make. “3×3” is out now on Killabop, marking both the band’s first release for the alt-rock label and the label’s very first release overall. Produced with Max Helyer of You Me At Six and Numen Studios, the track is their most lyrically direct work yet, inspired by the disorienting aftermath of a relationship breakdown. Stomp-ready percussion, dark bass rhythms, jagged riffs, and abrasive synth lines collide without sacrificing the band’s signature cinematic vocals. Kerrang! called it an “exhilarating new single.” Rock Sound went with “modern grunge at its finest.” Both are accurate.
The accompanying video, directed by Misha Warren and the band and shot in guitarist Eliza’s house, leans into a whimsical witchy-coven aesthetic drawing from The Hex Girls, The Love Witch, and Hammer horror. The band put it plainly: “We didn’t want to take this video too seriously; it’s all about putting a whimsical and theatrical spin on a high voltage performance.” The five-piece, based across Leeds, Newcastle, and Liverpool, have already toured with Sprints, headlined sold-out dates across the UK, and made festival debuts at SXSW, Download, and Reading and Leeds. The Nova Twins support dates are done, but festival appearances at Bearded Theory, Rock For People in Czechia, and 2000Trees in Cheltenham are still ahead.
Upcoming Dates:
May 20-24 – Derby, UK – Bearded Theory Festival
June 13 – Hradec Králové, Czechia – Rock For People
Bearded Theory just got bigger. The beloved Derbyshire festival, running May 20-24 at Catton Park, has revealed its latest wave of additions to an already formidable 2026 lineup. Mercury-nominated Everything Everything, boundary-pushing icons The Horrors, and revered Scottish outfit The Twilight Sad join previously announced headliners Garbage, Pixies, and Skunk Anansie. Acid-house pioneer A Guy Called Gerald, psychedelic prog veterans Ozric Tentacles, American indie artist Sir Chloe, post-punk firecrackers Opus Kink, and afro-psychedelic future poppers BCUC round out a new wave that spans decades and genres without breaking a sweat.
Beans on Toast’s annual Foolhardy Takeover of the Woodland stage also has its lineup locked in, with Katacombs, K.O.G Soundsystem, Mr Bruce, and Nuala joining previously confirmed comedian Stewart Lee. The Woodland stage remains one of the festival’s genuine highlights, an intimate tree-canopied space for unplugged sessions, late-night singalongs, and a silent disco that regularly outlasts everything else on site.
Bearded Theory has earned its reputation the hard way, building a fiercely loyal community around a compact, carefully curated site with eight distinct stages. The Guardian called it the festival with “the laid-back, escape-from-reality vibe of Glastonbury without the step count,” and with a lineup this deep and diverse, 2026 makes a strong case for that comparison. The Festival School, the UK’s first of its kind, returns with expanded pre-school provision, and new boutique accommodation The Junkyard brings retro Americana silver trailers to the site.
Cool is not a look. It is not a pose. It is not something you can manufacture in a boardroom or copy from someone else. The artists who truly redefined it did so by refusing to be anything other than exactly themselves, often at great personal and professional risk. These are seven of them.
Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish showed up in oversized clothes, sang about anxiety and dark rooms, and became one of the biggest pop stars on the planet without changing a single thing about herself to get there. She made vulnerability the new armor, proved that whisper could hit harder than a shout, and built a global fanbase by refusing to perform a version of herself she did not recognize.
David Bowie
Before Bowie, rock stars were supposed to be relatable. Bowie decided he would rather be unknowable. Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, each character a deliberate dismantling of whatever came before. He made reinvention not just acceptable but mandatory, and every artist who has changed direction since owes him a debt.
Prince
Prince existed outside every category the music industry tried to put him in. He was a virtuoso who played every instrument, wrote every note, controlled every detail, and did it all while dressed in ways that made everyone else look boring. He proved that total artistic control and massive commercial success were not mutually exclusive, and he looked extraordinary doing it.
Miles Davis
Every decade Miles Davis entered, he left it sounding different. From bebop to cool jazz to fusion, he never chased a trend because he was always ahead of one. He wore Ferraris and Issey Miyake suits and moved through the world like someone who had already heard tomorrow’s music and was mildly disappointed by today’s.
Patti Smith
Patti Smith walked onto the stage at CBGB in 1975 looking like nobody had ever looked before, and opened her mouth and changed punk forever. She brought poetry, art, and raw intellectual hunger into rock and roll and refused to separate any of them. She made being a serious artist and a dangerous performer feel like the same thing.
Björk
Björk has never once made the obvious choice. Her music sounds like it was assembled from instruments that do not exist yet, and her visual world matches it note for note. She is the rare artist who makes experimental feel genuinely joyful rather than academic, and she has been doing it for four decades without a single moment of compromise.
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain hated being cool, which is precisely what made him the coolest person in the room. He wore thrift store cardigans, played borrowed guitars, and sang like someone trying to escape his own skull. He took the underground and dragged it into the mainstream without cleaning it up, and the world has never fully recovered from the impact.
Here is something most artists learn too late: the difference between a career that lasts and one that stalls often comes down to a single relationship. Not the record deal. Not the playlist placement. The manager.
Think of it this way. When you are an artist, your only job is to create. Write the songs, make the music, develop the vision. Everything else, the strategy, the business, the team, the daily grind of running what is essentially a small company, needs someone else driving it. That someone is your manager. They are, in every practical sense, the CEO of your career. They handle long-term planning, contract negotiations, accounting, marketing strategy, release planning, and the hundred other things that would otherwise pull you away from the one thing you should be doing. They typically earn 15 to 20 percent of gross earnings for doing it, and a good one earns every cent.
The job covers more ground than most people realize. A manager builds and coordinates your entire team, connecting you with agents, publicists, entertainment lawyers, and distributors, and making sure all of those moving parts work together toward the same goal. They develop your brand, shape your release strategy, manage your social media presence, assist with tour booking, and help plan videos and projects. They are simultaneously strategist, diplomat, scheduler, and advocate, often in the same afternoon.
What has changed in 2025 and 2026 is how that relationship is structured and what it demands. The old model, manager takes commission, label handles development, was already eroding. Now it is largely gone. Managers are doing the infrastructure work that labels used to do, building fan bases, developing artists, creating sustainable careers before any major deal enters the conversation. The smartest ones are moving toward genuine partnership models, taking equity stakes in exchange for the significant resources and expertise they bring. It is less employer and employee, more co-founders of the same enterprise.
And here is the piece that rarely gets mentioned. A great manager protects the artist. Not just from bad deals or dishonest industry players, but from the weight of the industry itself. Managing expectations, shielding mental health, being the person who tells you the truth when everyone else is telling you what you want to hear. That kind of trust is rare, and when you find it, it is the foundation everything else is built on. An effective manager is not someone who gets you gigs. They are the strategic partner who helps you build something that lasts.
The New Pornographers just released their tenth studio album, and it delivers everything the band does best. ‘The Former Site Of’ is out now via Merge Records, ten tightly crafted pop songs built around people navigating personal and societal extremes. New single “Votive,” anchored by A.C. Newman’s mandolin and animated by Michael Arthur, grows from a quiet atmospheric opening into something wide and generous. It joins the already acclaimed “Ballad Of The Last Payphone,” which Paste named one of their Best New Songs, praising its “ghostly pedal steel and vocals that swirl like a memory you can’t quite shake.”
The record started in Newman’s home studio before coming to the full band, which includes Kathryn Calder, Neko Case, John Collins, and Todd Fancey. Joining for the first time is storied session drummer Charley Drayton, whose resume runs from the Divinyls to The Rolling Stones to Fiona Apple. Josh Wells of Destroyer and Black Mountain steps in as touring drummer for the spring run. Newman describes the process: “Having time in my studio really opened things up. I can get the skeleton of a song together first, just a couple of elements, the key feeling, really as little as possible, before bringing it to the band and running from there.”
A 23-date North American tour runs through spring with Will Sheff of Okkervil River supporting every date, hitting rooms from Webster Hall in New York to The Castro Theatre in San Francisco to the 9:30 Club in Washington DC.
‘The Former Site Of’ Tracklisting:
Great Princess Story
Pure Sticker Shock
Ballad Of The Last Payphone
Spooky Action
Wish You Could See Me I’m Killing It
Votive
The Wine Remembers The Water
Calligraphy
Bonus Mai Tais
The Former Site Of
Tour Dates (w/ Will Sheff):
April 22 – Boston, MA – The Wilbur
April 23 – New York, NY – Webster Hall
April 24 – Glenside, PA – Keswick Theatre
April 25 – Rochester, NY – Water Street Music Hall
April 27 – Detroit, MI – El Club
April 29 – Millvale, PA – Mr. Smalls Theatre
April 30 – Cleveland, OH – House of Blues
May 1 – Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall
May 2 – Minneapolis, MN – The Fitzgerald Theater
May 3 – Chicago, IL – The Metro
May 5 – Englewood, CO – Gothic Theatre
May 6 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Commonwealth Room
Thirty years in, and Embrace are making their most candid record yet. ‘Avalanche’, the band’s ninth studio album, arrives June 12 via Cooking Vinyl, led by new single “Road To Nowhere.” The five-piece have sold over two million albums worldwide since their 1998 debut ‘The Good Will Out’, racked up three number one albums, and built one of the most loyal fanbases in British rock. ‘Avalanche’ finds them stripping back the polish and leaning into something rawer and more personal than anything in their catalog.
Lead singer Danny McNamara frames the album’s core idea plainly: “Real, deep, honest-to-God joy doesn’t live in the big, dramatic moments we’re all taught to chase. It lives in the small, almost invisible flashes of magic that happen when you slow down and actually live in the moment.” That philosophy runs through every corner of the record, songs that sit with contradiction, ask uncomfortable questions, and refuse to wrap things up neatly. “Road To Nowhere” captures that tension directly, a track about the futility of a toxic relationship that somehow manages to feel uplifting at the same time. It is the kind of song Embrace have always done well, emotionally direct, melodically strong, and built to last.
The 30th anniversary year extends well beyond the album. Embrace have also announced a spoken-word theatre tour telling the story of the band, a new book, festival appearances, and a 14-date UK headline run in November hitting venues from Aberdeen to Cardiff.
‘Avalanche’ Tracklisting:
Stop
Road To Nowhere
Get Out Of My Own Way
Coming Home
Emily
Up In Your Feelings
Pure O
Deny
Funny
The Power
November 2026 30th Anniversary UK Tour Dates:
Monday, November 9 – Aberdeen – Music Hall
Tuesday, November 10 – Glasgow – Barrowland Ballroom
