Postmodern Jukebox have pulled off something genuinely delightful with this one. Their 70s soft rock reimagining of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Please Please Please” features vocalist Tori Holub, whose voice lands so naturally in the Karen Carpenter register that the whole thing feels less like a cover and more like an unearthed archival recording. The arrangement is warm, unhurried, and impeccably crafted, stripping away everything contemporary and replacing it with the lush, pillowy textures that made The Carpenters impossible to resist 5 decades ago. Sabrina Carpenter meets Karen Carpenter, and somehow it’s a perfect fit.
Beck ‘Live at Roy Thomson Hall’ Is a 22-Song Fan Recording Worth Every Minute
A devoted fan captured Beck’s 2-night stand with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at Roy Thomson Hall on July 19, 2025, and the recording documents something genuinely special. 22 songs spanning the full arc of Beck’s catalog, from “Loser” and “Devil’s Haircut” to “Lost Cause,” “Tropicalia,” and “Paper Tiger,” reimagined with full orchestral arrangements that give even the most familiar tracks new dimension and emotional weight. The inclusion of 2 Scott Walker covers, “It’s Raining Today” and “Montague Terrace,” speaks to Beck’s curatorial instincts and the ambition of the overall program. This is not a greatest hits run-through. It’s a genuine artistic statement, and the fan footage, while unofficial, preserves a night that deserved to be remembered.
De La Soul Bring “Different World” to The Tonight Show in a Performance Worth Savoring
De La Soul took The Tonight Show stage to perform “Different World,” and the moment carried the kind of weight that comes with knowing what this group has meant to hip-hop for nearly 4 decades. The performance is unhurried, confident, and deeply felt, a reminder that De La Soul operate on their own timeline and always have. With their catalog finally available on streaming after years of legal limbo, every De La Soul performance right now feels like a reclamation, and this one is no exception.
Angine de Poitrine’s KEXP Full Performance Is Required Viewing
KEXP captured Angine de Poitrine performing live at ESMA in Rennes, France during Trans Musicales 2025, and the full session is exactly as extraordinary as the duo’s growing global reputation suggests. Just 2 people, Khn de Poitrine on microtonal guitars and Klek de Poitrine on drums, filling a room with something that defies easy description: baroque, trance-inducing, carnival-chaotic, and completely riveting across all 4 songs. “Sarniezz,” “Mata Zyklek,” “Fabienk,” and “Sherpa” unfold over roughly 30 minutes of music that sounds like nothing else being made anywhere right now. With 11 million views on their full KEXP performance and counting, the world is paying attention. Watch this.
Norah Jones and Josh Homme Make “Somethin’ Stupid” Sound Like It Was Always Theirs
Nobody saw this pairing coming, and that’s exactly what makes it work. Norah Jones and Josh Homme, the jazz-soul icon and the Queens of the Stone Age architect, share a live performance of “Somethin’ Stupid” recorded in Los Angeles in 2025, and the chemistry between them is immediate and completely convincing. Jones’s warm, unhurried delivery meets Homme’s understated cool in a rendition that strips the Frank and Nancy Sinatra classic down to its emotional core and lets it breathe in a way the original never quite did.
The Middle Aged Dad Jam Band’s “Copacabana” Cover Is Exactly as Joyful and Ridiculous as It Sounds
The Middle Aged Dad Jam Band doing “Copacabana” is one of those things that shouldn’t work as well as it does, and yet here we are. Ken Marino and David Wain, the comedy duo behind The State and Wet Hot American Summer, built MADJB out of pandemic-era garage jams in Los Angeles, pulling in friends, collaborators, and actual serious musicians until the whole thing took on a life of its own. The lineup for this particular performance is stacked, with Jon Spurney (musical director of Hamilton) on piano, Jordan Katz (Ghostface Killah, De La Soul) on trumpet, Clint Walsh (Morrissey, Juliette and the Licks) on guitar, Kestrin Pantera on vocals and cello, Allie Stamler (Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo) on vocals and violin, and young Edie Katz stealing the whole thing as Lola. The New York Times called MADJB “literally the best live music show of all time,” and watching this version of Barry Manilow’s classic unfold with this much talent and this much fun in the room, it’s hard to argue.
Video: Genesis’ ‘Lyceum 1980’ Gets the 45th Anniversary Fan Remaster It Always Deserved
A devoted fan has given one of Genesis’s most celebrated live recordings a serious upgrade. The May 1980 Lyceum Theatre performance from the Duke tour, long cherished by collectors but never officially released in its entirety in HD, has been remixed and restored with freshly remastered audio marking the show’s 45th anniversary. The result is the best available presentation of Genesis from this era, an 18-song set that moves through Duke Suite highlights, deep catalogue cuts, and beloved classics from “Follow You Follow Me” to “The Knife,” all captured at a moment when the band were operating at an extraordinary live peak.
Norwegian Hard Rockers Lily Löwe Go Bigger, Bolder, and More Cinematic on Sophomore Album ‘Beautiful Disaster’
‘Beautiful Disaster’ announces itself with total confidence, and Lily Löwe deliver on every promise the title makes. The Norwegian hard rock outfit’s sophomore album packs 9 tracks into just over 27 minutes of heavy riffs, dark atmospheres, soaring hooks, and raw storytelling that moves between high-energy anthems and emotionally charged moments without losing momentum for a single second. This is the sound of a band who know exactly what they want to say and how loud they want to say it.
The album was built around one of Norway’s strongest rock lineups. Frontwoman Lill Sofie Wilsberg is joined by Adrian Sunde Bjerketvedt (Jorn) on guitar, Patrik Svendsen (Tonic Breed) on bass, Stian Hansen (Suicide Bombers) on guitar, and Eiliv Sagrusten (Invasion) on drums. Mixed and mastered by Jonas Holteberg Jensen at The Woods Norway and mastered for vinyl by Steve Kitch, the production gives the album the punch and cohesion its songs demand. Themes of desire, power, self-destruction, and transformation run through every track, from the haunting introspection of “Haunted House” to the glam-punk swagger of “Glitter & Gore” and the cathartic punch of “Demons.”
Löwe’s trajectory has been steep and deliberate. Her project debuted at Melodi Grand Prix 2022 with “Bad Baby” before the critically praised first album ‘LÖWE,’ produced by Trond Holter, established her as one of Norway’s most exciting new rock voices. A year of singles, “Wild,” “Demons,” “Puppet Master,” “Glitter & Gore,” “Haunted House,” and “Love Like This,” built the anticipation for ‘Beautiful Disaster’ track by track, each one revealing another dimension of where the band had arrived creatively.
Löwe puts the album’s ambition plainly: “We wanted to give listeners a real experience, that feeling of power, emotion, and release you get when music truly hits.” For fans of Halestorm and The Pretty Reckless looking for their next hard rock obsession, ‘Beautiful Disaster’ delivers exactly that feeling, sharper, more dynamic, and more emotionally resonant than anything Lily Löwe has done before.
‘Beautiful Disaster’ Tracklist:
Demons
Haunted House
Puppet Master
Beg For Your Life
Beautiful Disaster
Glitter & Gore
Our Secret
Wild
Love Like This
Progressive Metal Force No Terror in the Bang Explore Humanity’s Collapse on New EP ‘Existence’
No Terror in the Bang have built their identity on the collision of fragility and fury, and ‘Existence’ pushes that tension further than anything they’ve done before. The French progressive metal outfit’s new EP arrives as a 5-track exploration of humanity’s downfall across cosmic, physical, social, environmental, and mortal dimensions, each track exposing a distinct layer of collapse with dark atmospheres and narrative depth that demands full attention from the first second to the last.
At the centre of everything stands Sofia Bortoluzzi, whose shape-shifting vocal performance remains one of progressive metal’s most compelling instruments. She moves between ethereal clean melodies and visceral, gut-level screams with a seamlessness that feels entirely natural rather than technically calculated. It’s the kind of vocal range that doesn’t just serve the music but defines it, anchoring the band’s cinematic sound in something deeply human even as the themes push toward the cosmic and catastrophic.
The band’s approach to progressive metal has always been built on tension and contrast, restraint giving way to eruption, intimacy expanding into something overwhelming. ‘Existence’ reinforces that language while expanding it, blending technical precision with emotional volatility across a record that provokes as much as it overwhelms. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Sébastien Langle, the production gives every dynamic shift the weight and clarity it needs to land.
Following 2021’s ‘Eclosion’ and 2024’s ‘HEAL,’ ‘Existence’ marks another significant step forward for a band that has been building one of progressive metal’s most distinctive catalogs. This is music that interrogates destiny, purpose, and the self-destructive impulses that define the human condition, and it does so without flinching once.
Swedish Soul-Rock Troubadour Jesper Lindell Pilgrimages to Muscle Shoals on New Album ‘3614 Jackson Highway’
Jesper Lindell had a mission and he saw it through. The Swedish singer-songwriter packed up his band The Brunnsvik Sounds in 2024 and made the pilgrimage across the Atlantic to record at 2 of American music’s most hallowed spaces: Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama and Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. 4 days, 2 studios, and enough material for 2 albums. The first of those is ‘3614 Jackson Highway,’ out now via Yep Roc Records, and it’s a deeply felt tribute to the classic American songbook delivered with genuine reverence and real musical command.
Lead single “If Love Was Money” is a cover of a Dan Penn track discovered during the 3-day drive from Boston down to Alabama. “The closer we got to Alabama, the more I realized that I kept coming back to songs written or co-written by Dan Penn,” Lindell explains. He discovered Penn’s 1972 solo album on that drive and immediately felt the connection. “The last track, ‘If Love Was Money,’ felt 100% like something me and my band could really sink into. And we did, didn’t we?” The answer, on the evidence of the recording, is an emphatic yes.
The Muscle Shoals sessions came with their own drama. Flight delays cut the band’s planned 2 days in the studio down to a day and a half, but the compressed timeline produced something unexpected: a creative rush born from pent-up energy, jet lag, joy of playing, and genuine wonder at standing in the same room that hosted the Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Duane Allman, Paul Simon, Bob Seger, Willie Nelson, Rod Stewart, and so many more. Lindell is reflective about the decision to cover songs that already exist in iconic versions. “To dive deep into the material, to actually play and sing the songs instead of just listening to them, that was an invaluable experience for us, one we learned a lot from.”
Born and raised in Ludvika, Sweden, Lindell came up through local bars and rehearsal rooms developing a reverence for classic American songwriting and the warm, analog textures of the 60s and 70s. His breakout EP ‘Little Less Blue,’ recorded with members of First Aid Kit, revealed a strikingly emotive voice and a natural instinct for blending retro soul with contemporary Americana. Subsequent albums ‘Twilights’ and ‘Before the Sun’ cemented his reputation as a craftsman capable of turning personal stories into widescreen, roots-steeped soundscapes. ‘3614 Jackson Highway’ is the natural extension of that journey, an artist following his influences all the way to their source and coming back with something unmistakably his own.