Comedy rock legend “Weird Al” Yankovic stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to trace his journey from working in a mailroom to headlining a sold-out Madison Square Garden more than four decades later. The Emmy- and GRAMMY-winning musician recalled quitting his day job after discovering one of his songs had cracked the Billboard Top 100, a pivotal moment that set everything in motion.
Houston Electronic R&B Alchemist Lotus Karma Soars With “LGA”
Houston-born electronic R&B shapeshifter Lotus Karma releases “LGA,” a dreamy, mid-air meditation written while leaving New York City after a breakup. The single drifts in a floating haze, perfect for late-night travel and reflective headspace. It captures a suspended moment, weightless and intimate, where memory and movement blur together.
Karma builds sound worlds from shimmering drum and bass, trap, electro and R&B textures. His production is atmospheric and immersive, shaped by underground club culture and studio craft honed in New York rooms like IMI, Muse WAV and Platinum Sound. “LGA” glides on layered rhythms and soft-focus emotion, expanding from a quiet spark into widescreen pop detail.
Life in motion defines his story. From an LA rise to deep immersion in NYC’s scene, and back to Houston to build his debut at 713 Studios, Karma channels transition into tone. Each track feels like a threshold moment, caught between departure and arrival.
“I dream of a return to shared music culture. Bringing people together in a new world of sound and feeling. How beautiful would it be to step out of our own boxes and share that with each other again?” he says. “LGA” embodies that vision, hazy and hypnotic, a sonic passport stamped with what those around him call The Karmaesthetic.
London Art Rock Collective Ulrika Spacek Expand Reality On ‘EXPO’ And 2026 North American Tour
London art-rock collective Ulrika Spacek return with ‘EXPO,’ out now via Full Time Hobby, and announce a 2026 North American headline tour. The band’s cult-status live show lands in Baltimore in March and closes in Los Angeles in April.
Lead single “Build a Box Then Break It” sets the tone. The track pushes their sound into a liminal zone between analogue grit and electronic pulse, reflecting the album’s focus on fractured reality experienced through screens. The second single, “Square Root of None,” emerged during a biting Stockholm winter, a rare stretch when the band were in the same room throwing ideas against the wall.
Ulrika Spacek thrive on collective creation. Day jobs as experimental physicists, graphic designers and producers feed into a shared dream logic of jagged guitars and drifting atmospherics. Their orbit includes Oysterland, the East London hub Total Refreshment Centre run by Syd Kemp, and collaborations that connect them with artists across experimental scenes.
With ‘EXPO,’ Ulrika Spacek sharpen their art-rock identity and bring it to stages across North America.
TOUR DATES:
March 20th – Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery
March 21st – New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
March 22nd – Troy, NY @ No Fun
March 24th – Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa
March 25th – Toronto, ON @ The Cave
March 27th – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
March 28th – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
March 30th – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
March 31st – Salt Lake City, UT @ DLC
April 2nd – Seattle, WA @ Baba Yaga
April 3rd – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl
April 4th – Portland, OR @ The Get Down
April 7th – San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
April 8th – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
Irish Alt Pop Visionary Rosie Carney Unveils “The Evidence” From ‘Doomsday… Don’t Leave Me Here’
Irish singer-songwriter Rosie Carney announces her fourth studio album ‘Doomsday… Don’t Leave Me Here,’ arriving February 27, 2026 via cool0nline. Alongside the news, she shares the bold new single “The Evidence,” complete with a video directed by Cal McIntyre. It is a striking third preview of a record that expands her sound into darker, more atmospheric territory.
“It’s funny because I LOVE the production of this song, it’s so exciting to me. But the song’s theme is very dystopian,” Carney says. “It’s about that state of delirium you experience when you’re burning out but resting or being still is out of the question because it makes you feel too guilty.” The track surges with alt-pop urgency and shoegaze haze, capturing that fever-dream spiral in full colour.
Co-written and co-produced with Ross MacDonald and Ed Thomas, and mixed by Jonathan Gilmore, the album was shaped across months of sessions in London. Carney pushes far beyond the intimate folk foundations of her early work, pulling from electronic textures and widescreen sonics. The production feels expansive and charged.
“Making a sonic pivot was something I really wanted to achieve,” she explains. “Although the songs are essentially bigger and louder, they feel almost more personal than anything I’ve created before. The bigger sound almost worked as a shield while I was writing.” ‘Doomsday… Don’t Leave Me Here’ stands as her most ambitious and emotionally layered statement to date.
When They Riot Detonate ‘Covers’ With Green Day’s “Brain Stew”
Leeds-based alt-rock insurgents When They Riot unleash ‘Covers,’ a distortion-soaked reimagining of era-defining alternative tracks. This is not imitation. It is reconstruction. The band tears into foundational songs and rebuilds them with grunge abrasion, hard rock muscle and unfiltered emotional charge. The result is ferocious, immediate and unapologetically loud.
Pendulum’s “Propane Nightmares” is reborn as a guitar-driven onslaught, shifting the electronic pulse into full-throttle rock urgency. Their take on Green Day’s “Brain Stew” drags the slacker anthem into darker terrain, layering grimy distortion and suffocating atmosphere over its brooding core. It is tense, heavy and unrelenting.
With Alice in Chains’ “Again,” When They Riot deliver a crushing homage that honours the original’s bleak weight while injecting volatile edge. Each track feels physical. The riffs grind. The drums slam. The vocals cut through with snarl and purpose. ‘Covers’ stands as a declaration of intent from a band staking their claim.
At its core, this EP plants When They Riot shoulder-to-shoulder with their influences. They are not revisiting the past. They are detonating it and building forward from the wreckage. “Brain Stew” from the EP is out now across digital platforms.
Melbourne Singer Songwriter Caddy Callaghan Unveils “Wait A Minute” From ‘There You Are’
Melbourne-based singer-songwriter and pianist Caddy Callaghan shares “Wait A Minute,” a dramatic and tender new single from her debut solo album ‘There You Are,’ out now. The track captures the ache of longing for a love that feels destined yet impossible. It is heart-wrenching and fearless, built on emotional honesty and classic pop-rock craft.
Written and performed by Callaghan, the song was recorded and produced in Nashville by Rick Price. Soulful vocals lead the way, unfolding over echoing, nostalgic instrumentation. A soaring guitar solo from Mark Punch answers her voice like a second narrator. The result is cinematic and deeply felt, grounded in real instruments and timeless production.
“For me, songwriting is mostly like a journal entry with rhythm, rhyme and metre. I write from a heart state. It’s deeply personal, vulnerable and cathartic,” Callaghan says. That openness defines “Wait A Minute.” Every line carries weight. The emotion is front and centre, delivered with warmth and melodic strength.
A songwriter for more than three decades, Callaghan has earned an Australian Songwriters Association Award, national ABC radio support and mentorship through Tuesday Night Song Club led by Mark Seymour, Liz Stringer and Charles Jenkins. Balancing motherhood, independent artistry and running Cadwyn Clare Records, she channels resilience and faith into ‘There You Are.’ This is heartfelt pop-rock storytelling at full emotional scale.
Punk Supergroup YAKKIE Ignite “Rabbit’s Got The Gun” From ‘Kill The Cop Inside Your Head’
London-based DIY punk supergroup YAKKIE unleash “Rabbit’s Got The Gun,” a live-wire blast from their debut album ‘Kill The Cop Inside Your Head,’ out now. Recorded in one take, the track is a ferocious statement of resistance. It simmers, then detonates, driven by almighty riffage and protest-fuelled urgency. This is punk at full volume and full force.
“‘Rabbit’s Got The Gun’ is an uncompromising rager about resistance recorded in one live take. It’s about planning a strategy and surprising your enemy when they least expect it,” says vocalist and activist Janey Starling. That spirit runs through the entire record, captured live to reel-to-reel tape in four days at Middle Farm Studios with producer Peter Miles. No digital polish. Just raw power.
The album’s title track sets the ideological core. “This is a song against self-defeat,” Starling explains. Drawing on Augusto Boal’s concept of the “cop in the head,” she frames the record as a rallying cry against internalised oppression and political paralysis. The message is direct. Imagine a better world. Organise. Resist.
Starling, returning to the mic after focusing on anti-prisons activism, is joined by Robin Gatt, Laura Ankles and Maeve Westall. Together they build a hulking wall of sound, equal parts shredding guitars and thunderous rhythm. YAKKIE hit the road with Dead Pioneers, bringing that fury to stages across the UK.
SEE YAKKIE LIVE
w/ Dead Pioneers:
26-Feb-26 – Bristol – The Croft
27-Feb-26 – Manchester – Rebellion
28-Feb-26 – Leeds – Key Club
01-Mar-26 – London – Underworld
London Alt.Rock Firestarters Middleman Confront Nostalgia On Debut LP
“It’s hard to find your way, following the ghost,” sings Noah Alves on the title track of Middleman’s debut album. The London DIY four-piece take aim at nostalgia and the weight of the past, interrogating how memory can stall forward motion. From the opening moments of “CSN,” driving riffs and pummelling drums frame a restless meditation on authenticity, myth and the pull of bygone eras.
“CSN” nods to Crosby, Stills and Nash while refusing to romanticize them. “Ideas about authenticity definitely crop up quite a lot,” Alves says. “And nostalgia too – looking at the past with a focus on how our perception of this can be distorted. I wouldn’t describe it as anti-nostalgia but more how nostalgia can be damaging when you feel like the best stuff is in the past and there’s nothing new and exciting to be done.” It is sharp, self-aware songwriting with bite.
Alves, Harper Maury, Rory White and Ted Foster channel the wiry assault of Mission of Burma, the melodic charge of The Replacements and the punch of Wipers, balanced by flashes of Big Star and Neil Young. The album moves between punk velocity and hook-laden craft. “CSN” explodes into blistering alt rock, “All But The Flame” surges with melodic lift, and “Distractions” barrels through two minutes of pure overdrive.
Recorded and mixed by Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse Recording Studio, the record captures a band in full stride. “We wanted to balance songs between more punky ones and slightly softer ones,” says Alves. Subtle tambourine, acoustic guitar and a collaborative writing process deepen the texture. The result is raw, immediate and fiercely alive, a debut that plants Middleman firmly in the present.
Welsh Electronic Visionary Max Avoidance Unleashes “Alone” And “Lightyear” Ahead Of Debut EP
Max Avoidance is the electronic pop project of Welsh producer Hari Limaye, and he arrives with two immersive statements, “Alone” and “Lightyear.” Recorded between a storm-lashed family home on the Gower coast and his London studio, the tracks pulse with atmosphere. Darkwave textures, glitchy electronics and dream pop haze frame a project forged through upheaval and renewal.
Limaye once balanced medical school with composing scores for high fashion houses including Hermes, Calvin Klein and Coach, alongside projects for Kendall Jenner. Personal trials reshaped that trajectory. Years of rebuilding followed. Max Avoidance stands as the sound of emergence, a focused electronic identity shaped by lived experience and relentless craft.
“Being alone isn’t the same as being lonely, being centered in oneself isn’t the same as being self-centered,” Limaye says of “Alone.” Raised on The Cure, Magazine, Cocteau Twins, Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees, he adds, “I wanted to write something that was a homage to them with a 21st century take on those sounds and out came Alone.” The result is brooding, propulsive and emotionally direct.
“Lightyear” stretches even further. “What if distance was a feeling? It would feel like Lightyear,” he explains. “We are all memories across space and time, and like everything in the universe, we will return to cosmic dust and regenerate in a timeless cycle.” Holed up in a candlelit house during a winter storm with Christian (OC Saint), Limaye captured that tension. The debut EP featuring “Alone,” “Lightyear” and “Poison” signals a bold new electronic voice.
Indie Folk Auteur Jessie Kilguss Unveils “Fool’s Fight” From ‘They Have A Howard Johnson’s There’
NYC-based singer-songwriter Jessie Kilguss steps forward with “Fool’s Fight,” a sweeping indie-folk anthem drawn from her album ‘They Have A Howard Johnson’s There,’ out now. The track moves with emotional velocity, tracing the surrender to a love so immediate it feels cosmic. Guitar and voice anchor the song before it expands into something vast and luminous. It lands as a striking introduction to her sixth full-length.
Kilguss writes from a place where literature, cinema and memory intersect. “When I wrote ‘Fool’s Fight’, I was deeply ensconced in Elena Ferrante’s ‘Neapolitan Quartet’, which I loved! The song is slightly inspired by those books. As with any song it also relates to my own life but I like to let people project their own stories onto my songs, find their own meaning,” she says. The result is intimate yet wide open.
The album was engineered, produced, mixed and mastered by Charlie Nieland at Saturation Point Studios in Brooklyn. “I’ve been working on this album for the past year with producer Charlie Nieland, with whom I have been collaborating since 2007. We started every track with just voice and guitar and built them out from there,” Kilguss explains. That process shapes a record that grows from spare beginnings into layered, cinematic statements.
A longtime presence in New York songwriting circles, Kilguss surrounds herself with heavyweight collaborators including Kirk Schoenherr, John Kengla, Andrea Longato, Rob Heath, Dave Derby and Rembert Block. ‘They Have A Howard Johnson’s There’ also features the melancholic lead track “Howard Johnson’s” and the slow-burn revelation “St. Teresa in Ecstasy.” It is a bold, literary indie-folk statement that commands attention.