A 1999 Late Night with Conan O’Brien clip featuring Tom Petty has resurfaced, and it’s easy to see why. Petty covers his custom tour bus, his vintage guitar collection, and his unfiltered take on the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC with the kind of dry, plainspoken honesty that made him one of the most quotable people in rock, and the whole thing ends with a surprise exchange of footwear on stage that you genuinely have to see to believe.
A Remastered 4K Full Concert from Steely Dan’s 2003 Detroit Run Is an Absolute Gift for Any Fan
Dan Belcher has delivered a remastered 4K full concert from Steely Dan’s August 11, 2003 stop at Pine Knob Music Theatre in Detroit, a 22-song, two-hour-plus set featuring Donald Fagen and Walter Becker at the helm of a 13-piece band that runs deep through the catalog, opening with “Cubano Chant” and moving through “Aja,” “Peg,” “Hey Nineteen,” “Kid Charlemagne,” and “My Old School” before closing on “FM (No Static at All).” The original audio was mono but Belcher’s restoration brings it to life with real presence, and for anyone who never caught this era of the band live, this is the closest thing to being there.
David Bowie’s Haunting Cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” at the Concert for New York City Is Essential Viewing
David Bowie opened the 2001 Concert for New York City alone on stage with an Omnichord he’d gone to a music store to buy specifically for the occasion, performing Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” as the night’s first song, and the choice was an act of quiet, profound grace. Where other performers used the televised charity event to make statements, Bowie chose a song that is patriotic without being blind, deeply human without being sentimental, and his understated delivery, sitting on the floor with a little keyboard, turned every line into something almost unbearably moving.
Holly Cole Announces New Summer Tour Dates In Support Of ‘Dark Moon’
Holly Cole announces a new run of summer tour dates in support of her thirteenth studio album ‘Dark Moon’,’ released January 24, 2025, via Rumpus Room / Universal Music Canada. The dates take her from the Rochester International Jazz Festival to stages in Sherbrooke, Huntsville, and Stratford, continuing a touring campaign that has seen the album connect with audiences across Japan, Germany, France, the United States, and right across Canada. For those who know Holly Cole, none of this is surprising. For those who do not yet, this summer is the moment to find out.
‘Dark Moon’ is the album of a singular artist at the full height of her powers. Holly Cole’s smoky, utterly distinctive voice reshapes material from the New American Songbook, with repertoire drawn from writers including Marty Balin, Peggy Lee, Hal David, Burt Bacharach, and Johnny Mercer, into something at once deeply rooted and completely her own. Smart arrangements, an unmistakable sense of drama, and the kind of ensemble playing that only comes from years of deep collaboration define the record. The expanded edition added “Comin’ Home Baby,” featuring a brilliant harmonica solo from Howard Levy and percussion from Brazilian-born Cyro Baptista, recorded on the eve of Mel Torme’s 100th anniversary, alongside the Good Lovelies lending their three-part 1950s Nashville-style harmonies. The Montreal Gazette’s Bill Brownstein captured the Cole effect perfectly: “Serial jazz fest performer Holly Cole returns to make magic and melt hearts.”
The career that has led to this moment is one of the most decorated in Canadian music. Cole began in 1989, signed to Blue Note’s Manhattan imprint in 1992, and released’ Blame It on My Youth’ to platinum-plus sales in Canada and over 200,000 copies internationally, with ‘Calling You’ hitting number one in Japan. Her album Temptation, made up entirely of Tom Waits material, became critically acclaimed in its own right. She has won two JUNO Awards from eight nominations, two Gemini Awards, two Japanese Grand Prix Gold Disc Awards, and the prestigious Ella Fitzgerald Award from the Montreal Jazz Festival, a distinction shared with Aretha Franklin, Diana Krall, and Etta James. In 2014, Queen’s University awarded her an honorary doctorate. With ‘Dark Moon’, she has returned with, as her own team put it, unstoppable force.
Holly Cole live is a different experience from Holly Cole on record, and both are extraordinary. Performing alongside her longtime collaborators Aaron Davis (piano), George Koller (bass), Davide Direnzo (drums), John Johnson (saxophone), and Kevin Breit (guitar), she brings to the stage the same ensemble warmth and interpretive intelligence that makes ‘Dark Moon’ the record it is. These summer shows are not to be missed.
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UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
June 27, 2026: Rochester International Jazz Festival, Kilbourn Hall, Rochester, NY
July 3, 2026: Granada Theatre, Sherbrooke, QC
July 10, 2026: Algonquin Theatre, Huntsville, ON
July 23, 2026: Avondale Theatre, Stratford, ON
Punk-Rockers PLZ RESPOND Release Scorching New Single “Gold Rush”
Plz Respond release their new single “Gold Rush” today, a raw, driving punk-rock track aimed at the economic systems that treat workers as expendable, and at the governments that let them get away with it. Written by frontman and drummer Galen Crampsey, produced by Logan Treaty, and mastered by Johnny Ross, the song is their most personal and politically charged statement yet, arriving as the latest in a run of singles from a band building toward something bigger.
This one comes from somewhere real. Six years ago, Crampsey was injured on the job when a door frame fell on his neck and fractured a bone in his spine. An injury he is clear could have been easily prevented. As a delegate to the Durham Labour Council, he has since given speeches on workplace safety to politicians, labour leaders, and community members across Durham Region. “Gold Rush” is what a speech cannot be: loud, unambiguous, and built to be played at full volume. “No one should have to gamble with becoming a statistic just to earn a living,” Crampsey has written. “It is unacceptable, and more people should be outraged.”
At the heart of the track is a tribute to the 26 workers killed in the 1992 Westray mining disaster in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, one of the most devastating examples of corporate negligence in Canadian history. Of the 52 charges eventually laid, 34 were dropped. That outcome, and what it says about who the system is designed to protect, runs through every line of the song. The band are explicit: neoliberal economic policy, across party lines, consistently prioritises profit over the people who do the work. “This isn’t new,” Crampsey writes. “Liberals haven’t been far behind in this regard.” Plz Respond do not traffic in partisan comfort. They name the pattern.
The song earns its anger through its specificity. “The bosses they make the rules / miners say the gold’s for fools / they won’t give their lives for jewels” strips the mythology of the gold rush down to its ugly core, while the recurring line “get back that 1950s Cadillac” carries deliberate historical weight: a longing not for nostalgia, but for the era of stronger unions, greater working-class security, and a society that had not yet been fully handed over to the market. The bridge drops any remaining metaphor entirely and addresses the audience directly on behalf of workers everywhere who died because safety training costs money and that money was never spent on them.
Plz Respond are Galen Crampsey (drums, piano/keys, lead vocals), Bryan Crouch (rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Brandon Smith (lead guitar, backing vocals), and David Bunn (bass, backing vocals). Rooted in Oshawa and drawing on the raw energy of the Ontario punk and alternative rock tradition, they play like a band with something real to lose and something urgent to say. They have shared stages at The Biltmore and the Bovine Sex Club, opened for Ill Scarlett, Lear Haven, and Excuses Excuses, and raised funds for the Durham Rape Crisis Centre and the AIDS Committee of Durham through benefit shows. Their politics are not a pose. They live where they write. “Gold Rush” follows “Budgets and Bootstraps,” the band’s previous single and one of the most direct working-class punk tracks to emerge from the Ontario scene in recent memory. With several more singles on the way, Plz Respond are building a body of work that takes seriously the idea that rock music exists to say things that are true and that nobody else is saying loudly enough.
Toronto Indie Rock Band Jayniac Jr. Release New Single “Tougher Than Tarzan” And Announce Second Album
Jayniac Jr. are back with “Tougher Than Tarzan,” a propulsive new single that fuses the band’s signature blend of rock, ska, and hip-hop into one of their most urgent and culturally resonant tracks yet. Written by vocalist and bassist Darron “Jay” Bailey Jr., composed alongside McLaren Alphonso and Andrew Shier, and produced by Austin Leeds, the song arrives as the lead single ahead of the band’s highly anticipated second album, due June 6, 2026.
Rewriting the rules of what a rock band can be, Jayniac Jr. put basslines and horn arrangements front and centre instead of reaching for the traditional guitar-driven formula. The Toronto quartet – Bailey Jr. (vocals/bass), Tavaughan Baisden (saxophone), Chelsey Clarke (vocals/guitar), and drummer Chris Zoubaniotis – came together formally in 2020, united by a shared instinct to push past genre boundaries and a deep cultural pride in the horn-driven traditions of Caribbean and West Indian music. Their 2025 EP Flower Mouth introduced a calypso-punk edge, and the band has since built a following that spans Canada, Australia, Brazil, and Jamaica, surpassing 79,000 YouTube subscribers along the way.
The spark for “Tougher Than Tarzan” came during a Black History Month conversation that turned into a full watch party of every Tarzan film from the 1932 Johnny Weissmuller series onward. “I found myself thinking, from the Tribe’s perspective, Tarzan is an Intruder,” Bailey Jr. has shared. “He’s not from the land. He’s invading their space, that they’ve lived in for centuries.” That question – why the outsider crowned King of the Jungle is while those indigenous to the land are framed as obstacles or background – crystallised into a broader idea: Tarzan as unintentional commentary on colonisation. A man arrives in a land that isn’t his, adopts parts of its environment, and is still elevated above those who were already there. The song reclaims that narrative entirely.
That reclamation plays out across the track with wit, fire, and genuine lyrical craft. Bailey Jr. flips the Tarzan mythology from the inside – adopting the character’s voice only to dismantle the power structure around it. Lines like “I no humble, king of jungle / land of thieves and home of slaves” reframe the iconic jungle throne as something built on erasure and extraction, while the outro’s declaration – “You’re my enemy, don’t pretend to be / my friend cause you never defended me” – cuts clean through any romanticism the original mythology might have carried. It is pointed, playful, and completely intentional.
Musically, the track is Jayniac Jr. operating at full throttle. Jay lays down the bass-forward groove, horn arrangements, and guitar work himself, while his mentor McLaren ‘Mack’ Alphonso locks in the tight, immediate rhythmic foundation the band has become known for — the two of them building the instrumental from the ground up together. Producer Austin Leeds captures the ensemble’s chemistry with clarity and punch, honouring the grit of rock and the bounce of ska while leaving full room for the hip-hop rhythmic sensibility that sits at the core of everything Jayniac Jr. does. The result is a song that sounds like a party and lands like an argument – one you can’t stop listening to.
With three Black members, one of which is part of the LGBTQ+ community, Jayniac Jr. bring lived experience to the cultural conversations their music opens up. Their sound – rooted in the multicultural energy of Toronto and drawing on the musical legacies of the Caribbean, West Africa, and North America – is not a stylistic choice but an expression of identity. “Tougher Than Tarzan” is the fullest realisation yet of that identity in song form: joyful, confrontational, deeply informed, and utterly alive. They’ve already drawn attention from CBC Lite, PunkBlack, Punknews.org, Sinusoidal Music, Blast Toronto, New Noise Magazine, Exclaim!, and Punk Head Magazine – and their “GirlFoe” video has over 100,000 views on YouTube, this new single is set to expand that conversation considerably.
The single arrives as Jayniac Jr. gear up for their most ambitious year yet. Their second album – pushing further into rock, ska, hip-hop, jazz, swing, and metal – drops June 6, 2026, with a record release show that evening at Primal Notes Studios in Toronto. A full run of live dates follows through the year, culminating at Hard Luck Bar on November 14th. For a band that has always channelled the full spectrum of Toronto’s multicultural energy into their sound, the stage ahead feels wide open – and Jayniac Jr. are ready to fill every inch of it.
UPCOMING TOUR DATES:
May 23, 2026 – Odd Farm Festival – Cambridge, ON
June 6, 2026 – Primal Notes Studios (Album Release Show) – Toronto, ON
July 24, 2026 – Bovine Sex Club – Toronto, ON
August 14-16, 2026 – Japan Festival Canada –Mississauga, ON
September 19, 2026 – Sneaky Dee’s – Toronto, ON
November 14, 2026 – Hard Luck Bar – Toronto, ON
Jordyn Sugar Drops “Oops,” a Playful Throwback-Inspired Anthem Packed with Confidence and Hooks
Jordyn Sugar, the 22-year-old Montreal-based singer, songwriter, drummer, and creator of Empowered Pop, today releases “Oops,” her bold and irresistibly fun new single, out now on all major platforms. A guitar-driven, hook-laden pop anthem about a spontaneous one-night connection told entirely from a place of confidence and zero regret, the track arrives on the back of over 500,000 views across pre-release teaser content and 55 million total social media views in the past three weeks alone. Early listeners have one consistent note: it is stuck in their heads.
The song began with a single word. Jordyn and her collaborators, songwriter Bayla and producer Lucas Liberatore, were working through a list of potential song titles when Jordyn offered “oops,” and it clicked immediately for everyone in the room. “I realised that no artist has really revisited the word in a modern pop context,” she says, “so it felt like the right time to bring it back.” The title carries a deliberate nod to Britney Spears’ iconic “Oops!… I Did It Again,” a gesture that signals from the outset that “Oops” knows exactly where it comes from and precisely where it is going. From that spark, the song came together across three four-hour sessions, quickly and naturally, with a flow that is fully audible in the finished recording.
Sonically, the track is rooted in early 2000s pop: bright, guitar-forward, and built around melodies that embed themselves after a single listen. The lyrics capture the night with vivid, scene-setting economy: “No lights your body was my focus / making me lose control / Felt right caught up in the moment / We just went with the flow.” And when the chorus lands, it lands with the kind of shameless, anthemic confidence that defines the whole song: “Oops, I woke up in your bed / I don’t know your name / But you’re stuck in my head.” Rather than reaching for apology or regret, Jordyn plants her flag squarely on the side of self-awareness and fun. “I know I’m insane, but I got no regrets” is not a confession. It is a declaration.
That emotional confidence is the hallmark of what Jordyn calls Empowered Pop, the genre she has been building since her debut single “Leaves Me” in 2021. Where much contemporary pop about one-night connections reaches for complexity or shame, “Oops” flips the narrative entirely, choosing humour and self-possession over hand-wringing. It sits squarely in the lane of Sabrina Carpenter, cheeky pop attitude wrapped in production clean enough for radio and irresistible enough for playlists. Recorded at Planet Studio in Montreal and 100% CanCon, the single was co-written by Jordyn, Bayla, and Lucas Liberatore, with Liberatore also producing.
The momentum surrounding the release speaks for itself. Since her debut, Jordyn has opened for Gloria Gaynor, performed for CeeLo Green at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, and shared stages with Kardinal Offishall. She now commands 315,000 TikTok followers, 132,000 on Instagram, and more than 5 million Spotify streams, with over 110 million total social media views to her name and 30,000 new followers gained in the past 21 days alone. With collaborations with Canadian artists including Tyler Shaw in the pipeline and new music scheduled throughout 2026, “Oops” is the clearest, most confident introduction yet to an artist who has been quietly building toward exactly this moment.
XOXO Entertainment Corp. Signs Producer JASON “JHOT” SCOTT, Expanding Its Global Multi-Genre Production Powerhouse
XOXO Entertainment Corp. continues its aggressive expansion in the global music space with the signing of producer, songwriter, and engineer Jason “JHOT” Scott to its management division.
A proven force behind a wide range of records across R&B, hip-hop, pop, and Afrobeats, JHOT brings a deep and versatile catalog shaped alongside industry leaders including Akon, Teddy Riley, Keith Sweat, Blackstreet, Dru Hill, and Eric Bellinger. Known for his signature talkbox sound and advanced musicality, he has established himself as a high-level creative capable of delivering across genres without compromising authenticity.
JHOT’s early breakthrough came through his work with Akon and Interscope Records on the Billboard Hot 100 record “Girl Got a Girlfriend,” setting the tone for a career built on both commercial impact and creative consistency. His long-standing partnership with Keith Sweat includes multiple key contributions, including the #1 adult R&B hit “Good Love,” as well as extensive work across full-length projects.
Continuing to expand his global reach, JHOT recently contributed production to Keith Sweat’s Afrobeats-influenced single “Working” featuring Lil Wayne, further highlighting his ability to operate fluidly across evolving musical landscapes.
As part of the partnership, JHOT will be co-managed by XOXO Entertainment Corp. alongside Blackstreet’s Chauncey Black, aligning him directly within one of R&B’s most influential creative ecosystems. He is already a key producer on Blackstreet’s upcoming 2026 album, a project generating strong global anticipation.
“JHOT is the real deal,” said Adam H. Hurstfield, CEO of XOXO Entertainment Corp. “He’s actively creating at a high level across multiple genres, and that combination of musical instinct, technical ability, and real relationships is extremely rare. This is a meaningful addition to what we’re building.”
“JHOT understands the foundation of the music, but more importantly, he knows how to evolve it,” said Chauncey Black of Blackstreet. “That balance is what separates good producers from the ones who actually move the culture.”
JHOT added, “I’ve always approached music without limits. R&B, hip-hop, pop, Afrobeats — it’s all about the feel and the record. Partnering with XOXO is about growth, vision, and being part of something that’s building at a high level.”
Under XOXO’s management, JHOT will focus on expanding his production footprint across major releases, developing emerging talent, and contributing to high-impact projects spanning both legacy and contemporary artists.
With multiple projects already underway, the partnership underscores XOXO’s continued evolution into a vertically integrated creative powerhouse operating at the center of global music culture.
Frankie Flowers Releases “let’s talk about last night,” A Breakthrough Moment From One Of Indie Sleaze’s Most Dangerous New Voices
It’s 2 a.m. and the night has already gotten away from you. That is where Frankie Flowers lives. The Waterloo, Ontario-based artist releases her newest single “let’s talk about last night” from her upcoming EP my love is a dog from hell!, a coiled, post-punk-soaked indie sleaze track that feels like it was recorded in the back of a cab somewhere between the Lower East Side and a very bad decision you are absolutely going to make again. Written by Lauren Knapp, composed and produced by Sebastian Torres, mixed by Calvin Hartwick and Emily Baxter, mastered by Phil Demetro, and recorded at Dreamhouse Studios in Toronto, the song announces an artist who arrived fully formed and running.
The reference points are there if you know where to look. The Strokes at their most frayed. Yeah Yeah Yeahs at their most electric. LCD Soundsystem on the comedown. But Frankie Flowers is not doing nostalgia. She is doing something more interesting: she is taking the wreckage of the early 2000s New York scene, the cigarette smoke and the blown-out amps and the morning-after mythology and running it through something darker and more contemporary. Her bio says she is mutating indie sleaze, not reviving it. That is exactly right.
“‘let’s talk about last night’ came from thinking about the emotional aftermath of those nights where two people give in to the moment without really thinking about what happens next,” Flowers says. “In the moment it feels exciting and inevitable, but the morning after there’s usually one person left replaying everything, wondering what it actually meant.” She wrote it alone in her bedroom one evening and then took it into the studio, where the band leaned hard into what she calls the track’s “restless energy.” “I wanted the track to feel like a night out that keeps escalating, loud, messy, and a little unpredictable.”
The song delivers on that promise immediately. “She’s a twisted lullaby / see desire in her eyes / but we don’t talk about it” sets the scene in three lines, all tension and unspoken electricity. By the time the chorus hits, “let’s talk about last night / why’d you go and do that?” the track has already built something that feels like collective guilt and collective thrill in equal measure. The bridge goes somewhere even stranger: “Got stranded outside Brooklyn Steel / saw LCD / your city’s a sucker, just like me.” It is a lyric that could only have been written by someone who understands exactly what scene she is in conversation with and is not intimidated by it.
Flowers has been building toward this moment with purpose. She has opened for KennyHoopla on his Survivor’s Guilt Tour and supported The OBGMs at Toronto’s Velvet Underground. Her music has been featured on Hockey Night in Canada and received regional NPR-affiliated radio play. Indie88 put her on Songs You Need to Discover and Ones To Watch flagged her on their #NowWatching list. For an artist operating independently out of Ontario, the trajectory has been steep and it is pointing in exactly one direction.
Beneath the noise and the swagger, there is a writer at work who is genuinely interested in what desire does to people. “A lot of my music explores romantic delusion and the strange things desire does to people,” Flowers says. “I’m fascinated by the tension between knowing something might not end well and choosing it anyway.” That fascination gives the track staying power. You can play it loud at a party or alone at 3 a.m. and it will find you either way.
No tour dates are announced yet. They will come. Keep up.
Pop-Rockers TRIBZ Turn Heartbreak Into Healing On New Single “Memories”
TRIBZ release their new single “Memories” today, a luminous and emotionally expansive pop-rock ballad about love that endures long after loss. The quartet is Earl Johnson (lead guitars), Errol Starr Francis (lead vocals), Donny Hill (bass), and Dave Davidson (drums/percussion). Written by Johnson and Davidson and produced by the band on their own TRIBZ imprint, the song is among the most personal and fully realised work of their careers.
Based in Hamilton, Ontario, TRIBZ have built their reputation on a warm and deeply felt brand of pop and soft rock, music that prioritises melody, genuine emotion, and the kind of songwriting craft that holds up across repeated listens. Their 2024 self-titled album established them as a band with both range and conviction, and “Memories” pushes that creative vision further, arriving as a centrepiece single that showcases the full depth of what TRIBZ are capable of at their most focused and inspired.
“Memories” was born from a place of real-life experience and emotional truth. The song began with a single evocative image, “Driving alone on these desert nights,” and grew into something far larger than either writer anticipated. Both Johnson and Davidson drew from lived experiences of losing partners who were not just loved ones but kindred spirits: people who understood the music, shared the freedom, and made the life feel whole. For both writers, the process of crafting the song became a way to honour the kind of love that leaves a permanent mark, the kind that shapes who you are long after it is gone.
That emotional weight is carried beautifully through the song’s imagery and its most memorable lines. “Like a king without his queen” captures the sense of foundational loss with quiet precision. It is more than a metaphor; it is a statement about identity, balance, and what it means to move through the world without the person who made it whole. In the recurring refrain “You’re still here with me,” the song transforms grief into something close to comfort, a quiet reassurance that love of real depth does not simply disappear but continues to live on in dreams, in thoughts, and in the spaces between moments.
Musically, the track finds TRIBZ operating with complete assurance. Johnson’s expressive guitar work anchors the song with warmth and texture, while Francis brings a lead vocal performance of rare emotional nuance, aching where the song calls for it and quietly radiant where the lyric opens into something approaching peace. Hill’s bass and Davidson’s percussion provide a foundation that is steady and unobtrusive, allowing the song’s emotional arc to breathe and build naturally. Produced entirely within the TRIBZ camp, “Memories” carries the intimacy of something made by people who know exactly what story they are telling and precisely how they want to tell it.
What makes “Memories” resonate beyond its personal origins is the universality at its core. The experience of carrying someone with you after they are gone, of seeing their face in unexpected moments and feeling their absence in the texture of ordinary days, is one of the most profoundly human things there is. TRIBZ honour that experience without sentimentality and without flinching from its weight. The result is a song that feels at once deeply private and completely open, the kind of track that finds its way into the listener’s own memories and makes itself at home there.
“Memories” is available now on all major streaming platforms. With this single, TRIBZ reaffirm their place as one of Hamilton’s most compelling and emotionally generous acts, a band whose best work consistently reminds us why music exists: to say the things that are hardest to say, and to make us feel less alone in the saying of them.