‘Apocalypse’ has a release date, and Crown Lands are making the wait worthwhile. The Canadian progressive rock duo have shared “Through the Looking Glass,” their new single and video, ahead of the album’s May 15 arrival. The clip was directed by collaborator Luke Paron, and the song delivers exactly what the title suggests: a deep dive into the band’s expanding conceptual world.
Guitarist and vocalist Kevin describes the track with characteristic enthusiasm. “Through the Looking Glass features rolling 12-string arpeggios, Mellotrons, and a 7/8 bridge featuring Moog leads, full proggy fun while also serving up a big chorus.” The song was written and recorded with producer Nick Raskulinecz at his Nashville studio, and drummer and vocalist Cody calls it one of his favorites on the record. “We had such a blast writing and recording the whole thing from start to finish,” he says.
The track fits squarely into the mythology Crown Lands have been building across ‘Apocalypse.’ Set in the world of Karagon, “Through the Looking Glass” chronicles the Dragon-Riders before the arrival of the Syndicate on Fearless’ planet. Kevin puts it plainly: “Is there anything cooler than heavy rock ballads about dragons? I think not.”
‘Apocalypse’ is described as the duo’s most demanding and fully realized work to date. Crown Lands have steadily built one of the most ambitious catalogs in modern progressive rock, and this album positions them to take it further.
Today, WXPN announces Homegrown Originals Volume 4, an 11-song Record Store Day exclusive celebrating the best of Philadelphia music. The beloved limited edition vinyl series returns to select independent record stores around the region and features The Hooters, Mo Lowda & The Humble, Reef The Lost Cauze, and more. The vinyl LP is only available as a free gift with purchase on Record Store Day – Saturday, April 18, 2026 – at 13 participating stores.
Featuring a range of exclusive live recordings from Philadelphia-rooted artists recorded at WXPN’s Free At Noonconcert series, XPoNential Music Festival, Studio Sessions and Homegrown Live!, the compilation is an eclectic, unique snapshot of the city’s music scene. From rockers The Hooters and The Tisburys, to the indie pop of Mackenzie Johnson, and the introspective folk of Denison Witmer, the release showcases the breadth and spirit of Philadelphia music.
When asked about their inclusion in the release, Rob Hyman of The Hooters said “We were honored to celebrate XPN’s ‘Free At Noon’ with their 1,000th show, quite the accomplishment and here’s to many more… And of course, The Hooters go way back with the station and their continued support for Philly bands in particular. We’re also happy to be a part of Homegrown Originals Volume 4 for Record Store Day 2026 as we were all inspired by our vinyl collections way back when – long may it play!”
Among participating local record stores is Bethlehem’s Compact Disc Center, and on the release, Mary Radakovits said “Our customers LOVE WXPN! Homegrown Originals is a hit every year on Record Store Day. Our music-loving customers really want to hear and support local bands, and WXPN helps them do just that. More copies please, WXPN!”
WXPN Local host Mike Vasilikos adds, “At XPN, we talk a lot about connecting artists and audiences. Our local music scene is an important part of that equation, and our Homegrown Originals series showcases the vibrancy of our local music community.”
In celebration of the release, WXPN has announced the latest installment of their Homegrown Live! Concert series on April 23 at World Stage (formerly World Cafe Live) featuring Black Buttafly, Denison Witmer, and John Faye & friends (ft. Joey DiTullio and Erin Fox). Free tickets are available now.
Tracklist:
SIDE A
The Tisburys – The Anniversaries
Queen of Jeans – Karaoke
Maxwell Stern & the Good Light Band – Light Later Lately
Denison Witmer – Focus Ring
Sadie Gust – Split
The Caufields – Devil’s Diary
SIDE B
The Hooters – And We Danced
Black Buttafly – Everybody Needs Love
Mo Lowda & the Humble – Canary
Mackenzie Johnson – Sunburn
Reef The Lost Cauze – Old Boy
Participating Stores:
A Day In The Life Records: 24A W Walnut St, Lancaster, PA 17603
Blue Raven Record Shop: 108 Harrison St, Frenchtown, NJ 08825
Compact Disc Center: 1365 Easton Ave, Bethlehem, PA 18018
Forever Changes: 10 S Main St, Phoenixville, PA 19460
Greatest Hits: 21 S. Jackson St., Media, PA 19063
Iko’s Music Trade: 2300 E Market St, York, PA 17402
Latchkey Records: 1502 E Passyunk Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19147
Main Street Music: 4444 Main St, Philadelphia, PA 19127
Newtown Book & Record Exchange: 102 S State St, Newtown, PA 18940
Princeton Record Exchange: 20 S. Tulane St., Princeton, NJ 08542
Repo Records: 506 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19147
Siren Records: 25 E State St, Doylestown, PA 18901
Tunes: 910 Haddonfield-Berlin Rd, Voorhees Township, NJ 08043
Cafe Wha? has a history that very few rooms can match. Bob Dylan played there. So did Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and The Velvet Underground. Now Victor V. Gurbo has added his name to that story with ‘Gurbo & Co. Live 2025,’ a raw, blues-soaked live album recorded in that same Greenwich Village room, out now.
The album captures Gurbo and his band channeling the timeless spirit of 1960s New York through a contemporary folk-rock and roots lens. Brooklyn-born and deeply steeped in the lineage of Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Hank Williams, Tom Waits, John Prine, and Leonard Cohen, Gurbo carries that tradition forward in a voice that is entirely his own. NPR’s Soundcheck host John Schaefer described his sound as evoking “sounds we probably heard in New York City from the late ’20s, early ’30s.”
The live setting suits him. ‘Gurbo & Co. Live 2025’ is a foot-stomping, archival-feeling document that also sounds vividly present. Gurbo has performed at Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Greene Space, Highline Ballroom, and City Winery, and his work has been covered by Top 5 Press Radio and The Big Takeover. This album adds a significant entry to that catalog.
Easter Island, 1973. The Chilean coup is days away. Two CIA agents are already there. ‘Wild Horse Nine,’ the new film from writer-director Martin McDonagh, arrives in theaters November 6, 2026, from Searchlight Pictures, and the official trailer is out now.
Malkovich plays Chris, partnered with Sam Rockwell’s Lee, both dispatched to the remote island by bureau chief MJ, played by Steve Buscemi. Among Easter Island’s iconic statues, old loyalties are tested, dark histories surface, and Chris’s connection with two rebellious local students, played by Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas, threatens to unravel the entire operation. Tom Waits and Parker Posey round out the cast. McDonagh wrote and directed, producing alongside Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, and Anita Overland.
Dave Mustaine has faced down a lot in his life. Now he is putting it all on the page. ‘In My Darkest Hour: A Memoir,’ written with Joe Layden, arrives September 8, 2026, published by Da Capo, and it covers the seven years Mustaine spent battling squamous cell carcinoma, fighting to keep his voice, his band, his family, and his life intact.
The diagnosis came in 2019, striking at the back of his tongue and threatening the one thing most inseparable from his identity: his ability to sing and play. Rather than step back, Mustaine went straight from radiation and chemotherapy appointments into recording sessions, a process that produced Megadeth’s sixteenth studio album, ‘The Sick, The Dying…and the Dead!’ “This was a journey of me saving myself, staying alive, keeping my family together, and continuing to make music through it all,” Mustaine says.
The book covers territory well beyond the medical. Mustaine traces how confronting mortality brought him closer to his family, challenged his relationship with his art, strengthened his faith, and taught him to ask for help. Da Capo Executive Editor Ben Schafer describes it as “Dave Mustaine at his most revealing, vulnerable, and true,” adding that it speaks to a universal human experience well beyond the Megadeth fanbase.
The timing is significant. Mustaine and Megadeth are currently on their multi-year farewell tour, and their self-titled final album, released January 2026, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, their highest chart position ever. The album hit number one in eleven countries and landed top five positions on eleven additional charts. After 40-plus years and 50 million records sold, Mustaine is going out at the top.
‘In My Darkest Hour: A Memoir’ arrives September 8, 2026, on Da Capo.
Muse have done it again, and this time they literally launched the announcement into space. The Grammy Award-winning English rock trio have revealed their tenth studio album, ‘The WOW! Signal,’ arriving June 26 via Warner Records, alongside lead single “Be With You” and its accompanying music video. To mark the occasion, the band partnered with Sent Into Space to send a specially-designed tablet 33 kilometres into the atmosphere, premiering the video mid-flight while a second package carried stickers for a limited-edition vinyl release for fans to claim.
“Be With You” opens on a massive church organ and Matt Bellamy’s commanding vocal before igniting into driving electronica and searing rock. The track moves from dejection to resolve, from “I’ve used up every ounce of luck” to “I feel my life has just begun.” Directed by Nico Paolillo (Deafheaven, Bad Omens), the video stars Ella Balinska (Resident Evil, The Occupant), who is pulled out into the night by an unseen force before witnessing something beautiful and terrifying alongside a stranger drawn by the same strange energy.
The album’s title draws from one of modern science’s most compelling mysteries. In 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman detected a powerful 72-second radio burst from the constellation Sagittarius, so anomalous in its bandwidth and intensity that he circled the data sequence and wrote “Wow!” beside it. That signal, never explained and never repeated, has captivated scientists and theorists ever since. Muse have built their new album around those same themes: cosmic mystery, existential hope, and the possibility of contact with something far greater.
‘The WOW! Signal’ is Muse’s first album since 2022’s ‘Will Of The People,’ which debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts, and marked their seventh consecutive UK chart-topping debut. Since forming in 1994, the band has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and earned two Grammy Awards, five MTV Europe Music Awards, and two Brit Awards among many others.
Prime Video has dated its next big series. Off Campus, based on Elle Kennedy’s international bestselling book series and created for television by Louisa Levy, premieres May 13, 2026, with all episodes dropping at once across 240+ countries and territories. A new teaser and updated book cover art featuring series stars Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli have been released alongside the announcement.
The show is a college soap centered on an elite ice hockey team and the relationships that form around it. Season One follows the romance between Hannah, a quiet songwriter, and Garrett, Briar University’s star athlete. Kennedy’s source material has sold over 10 million copies worldwide, been translated into more than 25 languages, and landed on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.
The cast is well-assembled. Ella Bright (The Crown, Malory Towers) and Belmont Cameli (Until Dawn, Saved by the Bell) lead, supported by Mika Abdalla, Antonio Cipriano, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Josh Heuston, and Stephen Kalyn. Louisa Levy co-showruns and executive produces alongside Gina Fattore, with Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, and James Seidman producing for Temple Hill.
Off Campus arrives at a moment when adapting romance fiction for streaming has proven a reliable formula, and Kennedy’s fanbase is large and devoted. The combination of a proven source property, a strong cast, and a Prime Video platform gives the series a solid foundation.
All episodes of Off Campus debut May 13 on Prime Video.
The 2027 Ultimate Disco Cruise and Beyond has a lineup worth booking a cabin for. StarVista LIVE’s seventh installment of the beloved floating festival sets sail February 21–26, 2027, aboard the Celebrity Silhouette, departing Fort Lauderdale with stops in Grand Turk and Puerto Plata. The 2026 sailing sold out, and with this lineup, 2027 is heading in the same direction.
Headlining the cruise are Kool & the Gang, Gloria Gaynor, The Spinners, Jody Watley, Lisa Lisa, Russell Thompkins Jr. & The New Stylistics, Al McKay’s Earth, Wind, and Fire Experience, and The Trammps featuring Earl Young, among others still to be announced. Combined, the confirmed acts account for more than 34 number one hits across disco, soul, funk, and dance music.
“With the limited number of disco artists still touring, we have started adding artists a little ‘beyond’ the disco era,” said executive producer Alan Rubens, “and our patrons have been loving every performance that we introduce to this cruise.” The format has expanded deliberately, pulling in artists from adjacent eras while keeping the core disco experience intact.
Beyond the performances, the cruise delivers DJ sets, artist panels, dance lessons, wine tastings, and late-night dancing at onboard nightclub Studio 55. Fares for remaining cabins start at $2,900 per person, including admission to all concerts, parties, and events, plus all meals.
Six years is a long time. Seahaven, the Torrance, California alt-rock outfit, are back with “Midnight Hour,” the lead single from their upcoming self-titled fourth studio album, due June 5 on Pure Noise Records. It is their first new material since 2019’s ‘Halo of Hurt,’ and it lands with the weight of a band that has taken its time.
The single captures the tension between melancholy reflection and cathartic release that runs throughout the record. Self-produced and engineered by Alex Estrada at Pale Moon Ranch in Juniper Hills, California, the album was mixed and mastered by Grammy Award-winning producer Will Yip. The bones of the record were written primarily by vocalist and guitarist Kyle Soto, who began the album in April 2025 with “Wedding Bells” and built outward from there, often completing full song outlines in a single night.
“I wasn’t consciously trying to put it all into songs,” Soto explains, “but I’d sit down with a guitar to see what would happen, and I’d end up writing.” Once the initial ideas were formed, Soto brought them to guitarist Cody Christian, bassist Mike DeBartolo, and drummer Eric Findlay, and the band recorded together at Pale Moon Ranch.
The self-titled framing is deliberate. “This album takes elements from all of our previous releases and rolls them into one,” Soto says. “It accurately represents our sound, so it felt fitting to have it serve as a statement that says, ‘This is the sound of the band.'” Across twelve tracks, the record balances introspective lyrics with some of the most memorable hooks of their career.
Raging Lines has arrived. The Oslo-based solo project of Sondre Thomassen Thorvik, born 2002, has released its debut album alongside a music video for “Yamaha 237,” shot in downtown Oslo by Scream Media. The video is streaming now on YouTube.
Thorvik works across rock, post-punk, and new wave, bringing a deep voice and a serious background in composition and music production to the project. That background is not incidental. He currently works as a freelance sound engineer and music producer for Ultima Contemporary Music Festival, and completed 12 weeks of studio practice at Newtone Studio, where he worked alongside Sigrid and Nico & Vinz while developing his own material.
The debut album reflects that production focus directly. Thorvik built the record with the kind of hands-on control that comes from years of studio work, and the result is a debut that sounds considered rather than rushed. “Yamaha 237” is a strong entry point, pairing downtown Oslo visuals with the project’s post-punk energy.
Thorvik is currently finishing his master’s thesis in musicology, with music production as his primary focus.
