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Save this storySaveSave this storySaveEarlier this week, French electronic pop musician Oklou joined ambient producer Malibu for a new episode of her monthly NTS show, United in Flames. During their hourlong set, they played tracks by Oklou (including a “Blade Bird” remix), d’Eon, Linda Perhacs, Chvrches, and more. Listen to the full session below.Previous guests on United in Flames include ML Buch, Evian Christ, and Casey MQ. Malibu has also hosted Merely, the Swedish producer with whom she made 2024’s Essential Mixtape.Oklou released her debut album, Choke Enough, earlier this year. She be playing songs from the record when she opens for Lorde on tour later this year. Oklou will also be performing at Pitchfork Music Festival London in November.Read Meaghan Garvey’s column about United in Flames, “Last Night an NTS Radio Show Saved My Life.”
When you look at the bonkers hard rock roster for the upcoming final Black Sabbath show in Birmingham, U.K. on July 5 at Villa Park, there is definitely one name that is conspicuously absent: Judas Priest. The masters of British leather-and-motorcycle metal simply are nowhere to be found among the head-banging roster of greats lined lined up for the Back to the Beginning show that includes Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Alice in Chains, Pantera, Lamb of God and many more.
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Apparently, there is a very good explanation for their absence, according to singer Rob Halford: they’re double-booked. Speaking to Metal Hammer, Halford explained that his band is slated to join the Scorpions in Hanover, Germany on that date for a 60th anniversary celebration of the German rock group.
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“I had no idea it [the Sabbath show] was happening. It all got announced and was a big deal,” he said of the Scorpions and Priest concert taking place more than 630 miles away from fellow Brummie Ozzy’s show. “Suddenly I get this phone call [from Ozzy Osbourne’s wife and manager Sharon Osbourne], ‘Robbie, I know you’ve got this gig with Scorpions, but could you consider coming over to do a thing with Ozzy and the guys. He’d love to see you.’”
But Halford said as much as he’d like to be on hand for the last run with Ozzy and the gang, trying to pull double-duty would be too difficult. He said Sharon Osbourne even offered to fly him back to Birmingham on the day of the show to make an appearance a la Phil Collins’ legendary Concord flight from London to Philadelphia to play two sets at Live Aid in July 1985.
And though Collins’ whirlwind flights, technically, got him to the U.S. before he left due to the timezones he crossed, Halford said as much as he’d like to double-down he thinks it might be “dangerous… Even with a private plane, there’s a word called ‘technical’, where something could go wrong, or the weather that time of year could cause problems… I was absolutely gutted [to miss the show],” he said.
The Sabbath swan song, which will also be Ozzy’s final solo show, has the 76-year-old metal legend pushing himself to deliver a curtain call worthy of his nearly 60-year career. “I do weights, bike riding, I’ve got a guy living at my house who’s working with me. It’s tough – I’ve been laid up for such a long time,” Osbourne said of his workout regimen to get pumped for his first full set since New Year’s Eve in 2018 in the wake of a series of health issues and surgeries that have laid him low for several years and kept him off stages.
“I’ve been lying on my back doing nothing and the first thing to go is your strength. It’s like starting all over again,” he said. “I’ve got a vocal coach coming round four days a week to keep my voice going. I have problems walking. I also get blood pressure issues, from blood clots on my legs. I’m used to doing two hours on stage, jumping and running around. I don’t think I’ll be doing much jumping or running around this time. I may be sitting down.”
Though Halford will not be on hand, former longtime Priest guitarist K.K. Downing will perform at the show alongside members of Limp Bizkit, Smashing Pumpkins, Living Colour, Megadeth, Halestorm, Faith No More, Sleep Token, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Megadeth, Ghost, Soundgarden and Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler.
“All my mates are going to be there though, great bands and artists,” Halford told Metal Hammer, saying that Downing’s appearance will represent the “spirt” of Priest. “It’s a wonderful and epic moment for Sabbath and heavy metal — it re-emphasizes that Birmingham is where metal came from.”
Save this storySaveSave this storySaveWith so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from billy woods; Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke; PinkPantheress; MIKE & Tony Seltzer; Erika de Casier; Kali Uchis; Cole Pulice; Preoccupations; Kara-Lis Coverdale; and Mclusky. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)billy woods: Golliwog [Backwoodz Studioz]Remarkably, Golliwog is billy woods’ first album without a dedicated creative partner since 2019’s Terror Management. Nevertheless, he welcomes guest rappers and producers aplenty across the new album’s 18 tracks. Among the contributors are familiar faces like Elucid, the Alchemist, El-P, Preservation, DJ Haram, Kenny Segal, and Despot, to name only a handful. As woods swings from one standout track to the next, he fleshes out a story about an “evil golliwog” that he wrote when he was nine years old and all the realities—displacement, war-torn trauma, love triangles, real-life horror stories—that it can represent.Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough TradeMark Pritchard & Thom Yorke: Tall Tales [Warp]Nearly 25 years ago, Thom Yorke woke up sucking a lemon. Today, he’s “sucking like lemons all over again” on “Back in the Game,” the lead single from his and Mark Pritchard’s first collaborative album, Tall Tales. Guided by the weird whirring of the electronic polymath’s ideas and the fluid creativity of the Radiohead singer-guitarist, Tall Tales starts gloomily but soon becomes a spirited and uptempo affair, as demonstrated on the singles “This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice,” “Gangsters,” and “The Spirit.”Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough TradePinkPantheress: Fancy That [Warner]After rising rapidly with viral TikTok snippets and marquee collaborations, PinkPantheress takes a step back from the drum’n’bass twist that defined her early work and, instead, moves toward the cushioned British pop of the noughties on new mixtape Fancy That. Don’t cry for that thudding bass; it’s still there, thumping against the walls of songs like “Tonight.” PinkPantheress just wants to incorporate a little more on these nine tracks—icy synths, vintage rave effects, slower vocal lines—with help from a long line of producers: Aksel Arvid, Count Baldor, Phil, Oscar Scheller, and the Dare. Let single “Stateside,” her favorite song from the record, usher in the new era.Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicBuy at Rough TradeMIKE & Tony Seltzer: Pinball II [10k]Just over a year after releasing their first joint full-length, Pinball, New York hip-hop staples MIKE and Tony Seltzer are back with another collaborative album. On the sequel, Pinball II, the two charge through 17 songs in just over half an hour, passing the baton to friends—Earl Sweatshirt, Niontay, Sideshow, Lunchbox—along the way. More than a basket of bonus songs, Pinball II is a space for the rapper and producer to exemplify why their collaborative spirit yields such easygoing and fun results.Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampErika de Casier: Lifetime [Independent Jeep Music]Erika de Casier decided not only to make another album barely a year after her last one, Still, but to drop it as a surprise—unless you’re one of the fans who got a limited-edition cassette tape. The downtempo Lifetime eases you into spacey trip-hop beats and sultry slow-mo songs, with de Casier’s glossy vocals spinning over it all like a ribbon in the wind.Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough TradeKali Uchis: Sincerely, [Capitol]Kali Uchis has been working at a rapid-fire pace. After putting out Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞ in 2020, she dropped Red Moon in Venus, in 2023 and immediately followed it with Orquídeas in 2024. Now, the Colombian American singer is already back with Sincerely,. She previewed the album with its final two songs, the brisk pop stroll “Sunshine & Rain…” and “LYSMIH.”Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicBuy at Rough TradeCole Pulice: Land’s End Eternal [Leaving]Maybe it’s due to their move from Minneapolis to Oakland, California, maybe it’s the result of a three-year-long wait for their new solo album, or maybe it’s something else entirely, but Cole Pulice’s Land’s End Eternal sounds like drifting off into a long-awaited dream while on a cross-country train ride. The composer and electroacoustic saxophonist slots revelatory horn solos next to ambient waves and glacial electric guitar, building off the technique they’ve been honing for years now. On singles like the nine-minute “After the Rain,” featuring Maria BC’s vocals, or the shimmering “Fragments of a Slipstream Dream,” Pulice invites you to shut your eyes and discover what unexpected images float across your eyelids.Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough TradePreoccupations: Ill at Ease [Born Losers]Preoccupations have been through a few evolutions since their debut album, Viet Cong. After the breakup of their former band Women, featuring Cindy Lee, the Canadian post-punkers started a new quartet and with it came a steelier sound. On their fifth album, Ill at Ease, they mold existential anxieties into eight tracks about purpose, death, and world collapse. Though thematically dark, Ill at Ease is still light on its feet, with “Focus” and the title track guiding the way forward with rubbery bass and singer Matt Flegel’s clear voice.Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough TradeKara-Lis Coverdale: From Where You Came [Smalltown Supersound]Montreal composer Kara-Lis Coverdale writes music that is both contemporarily digitized and timelessly classical. On From Where You Came, her first album in eight years, she examines what it means to be both rootless and full of life, regardless of the pains or thrills that can accompany wandering. With occasional accompaniment by cellist Anne Bourne and Grammy-winning trombonist Kalia Vandever, Coverdale brings warm detachment to singles “Daze,” “Freedom,” and “Offload Flip.”Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough TradeMclusky: The World Is Still Here and So Are We [Ipecac]Yes, that same Mclusky are back. Over 20 years since their last album, 2004’s The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not on Fire, the reckless British post-hardcore rockers return with The World Is Still Here and So Are We. Famously explosive live, Mclusky sound just as noisy on their comeback album, beginning with “Unpopular Parts of a Pig” and lasting on through the rest of its 13-song tracklist. With merciless song titles like “Way of the Exploding Dickhead,” Mclusky are as tongue-in-cheek as ever with their lyrics and delivery. Enjoy the ride while you can.Listen on Apple MusicListen on SpotifyListen on TidalListen on Amazon MusicListen/Buy at BandcampBuy at Rough Trade
It’s one thing for the Virginia Tech Hokies to blast Metallica‘s “Enter Sandman” as the football team’s game-day hype song when they take the field at Lane Stadium for home games. It’s quite another thing for the band to play the song on the team’s home field for the first time in front of a […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Everyone’s favorite lovable blue alien has crash landed onto HEYDUDE’s site in a unique new way. In celebration of the upcoming […]
Rob49 is officially a music executive. The New Orleans rapper has launched his VULTURE MODE record label, which arrives as a joint venture with independent record label and publisher SLANG.
While entering his prime as a rapper in his own right, Rob is looking for the next generation of stars in hip-hop. The label isn’t wasting any time as fellow New Orleans native Moskino is the first artist signed to VULTURE MODE.
“I always knew I would be successful outside of music, but I thought more so as a serial entrepreneur who owns a bunch of businesses,” Rob49 tells Billboard. “But music is something that I naturally gravitate to, and I honestly feel like I have the ear to know who’s the next hot artist.”
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He continues: “And with that, I’m surrounded by a bunch of new young talent that is trying to make it out the trenches, so what better way to use my platform than to become a music executive and help bring their careers to life.”
Moskino is gearing up for a busy summer with the release of his King of the Underdogs project slated to arrive on June 6.
“Moski wanted to be a rapper long before I even wanted to,” Rob49 adds of the first rapper joining the VULTURE MODE family. “And I think he’s one of the hardest out of not only New Orleans, but in general. His ability to story-tell while maintaining his own unique sound, creating a new lane with that New Orleans style… It’s something that I think is very different and refreshing.”
Rene McLean
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Founded by Influence Media’s Rene McLean, SLANG has built a reputation as a reliable creative partner for the likes of Future, DJ Khaled and Will Smith over the years.
“We’ve always believed in building platforms, not just moments,” says McLean. “Partnering with Rob49 to launch VULTURE MODE was a natural step. He represents everything SLANG values, originality, vision, authenticity, and a relentless work ethic. Together, we’re building something that’s not just reactive to culture, but ahead of it.”
As far as his own artistry, Rob49 caught fire with his viral cultural hit “WTHELLY” and is slated to drop another project later this spring.
Alice in Chains were forced to call off their planned Thursday night (May 8) show at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, CT after drummer Sean Kinney fell ill. According to a post on the group’s X feed, “After our soundcheck this evening at the Mohegan Sun Arena, Sean experienced a non-life-threatening medical emergency. We […]
Ahead of the band’s first tour in more than 15 years, Oasis‘ full catalog is now available in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos on Apple Music. Grammy-winning engineer Ryan Hewitt was commissioned by the band’s Big Brother Recordings Ltd. label to re-create the mixes from scratch, spending 18 months on the ambitious project. “Honoring the […]
PinkPantheress is officially back with her new nine-track mixtape Fancy That, out today (May 9) via Parlophone and Warner Records, marking her first full-length project since 2021’s breakout To Hell With It.
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The release comes after a several-month break from the spotlight. In August 2024, the 24-year-old British artist, born Victoria Walker, canceled all remaining tour dates, including festival appearances and high-profile support slots with Olivia Rodrigo and Coldplay, to focus on her physical health.
“It is with the heaviest heart that I will not be able to continue with the rest of my live shows this year,” she told fans at the time. “It appears I have reached a wall which I am struggling to penetrate through.”
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Now, PinkPantheress says taking that time away was necessary for her well-being, despite pressure to push through. “Really the least of my concerns was the money,” she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “There was something that I needed to address and so I had to leave… But obviously, what goes around comes around, and I’ll be back again.”
That moment of pause, including what she called a turning point when she impulsively cut her hair, ultimately helped set the stage for Fancy That, which finds the singer leaning further into her experimental pop-meets-club sound.
It comes following last month’s release of the single “Stateside”, which arrived three weeks after “Tonight,” the lead single from Fancy That. The club anthem, which samples Panic! At the Disco’s 2008 track “Do You Know What I’m Seeing?,” hit No. 5 on Hot Dance/Pop Songs and No. 25 on Bubbling Under Hot 100. She joked that Doechii “chewed” her up when performing the “Tonight” dance backstage at H&M’s inaugural music festival in Los Angeles in April.
Fancy That is now available to stream across all major platforms.
Back during the summer of 2021, Adam Duritz said he was in the process of “tightening up” the songs for the follow-up to Counting Crows’ then-new Butter Miracle, Suite One EP. “When it’s right, we’ll get in and record them and put them out, and then play them (live), which is always the best part,” he told us.
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But Duritz didn’t expect to take four years, almost to the day, for that to happen.
Butter Miracle, The Complete Suite Sweets! comes out Friday (May 9) as Counting Crows’ eighth full-length studio album. It includes the four songs from Suite One, plus an additional five — the four Duritz was talking about during 2021, plus the opening “With Love, From A-Z,” which came later. He and the band are certainly happy with the result, but Duritz acknowledges it did not come easily.
“I really thought I’d finished the (new songs),” Duritz, who’d written the material at the same friend’s farm in England where he composed the Suite One songs, tells Billboard via Zoom. On the way back home to New York, he stopped in London to sing on Gang of Youth’s 2022 album Angel in Realtime, which he calls “one of my favorite things anyone’s done in the last 10 years.” That, in turn, changed his perspective on what he thought was going to become Suite Two.
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“I was suddenly thinking these songs I just finished aren’t good enough,” Duritz acknowledges. “They’re missing some stuff.” He felt one, “Virginia Through the Rain” was “perfect,” but the others were lacking. “I kind of had lost confidence in them,” Duritz notes, “and I sat on them for a good two years. then I wrote ‘With Love, From A-Z’ here (in New York) and thought, ‘That’s great — now I have to figure out what to do with this, ’cause it needs to go on a record right away!’ I’ve got to shit or get off the pot on these songs.”
The solution, he found, was to gather some of his bandmates — multi-instrumentalist David Immergluck, bassist Millard Powers and drummer Jim Bogios — to his home New York and woodshed those songs that had been put aside.
“The problem was that my sort of ambition for what they should sound like outstripped my ability to actually play them on the piano,” Duritz says. “I’m really good at arranging and singing, no doubt. I’m great at being in a band, but I’m not the player some of the other guys are, or that a lot of other songwriters are.
“So the guys came to the house and we went through them one by one and we loved them. They became great…and then we went into the studio only a few weeks later and knocked the record out in 11, 12 days — It’s by far the fastest we’ve ever recorded (an album) — but it took forever to do it!,” he adds with a laugh.
The Complete Sweets! new songs certainly demonstrate the merits of that extra effort. Taken as piece with the Suite One tracks they offer a Counting Crows amalgam, from the Band-like earthiness of “With Love, From A-Z” and “Virginia Through the Rain” to the sweeping, string-laden build of “Under the Aurora,” the power pop of the single “Spaceman in Tulsa” and the gritty guitar rock of “Boxcars,” which Duritz says was particularly challenging until he brought the other players in.
It is not a narrative, but The Complete Sweets! is certainly a conceptual whole. “I wasn’t trying to write a specific story,” Duritz notes. “But (the songs) just sort of fit together for me. I just felt like this was a little world I was creating, and it felt very fertile.” The songs find him expressing himself mostly through characters — which he started in earnest on 2014’s Somewhere Under Wonderland — than in the angsty first-person that was once Duritz’s stock in trade. In particular, the protagonist of “Spaceman in Tulsa” is clearly there in Suite One’s “Bobby and the Rat Kings,” which is the closing track on The Complete Sweets! and links the two groups of songs together.
“It’s definitely thematically tied together; I think (the ‘Spaceman’) did end up in ‘Bobby and the Rat Kings’ for sure,” Duritz acknowledges. “But I think even without that, that song would work even if there was no connection. But I wanted the connection to be there, ’cause I was vibing on that. I was digging writing about Bobby on this record. I think there are a lot of us like that in the arts who grew up wondering if we had a place in the world, wondering how we were going to fit in. We felt different from other people. We field weird.
“I think there’s a world of people who work in our heads, and when we find that it’s like we get to be the butterflies instead of just the caterpillars.”
Counting Crows asserted its place in the world during the 90s, after Duritz and guitarist David Bryson began working as an acoustic duo in the San Francisco Bay Area. With its filled-out lineup, Counting Crows generated buzz by playing in Van Morrison stead’s at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction during January of 1993 — seven months before the release of its seven-times-platinum debut album, August and Everything After and its band-defining hits “Mr. Jones,” “Round Here” and “Rain King.” Since then, Counting Crows has sold more than 20 million records worldwide and was nominated for an Academy Award for “Accidentally in Love” from Shrek 2 in 2004.
This year, meanwhile, marks the 20th for the current lineup, since “new guy” Powers joined in 2005.
“I always wanted to be in a band and stay together,” says Duritz. And even though he’s worked outside the band on a variety of projects — with the Wallflowers, Ryan Adams and other acts as well as films such as Josie and the Pussycats and The Locusts, and running a couple of record labels — Duritz contends that, “I never wanted to be a solo artists. I have no interest in that shit. It’s a hard thing to stay together as a band, and it’s not surprising to me we’ve lost a couple people over 30 years, but right now it feels like we can go on forever — except I know that nothing works that way, y’know?”
Nevertheless, Counting Crows is gearing up for its Complete Sweets Tour!, which kicks off June 10 in Nashville and runs through Aug. 23, with Gaslight Anthem supporting. And while forever seems like a big word, Duritz feels confident that the band will be with us for quite a while longer.
“I’m not tired of it at all,” he says. “There were points where I was having more trouble with myself emotionally, and the band’s stress was just too much. But our manager’s great now. Our lawyer’s great. I totally trust everybody. All that stress is gone. The band is so stable and great, and we’re still killing it.
“So we’re on our way again. Things feel good. Everyone seems to be in a really good place. It’s a happy time — and,” he adds with another laugh, “if even I can be happy, what’s to stop everyone else from being happy, right?”