Behold, the Weeknd in a state of growth. "Kiss Land" is the title track to Abel Tesfaye's forthcoming LP - his first LP made specifically for the format, since Trilogy is just those first three mixtapes compiled - and he's stretching out here and there! Not radically, mind you: Over the first half of its seven minutes, "Kiss Land" checks the standard Weeknd box of being about sex (he starts with oral, which is a good pro tip), sung directly to his prey ("Because the only thing you're taking / is your clothes off"). But the [...]
Gunplay, Maybach Music's resident knuckle-throwing knucklehead, is both one of the most fearsomely unhinged rappers on the current rap landscape and straight-up one of the most gifted rappers out right now. One of the man's crowning achievements is "Bible On The Dash," a track from last year's 601 & Snort mixtape that gives some emotive context to all the fire-breathing that Gunplay does on other tracks. It's now got a video, one that Gunplay co-directed with Ryan Snyder, and it's mostly shots of Gunplay driving around and looking contemplative. Watch it below. [...]

Tweens are a young Ohio trio coming to prominence both for their crisp and kinetic lo-fi garage-pop jams and for the fact that the Breeders plucked the heretofore obscure locals to open a bunch of their recent tour dates. Dream city. Below you can hear why the Deals gave the kids a break: Songs like "Be Mean" and "Rattle&Rollin'" are compressed, peppy, and fuzzy, sunny and snotty in equal measure; then there's "Don't Wait Up," the demo they uploaded just this week, which introduces the slightest touch of melancholy to the equation. The tempo's just a few ticks slower, and [...]

There is so much to consider with Gorgeous Children's "Liberace Gems" that I have spent way too much time trying to suss out some kind of epic thesis statement to introduce these beasts to you, lovely Stereogum readers. I could wax eternally about the customs and culture of regional rap and how because of guys like them the Internet is one unto itself. There's also a mess of blogspace that Denver-based producer and one half of GC Gila Monsta's totally masterful SoundCloud deserves. But more important than a treatise on the ever-evolving rapscape or how Gila's steely and quivering remix [...]

Arizona pedal-mashing heavy psych band Destruction Unit are currently on tour with Merchandise and Milk Music, which ought to give you some idea how much noise they make; at least one friend has called them the loudest band he's ever seen. The band's got a new album coming in August, and they recorded "Sonic Pearl," half of a new 73 single, during its sessions. The track is halfway between basement-punk scrape and Spacemen 3 whoosh, and you can hear it below. Read More...

Given what we now know about Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's breakup, we shouldn't hold our collective breath for a Sonic Youth reunion anytime soon. Instead, we should probably settle in with Moore's new band Chelsea Light Moving, who have a new video for their skronky hardcore anthem "Lip." The clip chops up band-performance footage and images of protesters clashing with riot cops. It's credited to "Eva at Ecstatic Peace Library," and that probably means Eva Prinz, whose name has been in internet circulation a bunch lately. Watch the video below. Read More...

Books Of Love is a duo comprised of Vivian Girls/La Sera's Katy Goodman and Greta Morgan of the Hush Sound. The union was conceived when the two were walking by Griffith Conservatory in Los Angeles and wanted to write a song about finding love in another dimension. Check out their song "Space Time" and its delightful video, featuring Goodman and Morgan searching for a green man to love, below. Read More...
Laura Marling's Once I Was An Eagle is out later this month and she's released its third single "Once." While all of our Marling's output gurgles with sweetness, this one particularly smacks with it because of it's stripped down instrumentation gives all the more legroom to her voice. Check it out below. Read More...

One of the best tracks on Daft Punk's new album Random Access Memories is "Giorgio By Moroder," which has a long spoken reminisce from the Italo-disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder and which pays tribute to the endlessly tick-tocking dance beats that he created in the '70s. And now Moroder himself has returned in a fittingly strange way: He's done the soundtrack for a new Google Chrome game called Racer . Moroder's new track "Racer" exists at a halfway mark between the hypnotic tracks of his past and the pounding Euro-house of our shared present. [...]
Because they are kind and generous people who want nothing but nice things for us, Liars are giving away two brand-new tracks, "I Saw You From The Lifeboat" and "Perfume Tear." Both songs are harsh, buzzing synthetic things, keeping many of the textures from the band's 2012 album WIXIW but bringing a more merciless, sinister edge than most of that album had. Right now, you can download both songs by heading to this site and entering an email address. Meanwhile, watch a video for "I Saw You From The Lifeboat," which pairs the track with random [...]
Weekend - the fuzzed-out noisemakers responsible for 2010’s excellent Sports - will return this July with Jinx (a ballsy name for a sophomore album if there ever was one). The record reflects a series of big changes for the band. In addition to relocating from San Francisco to Brooklyn just after the recording of the album, the record also finds the former trio adding a fourth member (bassist Nick Ray) to the mix. Those worried that that these changes might temper the band’s sound need not fret. The songs on Jinx - as evidenced [...]
Savannah, Georgia sludge-metal warriors Kylesa started out as a slobbering two-drummer beast of a band, and they're still that. But on their last two albums, they've been injecting their ferocious roar with more and more gloriously anthemic '90s alt-rock melody. Ultraviolet , their latest, is a triumph in every way imaginable, and it's one of the year's best rock LPs thus far. We've posted the early songs " Unspoken ," " Quicksand ," " Vulture's Landing ," and " We're Taking This ," and now you can (and should) stream the entire monstrous thing at Pitchfork . [...]

Erik Wunder is probably best known as the instrumental genius behind Colorado-born black-metal duo Cobalt, whose now-decade-old career has produced three increasingly brilliant LPs that redefined the parameters and raised the stakes of the genre: 20052s War Metal , 20072s Eater Of Birds , and 20092s Gin . ( Gin placed at No. 2 on Stereogum's list of 20092s best metal albums , and I had it at No. 3 on my Pazz & Jop ballot that year.) Yet the Cobalt story frequently centers on vocalist/lyricist Phil McSorley, whose military service and tours [...]
Recently, Matthew Houck, aka Phosphorescent, played at New York's Bowery Ballroom in celebration of the release of his latest album Muchacho , which is by no means his first, but definitely his biggest. I'm more of a Pride guy myself. Pride came out in 2007. It's a small album. Houck owes a lot to Will Oldham, his voice cracks under the weight of age, and even when he's writing relatable songs, the ones on Pride mostly seemed a little bit off, in [...]

The-Dream made a video for his absolutely bananas track "IV Play" - one of the best songs of the year, for my money - and it could not be any more boring. You have Director X as craftsman here! He got Onyx and 50 Cent rapping in a hockey rink! Drake to reenact his bar mitzvah! Essentially wrote the Ciara-Future fan fiction we've all been adorably writing in our minds! I understand this is not the song to go literal on, but with that director credit, I expected a little bit more than scenes [...]
"If I Had A Tail" follows " I Appear Missing ," " Kalopsia ," and " Keep Your Eyes Peeled " as the fourth hyperviolent animated video for an incomplete song from the new Queens Of The Stone Age album ...Like Clockwork . In this one, our latest cartoonworld sociopath is the driver of a blood-spattered Thunderbird deathmobile with skulls hanging from its rearview mirror, one who gets kicks by tossing molotov cocktails at nearby biker crews. Four videos in, and apparently there are still people in this animated deathscape left to kill. The song, meanwhile, is surprisingly smooth, [...]

I watch a lot of television - like A LOT of television - and I've never seen a single episode of CSI . I know this sounds snobbish (and maybe it is in fact snobbish), but I'm saying it to make a point: I'm a fan of Black Sabbath, a passionate consumer of music, an employee at a well-read music blog, and I watch a lot of television. At some point in the last few months, some integrated marketing dude must have looked at a Venn diagram or analytics breakdown or something that included demographics overlapping with mine and [...]
The Bristol duo Fuck Buttons have been taking their time crafting their latest tsunami of chaotic skree and psychedelic gloop. The staggering Tarot Sport , their last album, is now four years old, and Fuck Buttons are only now getting around to announcing the follow-up Slow Focus . The new album, which arrives later in the summer, is just seven tracks long, and it's the first that Fuck Buttons have ever produced themselves. Check the tracklist below. Read More...
Right now, Titus Andronicus and the So So Glos are on the so-called "Bring Back The Dudes" tour, bringing sweaty and messy punk-rock singalongs to bars across this great nation. And both bands came together onstage to end a recent set at the New Orleans venue Siberia. The So So Glos guys drunkenly paid homage to their home borough (and Titus's adopted home) by covering the Beastie Boys' deathless " No Sleep Till Brooklyn ," tweaking lyrics while appropriate, while Titus frontman Patrick Stickles wandered around smoking and shaking a tambourine. This show looks fun as fuck, and the So [...]
Last year, Beck released Song Reader , an album that was only available as sheet music; it's still the closest thing to a proper album he's dropped since 20082s Modern Guilt . Beck has resisted any and all requests to play songs from the album live, so we've only heard those songs in our imagination's version of Beck's voice, not in Beck's actual voice. That's about to change. Read More...