“Tonight, it doesn’t matter you came from,” frontman Corey Taylor told the crowd, as Revolver points out. “It doesn’t matter when you were born. This year is 19 fucking’ 99, right here. We’re gonna play you some songs from beyond that year. But Goddammit, it all started in ’99, and it is starting again here tonight.”

As promised, a large part of their setlist for the intimate, $9 show (which benefited Joshua Tree No Kill Shelter and Boys & Girls Club of the Hi-Desert) pulled from their 1999 self-titled album, and they also included songs from throughout their discography (but nothing from their most recent album, 2022’s The End, So Far). See their setlist, photos from the show by Travis Shinn and Jonathan Weiner, and fan-taken video below.

Jonathan Weiner

Jonathan Weiner

Jonathan Weiner

Jonathan Weiner

Jonathan Weiner

Jonathan Weiner

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

Travis Shinn

In fifth grade, Jane Remover stayed up late the night of March 14, checking the iTunes Store over and over, holding her breath for Recess to drop. Had she not so diligently waited to dissect Skrillex’s debut album, had she not fallen down the rabbit hole of Taio Cruz and Katy Perry mashups on YouTube — perhaps, Jane would still be sitting in a dorm, halfway through her second semester of college. Instead, those inherently post-internet sounds led her here, blinking at me through cat eye glasses on a Zoom call. In the thick of her teenage years, Jane released unique projects under a slew of aliases, coined an entirely new genre, “Dariacore,” and before the age of 18 had written and released two acclaimed albums, Frailty and Census Designated — each inherently Jane, each astoundingly unique.

Read more: Kevin Abstract’s SoCal Network

Each work, Jane tells me, is a “time capsule.” The result is a sound both intimate, and indefinite; it’s a synthesis of digicore, indie rock, EDM, hyperpop, and shoegaze, regaling stories of where, and who, Jane Remover has been — her youth notwithstanding. “Sometimes, I have to remind myself how young I am in the grand scheme of things, you know?” Jane tells me. “I turned 20 four or five months ago. A lot of the people that I’ve been working with are quite older than me, but I don’t feel out of place, so it can be hard to remember my age. And that encourages me, and reminds me, that this is only the beginning, and I have a really long career ahead of me.”

As a listener, I don’t feel like your age is “heard” or obvious at all — however, given the reality of being 20, of both growing up and growing as an artist simultaneously — do you feel like there are ways youth gets into your sound? 

When an album comes out, it’s told from the voice of the age that I was making it. It’s kind of a time capsule of what I was making at 17, 18, and 19… The music is very much a slow burn — but it doesn’t age because it just captures what I wanted to do at that time. 

What would you say is the throughline across all of the work you’ve done? 

When I listen to my music, I can tell that I made it. Being an artist is distinguishing that sound and making it your own, even if it’s, for lack of better words, a cookie-cutter type of song or album or project. There could be a hundred musicians who all make an album with just their voice and the guitar, Pink Moon-type shit. But it’s going to sound different because everybody sings differently and writes differently. 

What was it that made you want to do it? Was there a moment where you thought you could do it, or heard something and set your goal on that track? Was it even a goal?

At a very young age, music had a deep emotional impact on me. It always evoked a strong emotion out of me, and I could catch onto a melody or song really quickly when I was little, which made me want to make something for myself. Also, on YouTube in the early 2010s, I got really into the mashup rabbit hole. I remember one of my favorite mashups when I was a kid was “California Girls” and “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz.

But I didn’t start writing music as a kid. I took piano lessons for a few years. I took drum lessons for one year, but after learning, after going through it enough, I found that following instructions was stressful in the world of music, and I would prefer to just do my own thing. So when I got my first iPod, I would download all the little free music apps on the App Store and just make a bunch of little demos and stuff, but I didn’t really post ’em anywhere. I was just practicing on my little iPod, discovering music through EDM and the internet, listening to the radio — and Spotify coming out was about the same time I started posting my own stuff.

I want to talk about the last two projects that you put out. I think that there’s a really interesting development from one to the other, and I am curious to hear about the process of that and also just the process that you have, whether it’s internally and externally, going into album mode — starting with Frailty, and how from there, you found your way to the next album. 

I started making Frailty halfway through my senior year of high school. I think with the stress of applying to colleges and stuff, and I guess senior year is supposed to be serious in a way — crossing the barrier from high school to college… Frailty is a love letter to childhood and crossing the bridge between becoming an adult from being a child to an adult. It’s really video game/music-based. There’s a lot of melodies from radio pop music from the 2010s. There’s a lot of EDM influence from it. I wanted to wear my childhood music on my sleeve for that album, and I had a really big emotional tie to it.

I remember not really having an emotional connection to my own music prior to making Frailty. I was 17 making these songs and tearing up a little bit, and I was like, “This is something really special.” After it came out, the funny part is I had a huge awakening — and I didn’t like it as much as when I was making it. I thought, “This is childish, too corny. I should be making adult music.” But I had just turned 18. So the next thought was, “Why am I in a rush to be an adult all of a sudden?” It was a whirlwind of emotions and self-evaluation. And that’s what led to making Census Designated, four or five months later, with the intent of making something different from Frailty, tapping into different parts of my brain and making some of the lyrics abstract. So nobody would really know the meaning except me. 

Did you have that same whirlwind feeling after Census Designated? 

I was really doubtful for maybe the first month or two after. “What if Frailty was just this little ball of magic that dried up?” But I think what brought me back down to Earth was that I had the same emotional connection to both while making each album. The emotions were there. If the faith in the music is there pre-rollout, and for as long as the music belongs to you, I think your opinion is probably the one that matters the most. Until it’s released to the public and ready to be dissected by everyone else… But I think Census Designated also set the scene for what’s to come five, 10, 15 years into my career — where no two albums sound the same. That’s a goal for me. Obviously, I’m still in the beginning stages. I’m still at ground zero for that.

It’s a big-picture thing. 

Right now the girls that get it, get it — but for the girls that don’t get it, just come back to it in two or five years.

GEL’s long-awaited debut album, Only Constant, was a standout last year, bolstered by their electrifying, ultra-intense live shows. Now, they’ve returned with the announcement of their new Persona EP, which arrives Aug. 16 via Blue Grape Music.

Jon Markson (Drug Church, Drain) produced and engineered the EP, aiming to make the band sound bigger without blunting their ferocity. “We really wanted to fill out the songs more and make them more nuanced,” vocalist Sami Kaiser says. “It’s a step forward. It’s different, it’s catchy, but it still really sounds like us.” You can hear that in the walloping lead single, “Mirage,” which they’re previewing today, revving up into a crushing combination of riffs and vocals without losing any stickiness. The new song arrives alongside a music video directed by Eric Richter, who’s done work with Knocked Loose, Jesus Piece, and Koyo.

Read more: 20 bands that shaped hardcore’s evolution, from Bad Brains to Soul Glo

GEL will tour internationally this year, opening shows for Fiddlehead, Militarie Gun, and Have Heart, plus festival appearances at Sick New World, Download, and Primavera Sound. See all the dates here.

Check out the album artwork, tracklist, and Richter-directed video for “Mirage” below.

Persona tracklist

1. “Mirage”
2. “Shame”
3. “Persona”
4. “Martyr”
5. “Vanity”

The first single from the album is the hard-hitting “Scars,” which Kid Bookie says is “about not being able to leave when you know you should.” He adds, “You’re in a mental torture prison, and you haven’t got the strength to leave. You know you should leave, but you’re scared, you’re hurt, and this is what the scars can make you do – people put you in mental prisons, and sometimes the only thing you have left to remember is the scars they leave.”

You can watch the video for “Scars,” and check out the album’s artwork and tracklist, below.

Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead
AI (Save Yourself)
Purgatory
Nothing To Believe In
Interlude 1
Scars
Self Control
DOWN MY FRIEND
Love Drunk
Love Me When You’re Angry
You Only See

In the visual, Yanya stars as a runaway bride who flees into the woods in search of something greater — time. Overtop a thick, distorted guitar line that wouldn’t sound out of place on a ’90s college radio station, she comes to realize how precious the seconds are. “It’s about how you choose to spend your time,” Yanya says of the song. “Time is like a currency, every moment. You’re never going to get it back. It’s quite an overwhelming thing to realize.”

Read more: The Smashing Pumpkins albums ranked: From worst to best

“Like I Say (I runaway)” was also written in collaboration with her longtime creative partner Wilma Archer (Sudan Archives, MF DOOM), who had a heavy influence on both PAINLESS and Miss Universe. “I’m really honored, basically, that we have that crazy friendship, and it got to that place where we could make so much music,” Yanya told us in 2022, reflecting upon their partnership.

See the Daniel-directed video for “Like I Say (I runaway)” below.

There’s a scene in Three Colors Blue, the 1993 film directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski, where the protagonist, Julie, visits her mother after walking around in an intense state of grief. She’s lost her husband and daughter to a horrific car accident and is in the thick of selling off her home, and everything in it, except for a transfixing lamp of blue beads. “I want no possessions, no memories, no friends, no lovers. They’re all traps,” she confesses. All these years later, the scene remains deeply arresting, brilliantly acted, and crushingly real. It seizes you with her alienation, her withdrawal, the loss of her whole world — and the idea that, eventually, she will be dared to rebuild a new one. The movie, as it turns out, served as a massive inspiration for María Zardoya, the soul-melting vocalist of the Marías, and the group’s second album, Submarine.

“The blue was representing this grief and loss, but as the movie went on, it started representing hope and aspiration for the future — and that’s how this album process happened for us,” she says from drummer Josh Conway’s house in Silverlake.

Read more: No alarms and no surprises: Radiohead unravel their 1997 landmark OK Computer

The new record, set to arrive later this spring, turns inward, plunging deep below the surface to explore a torrent of demanding thoughts and feelings in search of an inner calm. You can hear that transition, too, as the album begins sounding huge — like the heft of that emotional strain personified — and then slowly gets warmer, driftier, lighter. Blue, rather than their signature red, represents their past couple of years best, commencing a whole new iteration of the Marías.

Let’s get it out of the way: María and Conway, who’ve been together since the band’s inception, are no longer in a relationship. The grief and loss in question point to this new phase of their lives, one where they move forward as friends and collaborators. When everything ended — sometime after their Coachella performance in 2022 — they resolved to adjust the relationship, rather than break up the band.

The feeling had been “in the air,” Conway says, for months. Consider that the duo toured, lived, and wrote together, on top of being business partners and owners of a dog named Lucy, who wanders around the room during the Zoom call, becoming increasingly codependent. Space to grow became scant, and their senses of self, ever intertwined, were getting murky. “When you do so much together and you don’t have that breathing room, it’s like, ‘Who am I without María, or who’s María without Josh?’” Conway suggests. “It’s almost impossible to figure that out when you’re in the same room all the time.”

They have a lot of stops and starts as they begin to explain. It’s their first conversation about the breakup, and both are, understandably, still figuring out how they want to talk about it, but they are adamant that losing each other wasn’t an option. “To say that I am never going to talk to you again because we can’t be romantic is so finite and so extreme,” María shares. “If you truly love and respect the person, [the relationship] can evolve, and you can still be in each other’s lives — just as a different iteration of what it was.” You don’t need to look closely to see that the love between them still comes easy. They sit next to each other during the call, and often when Conway speaks, María will turn her head and stare at him, fixating on his responses.

It could’ve gone terribly. Instead, the breakup reinvigorated them, bringing light to their other two members — guitarist Jesse Perlman and keyboardist Edward James — who were often relegated to the background, as the relationship, involuntarily, dominated the band dynamic. “I’m so proud of them both and how they got through it and what they created out of it. It’s been a really special time this past year,” Perlman beams, adding that they’ve gotten far more collaborative this round. María remains the visionary, devising the mood and aesthetic that will define the album, whereas Conway helms the production, but James and Perlman both have more of a say. As James describes, “It feels very much like it’s all out on the table.” They talk about plans before they’re executed, and everything has a full-band feel again. Though María and Conway still write songs together in private, they relish being able to share them when they have legs. “Always my favorite moment is sending it to them and getting the first fresh ears on it — on the people that matter most,” Conway says. 

As they are discovering, love isn’t bound to sex. Love can also be friendship. “It truly is a family — it’s a chosen family,” James says. He can’t remember a day within the last eight years when they weren’t texting or hanging out with each other, especially as they gear up for the album rollout. This past December, the band even took their first proper vacation together to Vieques, a Caribbean island off the Puerto Rico coast, to visit María’s family. There, they spent time lazing on the beach and toured Mosquito Bay, where hundreds of thousands of microscopic organisms called dinoflagellates cast an eerie, supernatural radiance when agitated, making the water glimmer like stars. (This will sound familiar if you’ve seen Life of Pi, where the main character swirls the water with his hand before a whale knocks him off his raft.) Her family cooked paella for the band, and they also celebrated María’s birthday, culminating in “an amazing bonding experience,” as James tells it. Then, a few weeks later, they decided to go skydiving — another homage to Three Colors Blue, whether conscious or not, as people are seen falling throughout the film to mirror a connection to the past.

“A year ago, you couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to do it, and you probably couldn’t up until I jumped out of the plane,” James says. “But us having that foray into that world together, there’s so much trust that develops that. Josh and Jesse were really excited about skydiving. I was extraordinarily anxious.”

“You weren’t going to do it,” Perlman adds.

“I was trying to come up with every excuse I could,” James laughs. “María was sending me really sweet and uplifting texts the morning of trying to get me to calm down about it. Then once you do it, it’s just another notch in the belt of overcoming and developing something together.” It’s a lot like taking psychedelics, the abrupt abandonment of familiarity in exchange for greater unknowns, that requires trust, patience, and good friends. You still look the same, but the experience can be shapeshifting as you embrace uncertainty and begin anew, whatever that might mean. 

The trajectory, and story, of the Marías is one all its own. Formed in 2016, the band rattled off a pair of uniformly excellent EPs, Superclean, Vol. 1 and 2, which boasted an impossibly stylish set of songs that touched on jazz, disco, indie pop, and beyond. “Dreamy” is a word that’s dramatically overused to describe music, but there aren’t many other adjectives that feel more apt. A few years later, they got to work on their debut album. The foundation of 2021’s CINEMA was an ode to film, nodding to both their early days of writing professional music for movies and TV and the medium that intensified their bond. The songs sounded sleeker, filled with synths and lush string arrangements that made them feel like a soundtrack, rather than an LP on a major label. “Un Millón” was inspired by María’s native Puerto Rico, where she grew up listening to reggaeton, while “All I Really Want Is You” pulsed with bass and seduction, calling back to when Conway and María would take acid and wander around their neighborhood to connect with nature and each other during pandemic lockdowns.

The music they create draws little comparison, as well. It’s inherently psychedelic, informed by Beach House, Radiohead, and Tame Impala’s Lonerism — one of Conway and Perlman’s favorite records of all time — as well as dozens of films, naturally, but it’s also wholly original. When you ask for suggestions of bands that sound like the Marías, groups like Men I Trust, L’Impératrice, and Alvvays come to mind, but if you want to scratch that itch, you just have to delve deeper into their discography and hope for new music.

As a follow-up, Submarine is a daring but necessary departure, subverting CINEMA with thoughtful detail. Their reverence for film still exists, but the strings that made those songs so divine have slipped away as the band tap into dream pop, trip-hop, and heavier electronics. Opener “Ride” takes that leap forward with full-throttled bass and Auto-Tuned vocals that sound gargantuan, launching you deep into another world. Clearly, this is not the Marías that you have come to know. This is a wickedly different experience, and band, for that matter, and they welcome you to take part in its alienness.

To understand the full scope of the record, though, you must wear headphones. Immersion is essential and can frequently evoke a euphoric experience, heightening the intimacy but also the isolation. That’s key to connecting with María’s lyrics. Yes, the music’s still a vibe, but her words, delivered in a silky purr, unfurl the emotional heaviness and healing that took months to wade through. It was a heady process, but the band didn’t go into Submarine with specific rules or goals in mind — only, according to María, to be unafraid to lay her vulnerabilities bare. She does so heroically, often sinking into swirling melancholy (“Come on, don’t leave me/It can’t be that easy babe,” she coos on “No One Noticed”) that represents “being underwater and exploring this more in-depth part of who you are.” Whenever their friends have come over to listen to the record, Conway will hand them a pair and leave the room for the next 45 minutes so they can submerge themselves in the music.

It’s partially the confluence of all of their influences, too. María grew up listening to Latin and urban music, though she went deep into trip-hop for this record, while Perlman and Conway lean toward the indie realm. James has an affinity for jazz. “It’s like a Venn diagram of all of our favorite influences, and then in the middle is just the sound you’re going to get,” Perlman says.

“Hamptons,” for one, transports the band out of their native LA and into the luxurious world of NYC overtop skittering electronica, whereas “If Only,” with its longing trumpet, could live inside of a lounge that still houses dusty photos of Billie Holiday. “Blur,” meanwhile, adopts a nocturnal and smoggy feel, sounding as if it were cut from the same sessions as Portishead’s Dummy. “It reminded me of The Virgin Suicides soundtrack, the Air soundtrack, so the song was called ‘Virgin Suicides’ for a long time before we landed on ‘Blur,’” María shares. The track started as a long jam — much like how “Paranoia” and “Real Life” found their roots — while Conway was on a solo trip in Europe between June and July 2023. They had a drum loop going, and Perlman was playing the chords back and forth. Then Conway dismantled the 30-minute session, working his magic to condense the song into four minutes. When he returned, the band wrote the second half of the album within three weeks. “The inspiration was just flowing,” Conway says. 

Most jarring is the way the album suddenly ends, which Conway likens to “getting spit out of that submarine” and flung back to reality. “I think with ‘Sienna,’ at the very end, it envelops you in this wall of sound, almost like you’re underwater and kind of drowning a bit, and then it stopping abruptly is finally coming up for air,” María says. The feeling is equivalent to listening on headphones, being totally absorbed in the music, and suddenly yanking them off your head. It’s disorienting yet thoroughly fascinating and satisfying. The record also wraps with the sound from the “Ride” intro, making it feel like a complete journey. “One thing about us, we love a good bookend,” Conway jokes.

Working out how to translate the songs live will be another jigsaw, and they’ve already completed a few rehearsals. Onstage, the Marías exude a seductive cool, adding as much flair to their gigs as they do to their studio songs. Most anyone who attended the shows behind CINEMA can attest to the impressive alchemy that took hold as the band flipped from rock to reggaeton to Britney Spears covers with a velvet touch. They have been playing “Run Your Mouth,” a bouncy song about being conflict avoidant, and the first preview of Submarine, as far back as 2022, including their set at Desert Daze, where the band graced the main stage on the festival’s final night. The show was sensational, but before they took the stage, as María later detailed on Instagram, she experienced a panic attack, one in a series that had been happening all week long leading up to the performance.

Going into their new era, however, she’s less encumbered by that intense anxiety and feels more zen. Therapy and meditation have been magic, having learned to be more present in her body and out of her mind. Even through a screen, she seems more confident, as do the rest of the band. “This is the longest that I’ve been on my own, per se, and I’m learning just so much about myself, and as a result, I am able to communicate better and be there for my friends better and be a better artist because I’m getting to know myself instead of getting to know myself in the reflection of somebody else,” María says.

As for the rest of the band? It helps that Conway and Perlman have a history of playing in bands together since they were 11 or 12 years old, so they aren’t daunted by the crowds. “I feel like my body shuts down starting an hour before the show,” James admits, though the anxiety melts when he hits the first couple of notes. By the end of the CINEMA run, the routine became fixed, and he was a lot more at home onstage.

“Something that I’m working on is transforming the negative anxiety to excitement,” María explains. “Because it’s the same sensation in your body. It’s just the way that you think about [it], so you can either be like, ‘Oh, my God, my heart is racing. This is so bad.’ Or, ‘Oh, my God, my heart is racing. This is so exciting. I can’t wait.’” It’s all a process — rediscovering yourself, turning pain into purpose, is a process. Along the way, that blue, once a symbol of extraordinary sorrow, has morphed into hope, tranquility, and liberation. She let go, looked forward, and embraced her next life. Perhaps it will inspire you to find a similar serenity as you listen to the album from front to back, hopefully near the water as the waves break.

Photos by Sarah Pardini

Styling by Tabitha Sanchez

Makeup by Leticia Llesmin

On May 10, the band will release their brutal and punch-packing debut album, aptly titled Postindustrial Hometown Blues, via SO Recordings. The first single, “Dust Off/Start Again,” unabashedly tackles English class issues, with gusto. They gave us a delirious and dark taste of what’s to come with the full-length. And today, they’re taking it further — releasing the music video to accompany the album’s second single, “BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE,” which spirals deeper inward, recoiling from the outward, environmental discomfort and unpacking the internal. 

Read more: 20 greatest punk-rock vocalists of all time

“‘BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE’ is about fear, about rumination, intrusive thoughts, and cycles of depression,” Hicklin says. “It’s about trying to figure out how to reach out when feelings of guilt and shame take hold. It’s about recognizing these things in others, noticing the lost and undervalued, and their increasing numbers.” Unraveling the process, he continues, “It comes from a thing I wrote years ago, about a burning snake traveling in the hot sun and a small wren flying high above it to block the heat and give it shade, taking the burden of the sun, because the little bird loves the snake and won’t see it defeated, for whatever reason.”

The video, premiering on AP below, also stars actor Kate Dickie of Game of Thrones, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Loki, to name a few. On why the project felt right for her, Dickie, a fan of the band, says, “Big Special’s beauty and brilliance shines out in their lyrics, music, and visuals — I just love them. I don’t say this hardly ever, but I feel good about [“BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE”]. We made it with such passion and commitment and fun, and that is just the most special thing of all.”

Read more: 20 greatest Fueled By Ramen bands

5. Movements

Movements have shared three albums thus far, all with Fearless. The SoCal quartet made a stunning introduction with their debut album, Feel Something, in 2017, which highlighted Patrick Miranda’s gripping, ultra-emotional vocals. Their other two albums, No Good Left to Give and RUCKUS!, kept pace, serving up the same heartfelt ambition and love for storytelling that unfolded across their debut. That latest record, especially, cast aside their “emo revival” sound and tapped into more disparate influences, with producer Will Yip essentially acting as a fifth member and helping the band break new ground.

4. Ice Nine Kills

Over the years, Ice Nine Kills’ music has come to represent the joy of a good slasher movie, joining the Fearless fold with their 2014 album The Predator Becomes the Prey. The band’s passion for horror drives them to imagine meticulous, unique concepts, one-upping themselves every time. 2015’s Every Trick In The Book, for one, was a feat, with each track revolving around a piece of literature, and their videos are always deeply detailed, such as The Silver Scream 2’s “Hip To Be Scared,” which pays homage to American Psycho and features Papa Roach frontman Jacoby Shaddix.

3. Mayday Parade

Though Mayday Parade are no longer a part of the Fearless roster, they made history during their tenure. The band began strong with their unforgettable debut, A Lesson In Romantics, which soared with angsty rippers that unraveled the difficulties of maintaining a relationship while on the road. Then they kept up the momentum with four additional records — Anywhere But Here, their self-titled, Monsters in the Closet, and Black Lines — before moving to Rise. From selling their CDs in Warped Tour parking lots to making a mark on two singular labels, Mayday Parade haven’t lost any of their spark.

2. Starset

Columbus, Ohio hard-rock crew Starset have crafted a world that’s enraptured our readers. On both of their albums with Fearless — Divisions and Horizons — the band have leaned into lofty, intricate concepts that rival the works of Coheed and Cambria. Blurring science fiction with real-life experiences, each of their records, including two with Razor & Tie, has built upon a story centered on a dystopian future that misuses technology — and all the disorder that unfolds along the way.

1. Pierce the Veil

Is anyone surprised that Pierce the Veil snagged the top spot? The band have been part of Fearless since their 2012 landmark, Collide With the Sky, which became a defining moment for the band that opened up brand-new possibilities and yielded their platinum-selling single “King For A Day” featuring Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens. (The LP is so iconic that PTV will perform it in its entirety later this year at When We Were Young.) They’ve gone on to release two more albums with the label, including last year’s Jaws of Life — a release that we named one of the best records of 2023 — and recently shared a distortion-heavy cover of Radiohead’s “Karma Police,” which is quickly becoming a live staple.

Read more: 15 greatest supergroups across rock, punk, and metal

English Teacher

If you thought you knew what post-punk sounded, looked, or felt like, we dare you to check out English Teacher. The English band achieve what many have tried and failed at — boiling down and renovating the genre for a new generation, and doing so with thoughtfulness, true feeling, and style. And this month, they took it to new heights, in releasing their latest record. The satisfying 13-track LP, This Could Be Texas, guides the Leeds-based group into new arenas of sound, from nostalgic ’90s math rock with chugging melodic hooks to soaring, anthemic tracks that bring the listener right back to the present with an addictive jolt. In British post-punk fashion, they look out at the country’s landscape, digging into social issues and topics like Brexit, infused with more personal narratives around mental health, and vocalist Lily Fontaine’s experience as a mixed-race individual trying to understand life in a place “where many didn’t have understanding or even tolerance towards people who are different.” Standout tracks include one of the LP’s singles, “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab,” and “Albatross,” the opener, whose sparkling guitar part gives us a taste of the soft yet unbridled energy we’re in store for through the next dozen songs. And the band have pushed this out, all while gearing up to support IDLES on their North American fall tour and to play some of their biggest headlining shows to date in both the U.S. and U.K. —Anna Zanes

Doubt

There are a plethora of noteworthy acts coming out of the Baltimore hardcore scene right now. But there’s something that stands out about one of its newest characters, Doubt. Shrugging off the separation between East or West Coast style, the group have found an interesting and fresh overlap bouncing from mid-tempo to hyperspeed, while leaning into heavy, dense riffage that spans a slew of punk styles in itself. After recently signing to Get Better Records, Doubt delivered their very first single, “Delusion,” on April 11. While one might hear echoes of Trapped Under Ice, Outbreak, or Trash Talk — even a bit of Touche Amore, at times — the animalistic growl that we get from Doubt vocalist Claire Abila clearly sets them apart. And this is why a group like Doubt epitomize what’s happening in Baltimore, alongside a few other cities right now — hardcore is not only alive and well, but there’s a sense of new energy and openness that hasn’t always been so synonymous with any punk scene. Said best by Soul Glo frontman Pierce Jordan, “Doubt forces nothing and offers everything, a breath of fresh air from a region with only intriguing possibilities ahead.” Coming off last week’s tour with North Carolina’s Brass Tongue and with their brash new single in tow, we can all agree that whatever comes next from Doubt will be deviously good, and we’d encourage you to keep an eye out. —Anna Zanes

Halima

Halima has blurred theater with rich, forward-thinking alt R&B for the past six years, using her time in Lagos, London, and Brooklyn to build upon her own distinct world. The single “Awaken” is a brilliant entry point, for both Halima’s discography as a whole and her forthcoming EP, EXU, which arrives May 24 via drink sum water. Over soulful, buttery vocals, the song sinks deeply into the aftermath of a breakup and all the uncomfortable feelings that crawl to the surface — suddenly being alone, second-guessing your intentions, and fearing that pride ruined a good thing. Yet you can only really choose yourself. By the song’s end, she incorporates a Yoruba salutation — “omi-o mo” — that acts as a calling, a way to say that kind of closeness doesn’t just disappear. —Neville Hardman

Been Stellar

Been Stellar guitarist Skyler Knapp and vocalist Sam Slocum originally met freshman year in Michigan, then connected with the rest of the band — guitarist Nando Dale, bassist Nico Brunstein, and drummer Laila Wayans — at NYU, bonding over music and a shared sense of humor as they traipsed around the city. It’s fitting, then, that their new Dan Carey-produced album, Scream from New York, NY, cuts a fierce snapshot of their home, culling together a glowing, crackling set of songs that balances moments of frenzied melancholy (“Sweet”) with bits of chaos and urgency (“Can’t Look Away”). After opening for their Dirty Hit labelmates the 1975 earlier this year, plus past stints with Interpol, Shame, and Fontaines D.C., Been Stellar seem ready to lay down their own mark within the city’s rich scene. —Neville Hardman

The Ophelias

Earlier this month, bright and bold quartet the Ophelias delivered their latest project, a five-track EP titled Ribbon. Released on April 12, it stands as evidence of the group’s tangible chemistry, which has only grown and strengthened since their 2015 debut album, Creature Native. In the nine years since, they’ve not only forged ahead in sonic prowess, but have gone from identifying as an “all-girl” band to a proudly queer and trans group. It is a journey that Ribbon explores and unpacks beautifully over a landscape of wiley rhythm, carried by drummer Mic Adams, while grungier guitar parts play against Andrea Gutmann Fuentes’ folksy violin, all topped off with the incomparable, angst-ridden belt of vocalist/guitarist Spencer Peppet. Though they describe themselves as making “Midwestern moth music,” we’d call it a satisfying mix of sticky pop and joyful, singalong indie-folk, with a good bite, from the addition of Peppet’s rocker edge, distorted guitars, and the foundational, heavy bass part from Jo Shaffer. —Anna Zanes

Ekko Astral

Ekko Astral have been ripping up Washington, D.C.’s local scene for years, building upon a legacy left by a long list of punk forebears and cutting a path that speaks to marginalized communities. Pioneering their own “mascara moshpit music,” frontwoman Jael Holzman spits words as if she’s been holding them in for years, always keeping pace with the rest of the band — Liam Hughes, Sam Elmore, Guinevere Tully, and Miri Tyler — with biting pop-culture references and real-world observations. That’s brilliantly heard on Ekko Astral’s full-length debut, pink balloons, which brims with thunderous havoc, experimentalism, and sharp one-liners, pulling from Charli XCX as freely as Jeff Rosenstock and Arctic Monkeys. At its core, though, these songs examine how terror and anxiety — whether from intolerance, self-hate, violence — will always be universal. This raucous kind of solidarity is what sets them apart as they continue to redefine, and better, D.C. punk and beyond. —Neville Hardman