The beloved series Sweet Magnolias has returned with season 5, which sees the central friend group face new hurdles and embrace new challenges. They also venture outside the small town of Serenity, which makes for a refreshing change of pace.
Long-time fans have certainly welcomed the chance to catch up. Sweet Magnolias is currently the fourth most-watched English show on Netflix. With 2.8 million views, it also made the Top 10 in 28 countries. Is that enough to guarantee that the drama will come back for more?
Sweet Magnolias Season 6 Release Date
At the time of writing, Netflix hasn’t officially renewed the series for additional episodes.
Viewership is down compared to previous premieres, and Deadline reported that the streamer is waiting to see how the show performs before deciding either way. That said, many of Netflix’s returning shows suffered a decrease in viewership recently, and the platform still commissioned new installments.
Our best guess is that Sweet Magnolias season 6 will happen, but it might be the show’s last. If all goes well, a fresh batch of episodes could arrive in spring or summer 2027.
Sweet Magnolias Cast
JoAnna Garcia Swisher as Maddie Townsend
Brooke Elliott as Dana Sue Sullivan
Heather Headley as Helen Decatur
Anneliese Judge as Annie Sullivan
Logan Allen as Kyle Townsend
Justin Bruening as Cal Maddox
Dion Johnstone as Erik Whitley
What Could Happen in Sweet Magnolias Season 6?
Based on the novels by Sherryl Woods, Sweet Magnolias is a feel-good romantic drama set in the fictional South Carolina town of Serenity.
The series follows lifelong friends Maddie, Helen, and Dana Sue. You tune in as they navigate relationships, family challenges, careers, grief, and personal growth. Throughout, they never forget to support each other.
In season 5, Maddie relocates to New York, but things don’t go exactly as planned. Helen and Erik gear up for their wedding, while Dana Sue and Ronnie experience growing tension. By the time the finale rolls around, viewers get equal parts celebration and uncertainty. Without giving away too much, some of the characters are in a good place, while others are left contemplating a different future from the one they expected.
That ending leaves room for the story to continue in Sweet Magnolias season 6. How will Helen’s marriage look like? More importantly, what’s next for Dana Sue?
“We’re so proud of the past five seasons, and we’re so grateful for every fan that has watched it. We’ve put a little bow on it, so it can be done, but if the fans decide that we need to open that door again and go back in for season 6, I think we’re ready,” Heather Headley, who plays Helen, told TVLine.
One more for the road? For now, all we can do is wait and see.
Are There Other Shows Like Sweet Magnolias?
If you enjoyed Sweet Magnolias, you might like some of the other romance-focused content on Netflix.
The UK gambling market is no stranger to reinvention. From the Gambling Act 2005 to the sweeping reforms of the 2023 White Paper, regulation has always shaped the way players engage with betting and gaming. But whilst the rules have been tightening, a new format has been quietly winning over a new generation of players.
Crash games are the fastest-growing format in UK online casinos right now. Here’s why they’re thriving under the regulated market in the UK. If you’re interested in playing, you can use Vegas Insider to check out the best online casinos you can access.
How do crash games work?
The format is simple. A multiplier rises from 1x upward, and the player must cash out before the inevitable crash ends the round. Wait too long and your stake is gone. Time it right and your winnings multiply. Rounds can last as little as 30 seconds, with minimal downtime before the next begins.
The game is built to be social. Players can see how others are getting on in real time, watching when fellow players cash out simultaneously. Licensed crash games are also provably fair, verified through cryptographic hashing, ensuring fair outcomes.
Titles such as Aviator, JetX and Big Bass Crash are among the most popular, available at licensed online casinos across the country.
Why are crash games growing in the UK?
Crash gambling’s popularity has grown alongside wider participation in cryptocurrency trading, with which it shares many features: fast, speculative, and driven by a split-second decision on when to exit.
The format suits a mobile-first generation that gravitates towards short, high-intensity content over long, passive sessions. It’s also optimized for vertical playing, suiting users on phones much more.
Crash games now account for over 35% of mobile casino sessions globally, and the UK is amongst the most active markets. Crash games have one of the fastest growth rates recorded in any iGaming vertical. The UK generates more crash game content and affiliate activity than almost any other country.
How UK regulation is shaping the market
April 2026 brought the most significant wave of UK gambling reforms in two decades. Remote Gaming Duty nearly doubled from 21% to 40%. Statutory stake caps on online slots came in at between £2 and £5 per spin depending on age. Autoplay and turbo features were banned outright.
Crash games sit outside those slot restrictions. With a mandatory minimum five-second gap between spins now in force on slots, crash games’ active cash-out mechanic aligns naturally with what regulators are pushing the industry towards. Each round requires a deliberate decision. For operators squeezed by the new rules, crash games represent a compliant and commercially attractive alternative.
Playing crash games safely
The same qualities that make crash games compelling, speed, repetition, and the feeling of control, also make them worth approaching carefully. The fast game cycle makes it easy to lose track of time and spend, and the illusion of skill can encourage players to chase losses. Be sure to play safely, including deciding and sticking to a budget and other safeguarding tips.
The rise of crash games in the UK is still in its early stages. But with a ready-made audience, significant regulatory tailwinds, and the biggest operators investing in the format, that trajectory is only pointing one way.
Two Shell have announced their second album, Infinite Now, which will be released on October 16. The follow-up to last year’s Icons includes the previously released singles ‘The Nightmare’ and ‘Smile’, as well as the bubbly, infectious new track ‘Thing About You’. They’ve also shared an album trailer introducing the Infinite Now visual universe, a collaboration with Weirdcore. Check it out below, along with the album cover and tracklist.
Infinite Now Cover Artwork:
Infinite Now Tracklist:
1. The Nightmare
2. Lose Control
3. Smile
4. Follow
5. Closer To The Sound
6. Technology
7. Rhythm & Sound
8. Thing About You
9. Dance
10. Clouds
In the middle of June, we look back at the best albums released over the previous six months. Fifty albums may sound like a lot of music, but even after tallying up the records highlighted in our monthly column, there were still plenty of releases that felt worth mentioning; narrowing down the list is never a simple task, even at the year’s halfway point. Below, we’ve included albums released from January up until the second week of June. Here, in alphabetical order, are the 50 best albums of 2026 so far.
Aldous Harding, Train on the Island
Welcome to Aldous Harding’s island. You’re free to leave anytime you like, but the New Zealand artist is happy to show you around. There are no palm trees here; just the one tree that she used to climb, presumably as a child. Forget about the sensation of floating on the ocean blue; instead, lose yourself in questions like, “When I hit the ocean I was only a spark/ Who brought me up the stem with no love in their heart?” You’ll have to get by eating rocks and plants, but you can dance just to dance. You can get together with friends once in a while, but in the end, of course, it’s just you and your reflection. “I have met my sleeping self/ Things she knows keep me around/ I hope I’m more than I think about,” Harding sings towards the end of her insular yet inviting Warm Chris follow-up. Read the full review.
In the decade-plus since American Football’s reunion, Mike Kinsella has reserved some harrowing lyrical specificity for his other project Owen, aware that it’s much less subject to scrutiny. Reeling from a divorce he’s already addressed on the last couple of Owen records, however, he leans into that vulnerability on the band’s first album in seven years, pointing fingers while claiming responsibility for the mess he’s created. “I can’t bathe in your malaise anymore/ I’d rather be profane than chaste and bored,” he sings deep into the storm of the record, which is dramatic and ambitious, yes, but will probably prove less divisive than some of us early listeners assumed. It’s exploratory, unmoored, and self-aware, though never to the point of rupturing the mythos of American Football. Read the full review.
Each time you press play on poem 1, Anna Roxane’s first album in six years, you might find a new favorite revealing itself to you. For the longest time, for me, it was ‘Keepsake’, the record’s incalculably moving single. But on the cloudy summer morning that I’m writing this blurb, I’m clinging onto ‘Because in A-flat Minor, Op. 45’, where she sings of “the fog hanging over the sea” and “a song playing over the air,” followed by a simple plea: “Don’t go, don’t go.” Because what is memory if not a promise that a string of ephemera can stick around a little longer? Any song from poem 1 doesn’t play over the air, though, so much as it seems to suffuse it, whether murkying the waters with a loose synth or homing in on the bare essentials of piano and voice. It’s rare that music can be so epically small, so lush in its devastation, but it’s no surprise it’s coming from Ana Roxanne.
The backstory looming over Angel in Plainclothes is that, after being hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness in early 2022, Angelo De Augustine had to relearn how to walk, talk, see, hear, play music, and sing again. But though at times emotionally devastating, the singer-songwriter’s latest album is no document of suffering; it’s unguarded and mystical in its intimacy, shimmering with the kindness of those who have helped him survive. “Sometimes life is too much, you know,” De Augustine told me in 2023. Angel in Plainclothes captures an artist determined to live it. Read our inspirations interview with Angelo De Augustine.
After working with Shawn Everett on 2023’s starkly dramatic, grief-stricken The King, his 4AD debut following 2020’s critically acclaimed Giver Taker, Anjimile linked up with Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Hurray for the Riff Raff) to help craft the airier, relaxed, and quietly cathartic songs that emerged from a period of renewed freedom. “It comes in waves/ Memory and empathy/ It stays and waits with me,” he sings on ‘Waits for Me’, patiently letting them ripple across and crash into his music, often retreating into a question instead of resolving. Whether for something as abstract as freedom and embodiment or palpably simple like kissing a partner, you want the desire to wash over you, and Anjimile makes it sound easy. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Anjimile.
Avalon Emerson deepens her emotive songwriting on Written Into Changes, which encompasses five years of constant travel, including moving from Berlin to Los Angeles to New York. “Too young to die/ Too old to break through,” she sings on the glistening chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’, getting more reflective in the verses: “I have wasted all these years/ Collecting and perfecting this game.” But whatever the extent of Emerson’s sonic perfectionism and industry know-how, it builds no barrier to vulnerability on her second album with a band; or to cosmically upscaling her writing, like on the early single ‘Jupiter and Mars’. But just as she zooms out to the solar system, Emerson homes in on the small, persistent pleasures that seem equally, even frustratingly, miraculous, like drinking a cold beer. “How dare it cradle me in my tears so gently?” she wonders. Listening to Written Into Changes, you might find yourself asking the same question.
Broken Social Scene’s new album, Remember the Humans, urges you to think of music in organic terms. The title of the Canadian collective’s first album in nearly a decade came from Charles Spearin, who initially framed it as a joke: it sounds like the AI version of their seminal 2002 LP You Forgot It in People. The songs get lost in the haze of personal memory, eulogize individual people, and put relationships under the microscope, but the group still has a unique way of reveling in abstraction: finding relief from the burden of identity and emotional truth in every cliche. It’s a joyously universal kind of homecoming. Read our inspirations interview with Broken Social Scene.
On the cover of his new album The Mirror, Buck Meek is glancing back as if meeting his reflection in the lens, his shoulder obscuring his expression just enough: it’s not clear whether he’s startled, running away from something, or trying to break on through. Perhaps he’s heading to the “the tunnel underneath the road” that he finds on ‘Demon’, “a place I go to sing with echo, echo, echo” – a natural magic further filtered by the voices that tune into it throughout the record, a choir that includes Adrianne Lenker, Germaine Dunes, Staci Foster, and Jolie Holland, and bordering the electronic world fashioned by his Big Thief bandmate and producer James Krivchenia. But just like he sings of trying to write a song that is not for others on ‘Heart in the Mirror’, he’s aware of the dark side of his soul being exposed while learning to foster something good and even divine out of it rather than projecting it outward. Read our inspirations interview with Buck Meek.
The restless rhythms in cootie catcher’s music – often characterized as “laptop twee,” though the title of a new song, ‘Puzzle Pop’, does a better job of encapsulating it – reflect their overall creative pace. The Toronto-based quartet’s exuberant, untamable new album, Something We All Got, arrives just a year after their last, Shy at first – it’s no surprise its distinct lyrical perspectives collide at the vulnerability of repeatedly putting yourself out there, expecting more than you’re bound to get. SWAG, though, deserves all the attention it can get. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with cootie catcher.
I Built You a Tower doesn’t ride purely on nostalgia, but Ben Gibbard and company were certainly energized by the anniversary tour celebrating Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism and the Postal Service’s Give Up in 2023. Which is a very unemotional way to assume what it must have felt like to be on the road revisiting at least one seminal breakup album at the height of a new separation, if one with drastically different consequences at this stage of adulthood. Working with producer John Congleton, who proved more than capable of balancing the band’s gentle and aggressive sides on 2022’s Asphalt Meadows, Gibbard copes by building another world of sorrow that simultaneously breaks away from old habits – musical and otherwise. Read the full review.
I can’t make up my mind whether Dry Cleaning‘s new album Secret Love, the follow-up to 2022’s Stumpwork, is their darkest or most optimistic, precisely because it blurs the line between harmlessness and real horror, self-growth and destruction. In that way it’s certainly their dreamiest, with subtle, reconstructive production from Cate Le Bon, who helps the band break out of their shell by making them sound more like themselves. It’s hard to take that the wrong way. Read the full review.
Once again recorded across the trio’s homes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the surprise follow-up to feeble little horse’s mesmerizing 2023 LP Girl With Fish isn’t exactly nostalgic for a time when tech and money were only responsible for human suffering in different ways, but it does grapple with the kind of discombobulation of memory and self that’s particular to this cultural moment. Using digital tools as an extension of their knotty group dynamic and Lydia Slocum’s wiry introspection, it interlaces sugary melodies and dizzying left turns that hardly pale in comparison to its predecessor, making it feel far from a tossed-off release.
Something Worth Waiting For, the sophomore album by Chicago band Friko, obviously, instantly lives up to its title; the ironic part of it is that we didn’t have to wait that long. You could call them kids when they burst onto the scene with Where we’ve been, Where we go from here, and its follow-up sounds like the sort of epically anthemic record an indie rock buzzband might deliver over a decade after their debut. Just two years later, Friko return with an expanded lineup, with vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger – who formed the band right out of high school – being joined by bassist David Fuller and guitarist Korgan Robb. While building on the raw, explosive dynamics, anthemic choruses, and infernal yearning of their first record, Something Worth Waiting For feels anything but rushed, just riding the wave of relentless touring instead of letting it subside. Read the full review.
By the time Augusta Koch sent demos of Gladie’s galvanizing new record, No Need to Be Lonely, to Jeff Rosenstock, they weren’t just demo friends but friends friends, putting Rosenstock in the general category of people that many songs on the album feed off of and serve to uplift. “I brace myself to embrace you,” roars the chorus of one early single; “Know that I look to you, just to keep myself moving,” goes another. Rosenstock decided to produce the record, and they tracked it live to tape with Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden in Oakland. It’s no surprise the most dynamic songs on No Need to Be Lonely end up sounding eruptive, but the collaborative spirit enriches and sweetens the quieter songs, too, from the devastating catharsis of ‘Fix Her’ to the raw confessions of ‘Blurry’. It’s the rare gut-punch of a record that makes you feel lighter each time you play it. Read our In Conversation feature with Gladie and Jeff Rosenstock.
“I’m no stranger to that sage advice/ If you love her, let her find her life,” Grace Ives sings on the outro to the penultimate song of her incandescent new album, Girlfriend. Headed for the freeway, she’s “off with my little mind,” and if you’ve loved Ives’ past work, you know “little” is the kindest compliment. Charting her journey to sobriety, she and co-producers Ariel Rechtshaid and John DeBold dig through the wreckage to uncover an artist more big-hearted, bold, and buzzed with life than the introvert who’d shrink at the scale of it. You can catch Ives on the road on many of these songs (and playing them); you can also hear her marveling. Read the full review.
By the time he released his disarmingly intimate self-titled album in 2023, Greg Mendez had spent a decade and a half as part of Philadelphia’s DIY scene. The singer-songwriter’s full-length debut for Dead Oceans is his most extensive collection to date, Beauty Land, one no less thematically heavy than its predecessor but more unburdened in its expression. The songs swell with unguarded emotion, whether looping a single thought over spare keyboard or slow-burning into miniature symphonies. Still recording almost entirely alone, Mendez finds ways to stir them outside the confines of his own reality; you could say that’s where the beauty comes from.
hemlocke springs’ going…going…GONE! EP, not only showcased her knack for larger-than-life, 80s-inspired, maddeningly catchy art-pop, but also led to her opening for the likes of Conan Gray, Ashnikko, and Chappell Roan, the latter of whom interviewed her “favorite artist” in light of the artist’s debut album, the apple tree under the sea. A pop debut more conceptual but just as zany, melodramatic, and adventurous as Roan’s own, the album traces back hemlocke springs’ origin story while interrogating the narratives that have been projected upon her – not just lyrically but musically, through eclectic, triumphant production crafted alongside BURNS. It’s escapist pop you wouldn’t mind becoming more and more inescapable. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with hemlocke springs.
It’s not unusual for Iceage to obscure the narrative details of their songs. But when frontman Elias Rønnenfelt sings about catching “you like an ember falling down” on the opening track of their new album, he might as well be referring to the sparks of a new song that permeate the air when the band is in the studio. The more the Danish punks have pushed their sound forward since their 2011 debut New Brigade, the more days it’s taken them to record, with the last couple requiring – gasp – up to two weeks. Perhaps in reaction to the insularity of Rønnenfelt’s recent solo work, though, they returned to a speedier, raucous approach for For Love of Grace & the Hereafter, as if the ideas themselves were running for dear life. Read the full review.
Growing up in Oakland, California, Ivy Knight was tapped into different strains of alternative music: her dad brought her into the world of punk and experimental music early on, while her mom put on indie mixtapes in the car. That’s where we find the New York-based artist on the opening track of her debut album, Iron Mountain, where she sings, “You’re painting colors/ A picture for the sky/ The thin blue beads/ On the mirror while you’re speeding.” It becomes clear she’s absorbed those formative influences as deeply as she takes in her surroundings, her oneiric, often escapist imagery mirrored in frequent collaborator Deer park’s organic production. After a couple of blearier, stripped-back EPs, her first full-length homes in on subtly accented folk-rock, harking back to songwriters like Marty Robbins and Kate Wolf. If the vocal filters and synth flourishes position her as part of a new wave of alt-pop, they’re also just tools for her to blend into her own creative landscape, planting dreams into the earth. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Ivy Knight.
Patient and pensive, the follow-up to 2023’s The Window Is the Dream is marked by its open-endedness, recognizing that behind every loss and human sense of finality churns the cyclical nature of change. Documenting her first year of living in New York, where she moved after completing a creative writing MFA in Charlottesville, Jana Horn and her band refuse to paint a portrait of an artist unstuck from the past, unmissing, or untroubled by a changeless future. It would be absurd to try to force it. They simply inch towards an answer to the album’s final question: “I don’t know, how do you feel about that?” Read the full review.
On a purely textural level, it’s easy to dismiss Joshua Chuquimia Crampton‘s music as harsh to the point of being overstimulating. But it doesn’t take more than a little context and emotional attunement for its spiritual, medicinal, and strikingly deconstructive properties to take hold. Inspired by the ceremonies of the Great Pakajaqi Nation of Aymara people and more specifically the idea of “activated ceremonial music,” the Los Thuthanaka guitarist’s fantastic new album, Anata, riffs on and blows apart its influences not as a means of distancing but approximating their ecstatic essence, the way a low-quality audiovisual can elicit a more visceral response than the best technology. Crampton possesses a mysterious ability to let his refractive, impossibly layered guitar playing soar up into the galaxy while ensuring it all slips away in a flash. It just makes you want to hit play again.
Over the past decade, Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore performed live together and collaborated on singles, but it wasn’t until they were invited to record an album in Paris, using the vast and historic collection of instruments at the Musée de la Musique, that a joint full-length finally materialized. The ambient composers have shown admiration for each other’s spiritual world-building, but, in the same way that they use technology and looping to elevate their respective instruments, their kinship heightens and bends the reality they mutually absorbed towards the cosmic – from the strange survivor’s guilt of leaving California in the midst of last year’s tragic wildfires to the reverie of a once-in-a-lifetime creative opportunity – towards the cosmic. Read our In Conversation feature with Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore.
Kacey Musgraves was wandering around her hometown in Texas when she noticed a small sign that said, “Golden, Texas: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.” She loved that it was “self-deprecating but also kind of confident,” she explained in an interview, which is the exact tonal balance she strikes on her latest record. Middle of Nowhere, in fact, begins “out there on the edge of the world, way past common sense” before Musgraves proclaims that she lives in “the great state of confusion.” Yet the album is less incoherent than her 2021 pop pivot star-crossed, and even more grounded than 2024’s Deeper Well, which focused less inspiringly on growth and healing. She’s not only more comfortable but more incisive in this transitional lane, leaning into the country classicism of Pageant Material and the radiance, if not the total brilliance, of Golden Hour. Read the full review.
Though Kelsey Lu has kept busy since 2019’s Blood, returning to their musical identity feels like a process of homecoming. After scoring award-winning films, working across galleries, and collaborating with musicians ranging from Beverly Glenn-Copeland to Jamie xx, Lu discovered that going back to songwriting meant having to sit with uncertainty, slowness, and a lack of resolution. “While many things can serve as beautiful guides,” they have said, “I believe that, at our core, we are made from beauty and love. Being able to return to that source feels deeply important, especially now.” Those qualities spill out of So Help Me God with painstaking precision, but even as a classically trained cellist (and therefore perfectionist), Lu is forced to resist giving them any kind of linear structure, instead gliding from “burning desire” to “volcanic gaseous tremblings” with a distinctly emotional logic. Read the full review.
How do you relate to Kevin Morby’s music if you’ve never even been to the Midwest? So much of the singer-songwriter’s work is beloved for its sense of place; I tend to appreciate it because it never seems entirely tied to a single one. Even as he delivers his most settled and, by all accounts, most Midwestern album to date, Morby’s life is split between Kansas City and Los Angeles, as he and his partner, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, are expecting their first child. Little Wide Open, in its grand simplicity and cautious optimism, doesn’t cling to Middle America as a nostalgic signifier but mines its abundance of imagery, honouring a beautiful region you can drive through but will always ride passenger to time. It’s the same where you are; Morby just makes the truth easier to embrace. Read the full review.
As ‘BUSY BEE’ weaves in a sample of Kim Gordon and her Free Kitten bandmate Julia Cafritz co-hosting MTV’s Beach House, a sentence reverberates through its clattering noise: “The pressure to relax, it was just too much for her.” Sure enough, Dave Grohl’s drums thunder back in, resuming PLAY ME‘s gnarly flow. ‘BYE BYE’, a highlight from the Sonic Youth co-founder’s previous solo album The Collective, spawned TikTok videos of teens going through their own packing list, as Gordon chaotically did on that track – can you imagine going on vacation these days, she now seems to say, let alone enjoying it? The pressure to make music for “chillin’ after work,” as she puts it on the opening track, is too much for Gordon – so she soundtracks the doomscrolling, the brain fog, the post-Everything. Shorter and more spontaneous than its predecessor, PLAY ME‘s restlessness is nearly just as fruitful. Read the full review.
Lip Critic frontman Bret Kaser’s identity was purportedly stolen while the Brooklyn quartet was writing Theft World, the follow-up to their 2024 debut Hex Dealer; the thief turned out to be a devoted fan who believed he’d cracked the code to the band’s loosely conceptual universe. For a record that toes the line between absurdist fantasy and depressing realism, that origin story is almost too good, but the frenetic machinations of the record itself are even better: a melting pot of delirious characters, adrenaline-fuelled propulsion, and ingenious experimentation. Outlandish or not, it drives home the same truth: It’s happening to you right now. Read our inspirations interview with Lip Critic.
Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon paces himself all the way through As of Now, his 17-track debut LP for Lex Records. That doesn’t always mean taking things slow: there’s definitely an unsteadiness to the album’s flow, punctuated with the nerve to splice together beats seemingly destined for separate tracks, over which the Charlotte rapper has no trouble triangulating his humour, swagger, and pure skill. You could even argue the beat-switching reflects some of the emotional shiftiness he admits to on the record, one where the skits and adlibs are as vital to the storytelling as his truth-spilling, heartbreaking soliloquies. But Jah-Monte never trips over the music as its layers and characters pile up; he keeps steering the wheel, anchoring it in the present as the only place he can assess both his past and future.
Look, I’m biased. In Greek, my last name means “duck.” Growing up, The Ugly Duckling was both one of my favorite and most anxiety-inducing stories. So when Lowertown, a New York duo I’ve interviewedtwice, come out with a concept record about a duckling protagonist and his companions as they attempt to defeat a tyrannical media corporation, you know they’ve got my attention. But while the album is accompanied by a playable Minecraft world, a handbook, plush dolls, and drawn comics by Doctor Nowhere, the focus is still Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg’s playfully ramshackle songwriting, which curdles from infatuation to paranoia. It’s great. Subjectively, of course.
Lucy Liyou’s revelatory new album, MR COBRA, is adapted from her semi-autobiographical theatrical work Mister Cobra, weaving together free jazz, Korean folk opera, musique concrète, 2000s-era pop, drag-inspired performance, and more. Skirting the line between shame and desire, the artist’s discordant sound poetry is juxtaposed with her reverence for pop, from ambiently interpolating Taylor Swift to going full-on nu disco. “Sometimes trying to adhere to the ‘facts’ of my experiences made other emotional truths feel distorted,” Liyou has explained. Stripped of the context of Liyou’s multimedia performance, the illusory nature of MR COBRA is all the more replete with meaning.
For Mandy, Indiana, inspiration could come from anywhere, and their ears are as attuned to the sounds in their environment – whether close to (or in the literal walls of their) home or entirely foreign – as the ways they can be imagined into their piercing, uncanny body of work. And the body is precisely the animating force on URGH, their first album for Sacred Bones, which partly took shape during “an intense residency at an eerie studio house” near Leeds, but mostly, and painstakingly, over long distances. Buzzing, thrashing, and sloshing through unpindownable spaces that can only be defined by the coordinates of their own band name, the album similarly inspires countless reactions but can only really be captured by its own title. Read our inspirations interview with Mandy, Indiana.
Following 2022’s Hyaline and 2023’s Spike Field, Maria BC‘s new album places an emphasis on songwriting over the gauzy, fragmented production that marked their earlier work. Hazy synths, twitching rhythms, and a blur of overlapping instrumentation still add nuance and density to the songs, but you can imagine them stripped of their textural brilliance, still hauntingly resonant. “The interesting thing about being vaguely ambient musicians for both of us is that without the verb, and without the dream zone additions,” Marissa Nadler said in a conversation with the Oakland-based artist, “I think that your music still stands up very strongly, even if you were to play unplugged on the street. That’s, to me, the mark of a great songwriter.”
As beautifully pastoral as 2023’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, with live instrumentation by the band that accompanied her on The Land tour, Mitski’s startling eighth album gestures at a cohesive narrative rather than breathing life into a series of interconnected vignettes. Still, there’s more than one way to connect the dots: from one song to the next, from new to old, nothing to everything. Just listen, though, and you might find her longest album (at 35 minutes) to also be her boldest statement to date. Read the full review.
Towards the end of MUNA’s new album, Katie Gavin is convinced she’s past her prime – “and everyone knows it.” It’s a natural insecurity, but it’s laced with the understanding that “everyone” now implies a larger group of people who are far from friends or devoted fans. Whenever the band comes up in the lyrics of their latest, Dancing on the Wall – self-produced, like all their records, but with a heightened urgency – it’s to affirm that they’re doing alright, if with a knowing sigh. “Lots of people love me now,” Gavin sings to deal with an unrequited love, “Lots of people.” Whatever personal grievances these often dizzyingly infectious songs latch onto, they point to a band continuing to grow into themselves rather than self-consciously aging out of their peak. Read the full review.
The original idea for My New Band Believe was to make a collaborative album with the avant-folk octet caroline, but the project of ex-black midi member Cameron Picton ended up being a more open-ended studio endeavour that included most of that group, as well as members of Black Country, New Road, shame, and more. Just as he handled most of the writing by himself, Picton then helmed the editing process, creating a magnificent illusion of natural coherence – the way dream logic convinces you this scene makes sense after that one, before the waking mind offers ambivalent interpretations. Fluidly arranged and no less tender than it is delirious, My New Band Believe makes the frantic possibilities of a single night, record, and group structure feel infinitely, intimately mutable. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with My New Band Believe.
Nothing have been on a two-year album cycle since 2014’s Guilty of Everything, and though they remained busy between 2020’s The Great Dismal and their fifth album and Run for Cover debut, a short history of decay, the break allowed Domenic “Nicky” Palermo the stillness to properly reflect on his pre-Nothing days – growing up with an abusive father, spending two years in prison – and the toll of keeping the band going, both on his body and his relationships from home. Named after a book by Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran, a short history of decay takes a step back to mirror the raw humanity that’s been responsible for the band’s survival, articulating, gently yet vigorously, traumas better shrouded on previous records. “When I was old/ Ain’t life terrible/ With beautiful things getting between,” Palermo sings on the opener. This may be Nothing’s final chapter, but they still traffic in that in-between. Read our inspirations interview with Nothing.
Olivia Rodrigo, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love
“It’s really poppy, but it doesn’t compare melodically to the stuff that Olivia does, but it’s my idea of Cure Pop,” Robert Smith said while teasing the next Cure album. “It’s probably 20 BPM slower than anything she does.” Slower than ‘honeybee’? Slower than ‘less’? Did he even receive an advance of the 23-year-old’s latest album before going into the studio to sing ‘what’s wrong with me’? If the Cure’s new album is sadder than ‘the cure’, I’m worried. Of course, this is to say that anyone’s idea of Olivia Rodrigo Pop is fallible, as she anchors in a range of influences that have always included the likes of the Cure and Hole – now also triangulated with Devo, Weyes Blood, and more – while stretching them in subtly unexpected ways. On you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, she charts a romance from its incandescent beginnings to its very last flicker, showcasing new strengths while throwing herself at the mercy of forces beyond her control. The fact that it’s bittersweet isn’t surprising; the execution just keeps getting better. Read the full review.
Listening to the follow-up to 2023’s The Window on repeat, an empty chair was always in my periphery, and I would sometimes find myself staring at it while letting the songs do the talking: projecting, sure, but mostly getting lost in their sprawling journey, closing my eyes to appreciate their textures – homed in with producer Chris Walla – and spinning my head in pure joy. I was grateful for their lonely revelations but eager to put it on in the car, on a long drive surrounded by loved ones. If you have listened to a Ratboys record before, you already know the new one is as tremendously open-hearted and emotionally piercing as it is ultra-catchy. The subject matter may seem heavier this time, but it feels less like pulling a blanket over the unvarnished truth than warming the room that could make it unravel, keeping the door open for anyone who’d like to enter. Read our inspirations interview with Ratboys.
Recorded at Chicago’s Electrical Audio, Remember Sports‘ new album, their first for Get Better Records, refashions the surreal collision of past and present selves – inspired by Perry’s job teaching at an elementary school through COVID – as a head-spinning emotional ride, from the guttural rawness of ‘Across the Line’ to the hypnotic recollections of the bagpipe-led ‘Ghost’. “The kitchen table split in two and I thought of you,” Perry sings on the latter, the whole band ensuring that train of thought – bending time and reason as it does – is a thrill to follow. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Remember Sports.
Two Wheels Move the Soul was recorded in the wake of an apartment fire that left Nina Cates and Zack James displaced. Relying on the generosity of the Vermont music community, they couch surfed for months, and while that infrastructure may have now seemed like a distant dream, music remained their only constant – “a new familiar place,” to quote ‘Backup Plan’ from their first LP, Wild Guess. Once again, the pair, along with guitarist Will Krulak and bassist Carney Hemler, returned to Little Jamaica Studios to lay down their new album for Fire Talk, Two Wheels Move the Soul, with engineer Benny Yurco. At once groovier and grimier than their debut, it hammers down on the same themes of shaky communication and perpetual unrest as if almost no time has passed between records. Yet through the rubble, they find new ways to navigate their shared space. Read the full review.
At one point on her self-financed, self-titled, and first independently released album, Robyn assumed the role of a captain attempting a crash landing before launching into a song called ‘Crash and Burn Girl’, echoing her description of Sexistential as feeling “like a spaceship coming through the atmosphere at a really high speed.” More than two decades after Robyn, and aided by early collaborators like Teddybears member Klas Åhlund, Sexistential still prioritizes the pleasure principle – “I’m never inspired by pain,” she told one celebrity fan, Tinashe – while defiantly eschewing the trappings of a “maturing” pop star. Read the full review.
Following a series of mixtapes, including 2019’s KILL SASSY 009 and 2021’s Heart Ego, Sassy 009 toiled away at her debut proper for years, struggling to funnel a fantastical narrative in which intrusive thoughts become reality into a digestible record; in essence, squaring the nightmarish with the catchy. But with notable assists from Blood Orange, yunè pinku, and BEA1991, Oslo-born artist Sunniva Lindgård – playing a character described, better than by the album’s namesake, on the title track as an “in-betweener” – embodies the blurry, fluid qualities of Dreamer+ with undeniable kineticism. It’s the kind of dream more likely to haunt you down than fade from memory. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Sassy 009.
Despite having a promo of WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA ahead of its release and keeping up with a promotional rollout that included dropping the album’s entire first half, Slayyyter’s latest didn’t fully hit until I loaded it onto my iPod classic and let ‘OLD TECHNOLOGY’ do the work. It’s easy to be suspicious of any artist cashing in on electroclash, hyperpop, and dance-punk in 2026 – remember that the record came out the same day as Fcukers’ Ö and in the wake of great pop albums by underscores, Robyn, and Grace Ives – but there was no getting around the fact that WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA‘s euphoric abrasion and pure raunchiness deserved its own place in the canon.
There was a time when Lindsey Jordan harboured the illusion that she could only write in her Maryland childhood bedroom, where she made the songs that brought her indie fame right on the cusp of adulthood. By the time she was in the process of making her latest record, Ricochet, she’d bought her own house, dodging any impulse to write somewhere more nostalgically familiar. Working with Aron Kobayashi Ritch, the bassist and producer of New York’s Momma, it finds her transposing a period of self-imposed yet heavenly isolation into her most comfortably subdued songs to date. There’s still a delicate tension gnawing beneath the surface, as solitude’s gorgeous quiet borders on obsessive dissocation. Jordan, though, will go a long way to dance around it. Read the full review.
Many of the songs on Thomas Dollbaum‘s new album – propulsive, twangy, torch-like – spring from the setting of his childhood, driven to a magically placeless evocation of memory, empathy, and solitude. “What the living do is prowl around on their hands and knees/ Among the bodies we leave behind,” declares one of its characters; another is purely happy to be alive. Aided by guitarist Josh Halperm, bassist Nick Corson, and MJ Lenderman on drums, guitar, and backing vocals, Dollbaum is always somewhere in between, pooling the feelings together like they’re one and the same. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Thomas Dollbaum.
U is shorthand for underscores, but it’s also how, at least 50 times on her sort-of-self-titled album, April Harper Grey spells her object of desire. U has a compressed, equalizing power, leveling the playing field when it comes to mathematizing its relationship to I, which gets a typical definition early on: “I get what I want and then find out right after I get it, I don’t even want it.” It’s a reductive way of looking at underscores’ own trajectory, as U abandons the complex conceptual framework of 2023’s Wallsocket for a concise, escapist psychodrama, which is a way of understating that it’s an early contender for the most irresistible pop album of the year. In truth, you get what you want and then you find out right after you want it all over again: that’s U in a capsule. Read the full review.
Victoryland, My Heart Is a Room With No Cameras in It
The Brooklyn-based project of Julian McCamman quietly released its first tape, Sprain, just a week before the musician’s former band Blood released their debut and final album, Loving You Backwards. The wiry, whimsical, and emotionally piercing new album finds him continuing his collaboration with producer Dan Howard, who worked on both of those records, honing their mid-fi pop ambitions to brilliant effect. “Was it even worth trying/ Knowing someone is crying for us/ Watching an infinite loop of our lives,” McCamman sings at one point; even at its most desperate, the album sounds like it’s somehow enjoying running back the tape. Read the full review.
Working with her primary collaborator Marcus White – who also arranged the lush contributions from violinist Oliva Lundberg, cellists Filip Lundberg and Kristina Winiarski, saxophonist Sebastian Mattebo, trombonist Hannes Falk Junestav, and flutist Pelle Westlin – waterbaby retains a preciously intimate and intuitive approach on her debut album, Memory Be a Blade, even going as far as to improvise a lot of the lyrics on the record. “Steady waters asking me to leave again” are the first words that come out of her mouth as she embraces this flow, illustrating that steadiness is an illusion, a trick of lonely shadows and lights. Still, we’re left with no choice but to paddle on. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with waterbaby.
If Wendy Eisenberg’s 2024 LP Viewfinder sought to loosen the parameters of the conventional song form, their self-titled album leans into the timelessness – or, more precisely, the eternal weirdness – of classic songwriting, in part as a call back to the inner child that began to show curiosity around it. As playful and genuine as it is beguiling, Wendy Eisenberg is shaped by its contributors – bassist Trevor Dunn, drummer Ryan Sawyer, and co-producer Mari Rubio (aka more eaze) – in different ways than its predecessor, warmed by their camaraderie while mourning past lonelinesses. “Looks like luck’s inherent humour pushed you past your sense of loss,” they sing on the opener. So when Eisenberg describes self-titling as a “locus point for jokes” that “offsets its vanity by making you laugh,” it’s not a bad way of looking at what makes life itself transcendable. Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Wendy Eisenberg.
Earlier this year, Zoh Amba joined Iggy Pop on saxophone at Coachella, a somewhat surprising move following the news that they would be switching to guitar and songwriting for Eyes Full, their Matador debut. The blazing, heavenly abrasion of the musician’s instrumental work is anything but lost on the self-produced record, which features Jim White on drums, Kevin Hyland on guitar, and a number of associates at Ashevile’s Drop of Sun, where it took shape. The title might as well be an inversion of the famous Shakespeare sonnet, putting it in alignment with Amba’s past work: The lover’s eyes are everything like the sun. Don’t be afraid to stare into them, Amba seems to implore.
“A couturier must be an architect for design, a sculptor for shape, a painter for color, a musician for harmony, and a philosopher for temperance,” said Cristóbal Balenciaga while his cocoon coats, balloon jackets, and sack dresses gave space to the 1950s cinched waists. The silhouette came first, the body negotiated afterwards. It’s an idea Pierpaolo Piccioli appears to have dug out of the archive for Spring 2027. Yet for all the references to the founder, this is still fashion in the age of compressed files and cloud storage. Balenciaga’s new chapter didn’t walk a runway. It arrived in an inbox.
The attachment might’ve been compressed, the 80-look collection, very poetically titled Unsized, A Lightness Of Being, clearly wasn’t. Shot by Robin Galiegue at one of the brand’s most sacred addresses, 10 avenue George V, meaning, of course, Cristóbal Balenciaga’s very own atelier, the lookbook comes with “a philosophical approach rooted in the integrity of the human body as the foundation for creation,” as the collection’s notes insist. During his time at Valentino, Piccioli already tested the idea that couture doesn’t have to revolve around a single ideal body. At Balenciaga, that becomes “unsized,” a term that manages to sound both inclusive and slightly like it doesn’t want to commit to measurements at all.
And it doesn’t. Garments here adjust on the wearer, their movement, and their intent. Drawstrings and ribbons cinch proportions, sometimes even inflating them, and snaps play with the silhouette at the hems, all while mostly keeping them under a kilogram. But you can blame featherlight techno taffeta and paper-light napa leather for that. Even the bags, Le City and Rodeo included, receive that same softening treatment. Jewelry behaves as structure rather than embellishment. A shirt can read as a gown. A gown can read as a t-shirt. And everything can read as a hybrid. A black leather set behaves like sportswear but doesn’t look like it should. A jacket borrows from outerwear and tailoring without committing to either. Shoes hover between everyday utility and suede precision. “Rather than couture going into the street, I wanted the vibe of the street going into the couture salon, to get this feeling of freedom,” the designer told Vogue. Good thing his couture debut is less than a month away.
These types of offers sit firmly in the ‘freemium’ category – a methodology which has been proven to drive growth in numerous industries.
Designing Sustainable Engagement
Online gambling site operators construct environments that favour continuity, repetition and anticipation without ever feeling stagnant.
Every action links into another opportunity, whether through bonuses, promotions, markets, in-play betting or changing odds.
This structure breeds a behavioural pattern where the punter never reaches a definitive endpoint, only a shifting horizon of possibilities.
The success of betting interfaces is hinged in their ability to transform fleeting attention into structured engagement. Odds fluctuate and punters remain alert to changes that could influence outcomes within the blink of an eye.
That persistent reset creates urgency without man-made pressure, bringing users into a flow that feels natural and important.
Brands can recreate this by dropping the static storytelling for adaptive narratives that evolve based on audience interaction, establishing systems where engagement compounds rather than resets.
This style requires discipline in execution because continuity cannot rely on buzz alone. It demands a clear structure where each interaction carries value and adds to a larger experience.
Ultimately, online bookmakers thrive because they treat every user action as data that affects the next layer of engagement.
Brands that adopt this style grow beyond visibility and create ecosystems where audiences return because the experience continues to offer something new.
Building Community as Infrastructure
Modern bookmakers operate within deeply connected environments where gamblers track markets, distribute insights, challenge outcomes and form narratives collectively.
In betting communities, conversations around odds, predictions and results create a secondary layer of engagement that often proves as valuable as the activity itself.
This changes users from consumers into participants within a shared system of interpretation and reaction. Betting site operators understand that value comes from interaction among users, not just from the platform itself.
They create features that allow discussion, comparison and shared anticipation, effectively transforming the community into an extension of the product.
This upgrade has implications for how organisations listen and respond. Tracking isolated feedback no longer shows the full picture as the real signal sits within collective behaviour and conversation patterns.
Gambling ecosystems succeed because they stay sensitive to these signals, changing markets, highlighting trends and backing participation based on what users show in real time.
Companies that encourage this model facilitate spaces where meaning develops through interaction, helping audiences with a stake in developing the brand itself.
<h2>Identity, Risk and the Power of Choice</h2>
Every betting decision is a personal judgement – a reading of probability formed by instinct, information and choice.
This establishes a powerful sense of ownership over the experience, even when results are not guaranteed. The act of choosing becomes as important as the result itself, incorporating the user deeper into the system.
Traditional branding often reduces identity to a few representations, showing fixed images of who the audience is supposed to be.
Bookmakers move in the opposite way, giving punters the tools to choose their own approach, whether conservative or all out, analytical or intuitive.
This flexibility also aligns with a bigger cultural movement where individuals say ‘no’ to rigid identities in favour of non-limiting self-expression.
Betting site operators provide a framework within which behaviour can evolve. Risk has a central role as a calculated element of engagement that increases emotional investment.
The presence of uncertainty increases attention and amplifies the importance of each decision.
Other brands rarely utilise this dimension effectively, often defaulting to predictable experiences that minimise tension rather than harness it.
Controlled uncertainty, when structured meticulously, can generate deeper connections by giving consumers a sense of urgency and consequence.
People no longer engage with brands that merely reflect their reality, but move towards experiences that permit them to look at different versions of themselves.
The betting industry succeeds because companies recognise this desire and build systems that permit it without imposing limits on how users engage.
Some games announce themselves loudly and then quietly disappoint. Crimson Desert is not one of those games. After years of development shifts, delayed launches, and complete identity changes, Pearl Abyss released something that genuinely earned the attention it received. Before a single session begins, though, there are things worth knowing — details that change how the game is experienced from the very first hour.
1. The Game Changed Completely During Development
What Pearl Abyss showed in 2019 barely resembles what shipped in 2026. The original concept was an MMO prequel to Black Desert Online — shared servers, online progression, the works. At some point during production, the studio made a decisive call: tear it down and rebuild as a single-player action RPG. New story. New protagonist. Standalone world. Players who dismissed Crimson Desert based on those early impressions missed how dramatically it evolved. Going in without those old expectations makes the experience considerably better.
2. Multiple Platforms, One Simultaneous Global Launch
Crimson Desert released on March 19, 2026, across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro, Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, macOS, and NVIDIA GeForce NOW. All regions unlocked at the same time — no staggered rollout, no territory delays. PC players have two storefronts to choose from at launch, and those who prefer picking up a Crimson Desert CD key through a third-party game shop have straightforward options available. Getting into the game quickly on day one simply requires having a key ready before the unlock hits.
3. Kliff’s Story Has Real Emotional Stakes
The protagonist isn’t a wandering hero looking for adventure. Kliff leads the Greymanes, a mercenary clan that gets torn apart by a rival faction called the Black Bears in a violent, decisive attack. What follows isn’t a revenge fantasy — it’s a story about survival, loyalty, and pulling something back together from ruins. Kliff speaks, makes choices, and reacts to the world as a full character. The personal weight of his situation is something players feel from early on, and it doesn’t let up.
4. Boss Encounters Are the Highlights of the Whole Game
Most action RPGs treat boss fights as gateways between story sections. Crimson Desert treats them as the main event. Named encounters like Hexe Marie, White Horn, and the Staglord are multi-phase battles that force players to use every mechanic available — weapon switching, environmental awareness, mounted combat, special abilities. They’re difficult by design. Going in underprepared means multiple attempts, which is intentional — the developers want players to learn, adapt, and earn the win. These are the moments people talk about after finishing the game.
5. The Open World Was Built for Wandering
Pywel is expansive without feeling empty — a balance that open-world games frequently fail to strike. Each region has its own visual character, its own weather behavior, and its own population of enemies and hidden stories. There’s no filler padding between objectives. Side content exists because the world has reasons to explore it, not because a checklist demands it. Players who take time to move slowly through the continent will find rewards that players rushing the critical path simply miss.
6. The Engine Behind It Is a Technical Achievement
Crimson Desert runs on BlackSpace Engine, Pearl Abyss’s proprietary in-house technology. The results are visible everywhere — rain that changes terrain visibility in real time, lighting that shifts the tone of a region as hours pass, structures and objects that respond physically to combat. On high-end PC hardware and PS5 Pro, the visual output is among the best the current generation has produced. More importantly, the technology makes the world feel alive rather than just impressive. There’s a difference, and Crimson Desert gets it right.
7. There’s No Monetization to Navigate
Before launch, Pearl Abyss made a clear statement: Crimson Desert is a premium product with no in-game purchases. No cosmetic store. No battle pass. No currency system. No daily deals. The studio runs Black Desert Online as a live-service game, so they know exactly what monetization looks like — and they deliberately chose to keep none of it in Crimson Desert. Any future content is expected to arrive as paid expansions. That decision shapes the entire experience — everything in the game was designed to be played, not sold.
8. Multiplayer Was Left Out on Purpose
Discussion around potential online modes has circulated since before launch, but Crimson Desert shipped as a pure single-player experience and remains one. No co-op. No shared world. No online events. The pacing, world design, and story structure all reflect that choice — this is a game tuned entirely around one player moving through it at their own speed. People hoping to play alongside friends will need to wait on any future announcements. For everyone else, the solo experience is more than enough to justify the time.
9. Pearl Abyss Built This on Combat Expertise
The studio’s reputation comes from Black Desert Online, a game that’s widely credited with having the best-feeling combat of any MMO in the genre. That obsession with how movement and attacks feel carried directly into Crimson Desert. Swings have weight. Dodges have consequences. Every weapon type — katana, crossbow, sword and shield, battle fan — behaves distinctly and rewards players who invest time learning it properly. The combat system isn’t decorated here. It’s the backbone of the entire game.
10. LootBar Is Worth Knowing for PC Players
For anyone buying Crimson Desert on PC, having a reliable source for keys matters. LootBar is an established game key shop with a clean reputation built around fast delivery, secure transactions, and consistent availability across major titles. The store carries a broad library that spans new releases and back catalog games alike, making it useful well beyond a single purchase. Picking up a Crimson Desert CD key through LootBar cuts out unnecessary steps — no complicated checkout processes, no waiting around, just access to the game. Players who use the LootBar game key option consistently find it one of the more dependable ways to handle PC game purchases, whether for a single title or an ongoing library habit.
Ready to Enter Pywel
Crimson Desert rewards players who show up prepared. Understanding that it’s a dense single-player RPG with demanding combat, a world worth exploring slowly, and a story built on real character investment changes how the first hours feel. Pair that knowledge with a smooth purchase experience through a trusted shop, and the only thing left is to actually play it — which, based on everything the game delivers, turns out to be the best part.
What Dubai households actually pay for an AMC in 2026
Most Dubai residents searching for an annual maintenance contract in Dubai find prices ranging from AED 1,499 to AED 3,999 per year for apartments, with villa contracts starting from AED 2,999 per year. These figures come from European Technical’s pricing, published as a three-tier structure that ties cost directly to service frequency, included repairs, and emergency response speed.
The monthly equivalent: AED 125, AED 209, and AED 334. For a flat in Business Bay or JBR running a split-system AC through the Dubai summer, the mid-tier is where most households land.
The three apartment tiers explained: AED 1,499, 2,499 and 3,999
The tier you choose governs AC service frequency, whether minor repairs are included, emergency response time, and the discount rate on any out-of-scope work.
Essential: AED 1,499 per year (AED 125 per month): two AC services for up to four units, one plumbing inspection, one electrical inspection, 10 percent off extra work, four-hour emergency response via hotline.
Premium: AED 2,499 per year (AED 209 per month): three AC services for up to six units, two plumbing and two electrical inspections, minor repairs on both systems, water heater maintenance, two-hour emergency response with unlimited callouts.
Platinum: AED 3,999 per year (AED 334 per month): four AC services with no unit cap, quarterly plumbing and electrical inspections, repairs across all three systems, annual pest control, annual AC duct deep clean, four handyman hours per quarter, one-hour emergency response.
Essential covers two AC services annually for up to four units, one plumbing and one electrical inspection, a 10 percent discount on extras, and a four-hour emergency response via hotline. Minor repairs are not included. Premium at AED 2,499 adds a third AC service for up to six units, doubles inspection frequency, includes minor plumbing and electrical repairs, adds water heater maintenance, and cuts emergency response to two hours. Platinum at AED 3,999 delivers four AC services with no unit cap, quarterly plumbing and electrical inspections, repairs across all three systems, annual pest control, annual AC duct deep clean, and four handyman hours per quarter. Emergency response is one hour.
Villa contracts start higher, and for a reason
Villa plans at European Technical start from AED 2,999 per year. A villa in Arabian Ranches or Dubai Hills Estate typically runs multiple split units, a larger plumbing network, and sometimes a chiller system. The service load is greater by design. The company publishes a direct comparison: individual trade calls for a villa above AED 10,000 per year. A structured contract from AED 2,999 changes that substantially. Exact villa tier prices are not listed; European Technical quotes based on the specific property.
What moves the price up or down (units, tiers, portfolio size)
Unit count is the main driver: Essential covers up to four AC units, Premium up to six, Platinum has no cap. A three-bedroom flat with splits in each room and a cassette in the living area sits at the Essential ceiling, which makes Premium the realistic starting point for that home. Portfolio scale is the second lever: landlords holding three or more units receive a 15 percent discount, applied at the three-unit threshold only.
How an AMC price compares with paying per breakdown
The sharpest number European Technical publishes is its two-bedroom apartment comparison: pay-per-service across a typical Dubai year runs to AED 6,000 or more, against an AMC from AED 1,499. The company attributes that 50 to 75 percent saving to the shift from reactive call-outs to scheduled visits. The full picture of AMC costs in Dubai starts with call-out fees: European Technical charges none to AMC holders. Every uncontracted visit carries that fee on top of labour and parts. Over four or five visits in a year, the total adds up quickly.
Parts turnaround is the other variable most people miss. When a repair needs an ordered component, the technicians return within 24 to 48 hours. All completed work carries a 12-month workmanship warranty. The 14-day money-back and the option to cancel after six months with a prorated refund keep the entry risk low. The cost of waiting usually surfaces during the first serious heatwave.
Johnny Marr has announced a new solo album, The Age of Everything, arriving October 2 via BMG. It’s led by the bouncy, shimmering ‘Spin’, which comes paired with a music video. Check it out below.
“This is the record that’s been the most cathartic,” Marr said in a prss release. “The title came to me early in the process and became an inescapable idea. It seemed to sum up the way I think a lot of people are feeling. It’s all encompassing, but it’s not necessarily a negative statement. There’s a sense of overwhelm in the culture brought about by technology, but looking at it with a different light, there could also be a sense of possibility.”
The Age Of Everything Cover Artwork:
The Age Of Everything Tracklist:
1. Spin
2. Beyond The Rain
3. It’s Time
4. How Come
5. Ophelia
6. That Feeling
7. In And Out Of Love
8. Just Once More
9. Fire With Fire
10. All In A Life
Squirrel Flower has announced a new album called Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going. The follow-up to 2023’s Tomorrow’s Fire is set for release on August 21 via Polyvinyl. The heartfelt lead single ‘Reelin’ is out today, and you can check it out below.
“The lyrics started as an art piece I made on an overdue Kansas Turnpike toll bill,” Ella Williams said in a statement about ‘Reelin’. “This song is my ode to the push and pull of domesticity and unraveling. Leaving and getting reeled back in, over and over and over and over.”
She added: “This video was born from serendipity and divine timing. There was a huge storm at the time Clay, Jackson and I had planned to shoot in this industrial area I’d been scoping out, and we called the shoot off. At the last minute, I looked at the sky and decided it’d be worth trying. We pulled up to the spot just as the clouds were breaking and a gorgeous double rainbow shot across the sky out of the sparkling city. The other footage is from the Indiana dunes, referencing many performance art videos I’ve made of myself playing accordion with the dunes and factories in the background.”
The new album was recorded live at Door County, WI’s Merry Meadow with a cast of collaborators including co-producers Seth Engel and Jack Henry, and later rerecorded in Asheville with Alex Farrar at his Drop Of Sun studios. It features contributions from Dave Hartley (The War on Drugs), Seth Kauffman (Angel Olsen), Dimitri Giannopolous (Horse Jumper of Love), Sofia Jensen (Free Range), Clay Frankel (Twin Peaks), Andy Krull (Red PK), Book Not Brooke (Babywave), and family members Jameson, Jesse, and Nate Williams.
Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going Cover Artwork:
Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going Tracklist:
1. Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going
2. Cleveland
3. Not Me
4. Helicopters
5. Highway Woman
6. Reelin
7. Foot Thick Ice
8. Sick Tooth
9. Fought a Hornet
10. Surfing USA
11. Weightless, Untethered
Welcome to 
In the decade-plus since 
Each time you press play on poem 1, Anna Roxane’s first album in six years, you might find a new favorite revealing itself to you. For the longest time, for me, it was ‘Keepsake’, the record’s incalculably moving single. But on the cloudy summer morning that I’m writing this blurb, I’m clinging onto ‘Because in A-flat Minor, Op. 45’, where she sings of “the fog hanging over the sea” and “a song playing over the air,” followed by a simple plea: “Don’t go, don’t go.” Because what is memory if not a promise that a string of ephemera can stick around a little longer? Any song from poem 1 doesn’t play over the air, though, so much as it seems to suffuse it, whether murkying the waters with a loose synth or homing in on the bare essentials of piano and voice. It’s rare that music can be so epically small, so lush in its devastation, but it’s no surprise it’s coming from Ana Roxanne.
The backstory looming over Angel in Plainclothes is that, after being hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness in early 2022, Angelo De Augustine had to relearn how to walk, talk, see, hear, play music, and sing again. But though at times emotionally devastating, the singer-songwriter’s latest album is no document of suffering; it’s unguarded and mystical in its intimacy, shimmering with the kindness of those who have helped him survive. “Sometimes life is too much, you know,” De Augustine 
After working with Shawn Everett on 2023’s starkly dramatic, grief-stricken The King, his 4AD debut following 2020’s critically acclaimed Giver Taker, 
On the cover of his new album The Mirror, 
The restless rhythms in 
I Built You a Tower doesn’t ride purely on nostalgia, but Ben Gibbard and company were certainly energized by the 
I can’t make up my mind whether 
Once again recorded across the trio’s homes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the surprise follow-up to feeble little horse’s mesmerizing 2023 LP 
Something Worth Waiting For, the sophomore album by Chicago band 
By the time Augusta Koch sent demos of Gladie’s galvanizing new record, No Need to Be Lonely, to Jeff Rosenstock, they weren’t just demo friends but friends friends, putting Rosenstock in the general category of people that many songs on the album feed off of and serve to uplift. “I brace myself to embrace you,” roars the chorus of one early single; “Know that I look to you, just to keep myself moving,” goes another. Rosenstock decided to produce the record, and they tracked it live to tape with Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden in Oakland. It’s no surprise the most dynamic songs on No Need to Be Lonely end up sounding eruptive, but the collaborative spirit enriches and sweetens the quieter songs, too, from the devastating catharsis of ‘Fix Her’ to the raw confessions of ‘Blurry’. It’s the rare gut-punch of a record that makes you feel lighter each time you play it. Read our 
“I’m no stranger to that sage advice/ If you love her, let her find her life,” 
hemlocke springs’ going…going…GONE! EP, not only showcased her knack for larger-than-life, 80s-inspired, maddeningly catchy art-pop, but also led to her opening for the likes of Conan Gray, Ashnikko, and Chappell Roan, the latter of whom 
It’s not unusual for 
Growing up in Oakland, California, 
Patient and pensive, the follow-up to 2023’s The Window Is the Dream is marked by its open-endedness, recognizing that behind every loss and human sense of finality churns the cyclical nature of change. Documenting her first year of living in New York, where she moved after completing a creative writing MFA in Charlottesville, Jana Horn and her band refuse to paint a portrait of an artist unstuck from the past, unmissing, or untroubled by a changeless future. It would be absurd to try to force it. They simply inch towards an answer to the album’s final question: “I don’t know, how do you feel about that?” 
On a purely textural level, it’s easy to dismiss 
Over the past decade, 
Kacey Musgraves
Though 
How do you relate to 
As ‘BUSY BEE’ weaves in a sample of 
Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon paces himself all the way through As of Now, his 17-track debut LP for Lex Records. That doesn’t always mean taking things slow: there’s definitely an unsteadiness to the album’s flow, punctuated with the nerve to splice together beats seemingly destined for separate tracks, over which the Charlotte rapper has no trouble triangulating his humour, swagger, and pure skill. You could even argue the beat-switching reflects some of the emotional shiftiness he admits to on the record, one where the skits and adlibs are as vital to the storytelling as his truth-spilling, heartbreaking soliloquies. But Jah-Monte never trips over the music as its layers and characters pile up; he keeps steering the wheel, anchoring it in the present as the only place he can assess both his past and future.
Look, I’m biased. In Greek, my last name means “duck.” Growing up, The Ugly Duckling was both one of my favorite and most anxiety-inducing stories. So when Lowertown, a New York duo I’ve 
Lucy Liyou’s revelatory new album, MR COBRA, is adapted from her semi-autobiographical theatrical work Mister Cobra, weaving together free jazz, Korean folk opera, musique concrète, 2000s-era pop, drag-inspired performance, and more. Skirting the line between shame and desire, the artist’s discordant sound poetry is juxtaposed with her reverence for pop, from ambiently interpolating Taylor Swift to going full-on nu disco. “Sometimes trying to adhere to the ‘facts’ of my experiences made other emotional truths feel distorted,” Liyou has explained. Stripped of the context of Liyou’s multimedia performance, the illusory nature of MR COBRA is all the more replete with meaning.
For Mandy, Indiana, inspiration could come from anywhere, and their ears are as attuned to the sounds in their environment – whether close to (or in the literal walls of their) home or entirely foreign – as the ways they can be imagined into their piercing, uncanny body of work. And the body is precisely the animating force on URGH, their first album for Sacred Bones, which partly took shape during “an intense residency at an eerie studio house” near Leeds, but mostly, and painstakingly, over long distances. Buzzing, thrashing, and sloshing through unpindownable spaces that can only be defined by the coordinates of their own band name, the album similarly inspires countless reactions but can only really be captured by its own title. 
Following 2022’s Hyaline and 2023’s Spike Field, 
As beautifully pastoral as 2023’s
Towards the end of 
The original idea for My New Band Believe was to make a collaborative album with the avant-folk octet caroline, but the project of ex-black midi member Cameron Picton ended up being a more open-ended studio endeavour that included most of that group, as well as members of Black Country, New Road, shame, and more. Just as he handled most of the writing by himself, Picton then helmed the editing process, creating a magnificent illusion of natural coherence – the way dream logic convinces you this scene makes sense after that one, before the waking mind offers ambivalent interpretations. Fluidly arranged and no less tender than it is delirious, My New Band Believe makes the frantic possibilities of a single night, record, and group structure feel infinitely, intimately mutable. 
Nothing
Listening to the follow-up to 2023’s The Window on repeat, an empty chair was always in my periphery, and I would sometimes find myself staring at it while letting the songs do the talking: projecting, sure, but mostly getting lost in their sprawling journey, closing my eyes to appreciate their textures – homed in with producer Chris Walla – and spinning my head in pure joy. I was grateful for their lonely revelations but eager to put it on in the car, on a long drive surrounded by loved ones. If you have listened to a 
Recorded at Chicago’s Electrical Audio, 
Two Wheels Move the Soul was recorded in the wake of an apartment fire that left Nina Cates and Zack James displaced. Relying on the generosity of the Vermont music community, they couch surfed for months, and while that infrastructure may have now seemed like a distant dream, music remained their only constant – “a new familiar place,” to quote ‘Backup Plan’ from their first LP, Wild Guess. Once again, the pair, along with guitarist Will Krulak and bassist Carney Hemler, returned to Little Jamaica Studios to lay down their new album for Fire Talk, Two Wheels Move the Soul, with engineer Benny Yurco. At once groovier and grimier than their debut, it hammers down on the same themes of shaky communication and perpetual unrest as if almost no time has passed between records. Yet through the rubble, they find new ways to navigate their shared space. 
At one point on her self-financed, self-titled, and first independently released album, 
Despite having a promo of 
There was a time when Lindsey Jordan harboured the illusion that she could only write in her Maryland childhood bedroom, where she made the songs that brought her indie fame right on the cusp of adulthood. By the time she was in the process of making her latest record, Ricochet, she’d bought her own house, dodging any impulse to write somewhere more nostalgically familiar. Working with Aron Kobayashi Ritch, the bassist and producer of New York’s Momma, it finds her transposing a period of self-imposed yet heavenly isolation into her most comfortably subdued songs to date. There’s still a delicate tension gnawing beneath the surface, as solitude’s gorgeous quiet borders on obsessive dissocation. Jordan, though, will go a long way to dance around it. 
Many of the songs on 
U is shorthand for 
Working with her primary collaborator Marcus White – who also arranged the lush contributions from violinist Oliva Lundberg, cellists Filip Lundberg and Kristina Winiarski, saxophonist Sebastian Mattebo, trombonist Hannes Falk Junestav, and flutist Pelle Westlin – waterbaby retains a preciously intimate and intuitive approach on her debut album, Memory Be a Blade, even going as far as to improvise a lot of the lyrics on the record. “Steady waters asking me to leave again” are the first words that come out of her mouth as she embraces this flow, illustrating that steadiness is an illusion, a trick of lonely shadows and lights. Still, we’re left with no choice but to paddle on.
Earlier this year, Zoh Amba joined Iggy Pop on saxophone at Coachella, a somewhat surprising move following the news that they would be switching to guitar and songwriting for Eyes Full, their Matador debut. The blazing, heavenly abrasion of the musician’s instrumental work is anything but lost on the self-produced record, which features Jim White on drums, Kevin Hyland on guitar, and a number of associates at Ashevile’s Drop of Sun, where it took shape. The title might as well be an inversion of the famous Shakespeare sonnet, putting it in alignment with Amba’s past work: The lover’s eyes are everything like the sun. Don’t be afraid to stare into them, Amba seems to implore.
