Home Blog Page 239

Achieve Faster Progress in WoW with Expert Carry Support

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a game built on challenges, exploration, and progression. Whether you’re exploring dungeons, tackling raids, leveling up, or pushing your way through PvP, each aspect of the game requires a considerable investment of time and effort. While many players enjoy the journey, there are times when it can feel like progress is slow, especially when you’re stuck on a difficult boss or challenge. This is where wow carry comes into play, offering a way to speed up your progress and achieve your goals in a more efficient and enjoyable manner.

What is WoW Carry Support?

In the context of World of Warcraft, “carry” refers to the service provided by expert players who help you achieve in-game objectives by carrying you through difficult content. Whether it’s completing raids, leveling up your character, or achieving high rankings in PvP, expert carry support ensures that you get the desired results without needing to spend hours on repetitive or challenging tasks. Carry services allow you to skip past the grind and focus on the parts of the game you enjoy the most.

Benefits of Expert WoW Carry Support

  1. Efficient Progression
    One of the main benefits of using carry services is the speed at which you can achieve your goals. In WoW, progression can sometimes feel slow, especially when you’re working on high-difficulty raids, challenging dungeons, or striving for rare achievements. Expert players who offer carry services are skilled at efficiently navigating content, completing tasks, and securing rewards. With their help, you can bypass the time-consuming grind and achieve faster results, allowing you to spend more time enjoying the game’s rewarding aspects.
  2. Conquer Difficult Content with Ease
    WoW is known for its tough raids, endgame dungeons, and competitive PvP encounters. These challenges often require precise strategies, teamwork, and deep game knowledge. While this content is undoubtedly rewarding, it can also be difficult, especially if you’re undergeared or unfamiliar with the mechanics. Expert carry support provides you with highly skilled players who can carry you through these difficult scenarios, ensuring you get the loot, achievements, or rank you’re aiming for without the stress of failing multiple times.
  3. Access to Top-Tier Loot and Rewards
    Many WoW players are motivated by the desire to acquire rare and powerful loot, which is often locked behind difficult content such as Mythic raids or high-level dungeons. With carry services, you gain access to the best gear available, whether it’s through completing raids or farming high-tier dungeons. Expert players know the quickest routes and strategies to secure these valuable items, so you can enhance your character’s power without the need to endlessly grind for gear.
  4. Focus on What You Enjoy Most
    World of Warcraft offers a massive amount of content, and not all of it is enjoyable for every player. Some players may love exploring, crafting, or socializing, but find themselves bogged down by the time it takes to complete specific quests or tasks. With expert carry support, you can focus on the parts of the game that bring you the most joy, while professionals take care of the parts that you may find tedious or difficult. This allows you to enjoy the game at your own pace without feeling like you’re missing out on rewards or progression.
  5. Safe and Secure
    Reputable carry services prioritize the security of your account. Whether you’re opting for a self-play option (where you play alongside the experts) or an account-sharing option (where the boosters complete the task on your behalf), professional carry services use secure methods that comply with WoW’s terms of service. You can trust that your account and progress will be handled safely, without the risk of being banned or facing penalties.

Types of WoW Carry Services

Expert WoW carry services cover a wide range of content to help you achieve your specific goals. Some of the most popular carry options include:

  • Raids and Dungeons: Complete challenging raids and dungeons, even at the Mythic level, with professional players who know the optimal strategies and mechanics.
  • Leveling Boosts: Skip the grind and level up your character quickly and safely, getting you to the maximum level in a fraction of the time.
  • PvP Boosts: Rank up in competitive PvP and unlock prestigious rewards, titles, and mounts.
  • Achievement Boosts: Secure rare in-game achievements that may be hard to obtain on your own.
  • Loot and Gear Boosts: Get your hands on high-quality loot and gear from endgame content.

Why Choose Expert Carry Support?

Opting for expert carry support provides multiple advantages over attempting to grind or struggle through difficult content on your own. Here’s why it’s a great choice:

  • Professional Skill: Carry services provide you access to highly skilled players who know the ins and outs of the game. They can complete tough content quickly and efficiently, saving you time and frustration.
  • Tailored to Your Needs: Whether you’re looking to improve your gear, achieve a specific PvP rank, or complete a raid, carry services can be customized to help you reach your exact goals.
  • Save Time and Effort: Carry services let you skip the grind and focus on the aspects of WoW you truly enjoy, from exploring the world to engaging in high-level content.
  • No Stress, Just Rewards: With expert carry support, you can rest assured that you’ll reach your desired outcomes without the stress of failed attempts or tedious grinding.

World of Warcraft offers endless content, but progressing through its most challenging elements can be a time-consuming and often frustrating task. Expert carry support is the ideal solution to help you achieve your goals more efficiently, allowing you to conquer difficult content, secure top-tier loot, and rank up in PvP without the usual grind. With expert players on your side, you can focus on what you enjoy most about WoW while leaving the tough tasks to the professionals. Whether you’re looking for faster leveling, a high-tier gear upgrade, or assistance with difficult raids, expert carry support will ensure that your WoW experience is more enjoyable, rewarding, and efficient. A high level dungeon boost is the key to faster progress in WoW, allowing you to complete challenging content that rewards you with powerful gear without the endless grinding.

Additionally, with expert carry support, you can skip the frustration of learning complex raid mechanics or struggling to make progress in competitive PvP. The time saved allows you to experience all the exciting parts of the game, from exploring new content to strategizing in PvP without getting bogged down by the grind. This support also opens up access to elite loot drops and valuable achievements that might otherwise take a significant amount of time and effort to unlock. By choosing carry support, you ensure that you don’t just progress faster, but do so with the help of seasoned professionals who enhance your overall experience and make your WoW journey smoother and more enjoyable.

With expert carry support, you also gain the peace of mind that comes with knowing your account is in safe hands. Reputable carry services use secure methods to ensure that your account’s security and integrity are never compromised. Whether you opt for a self-play option, where you actively participate in the carry, or an account-sharing option, professional boosters adhere to WoW’s terms of service, ensuring a risk-free experience. This allows you to enjoy your WoW progression without worrying about potential issues, enabling you to focus entirely on the fun and rewards the game has to offer. The combination of expert guidance, efficient gameplay, and a safe environment ensures that your WoW journey is not only faster but also stress-free and highly satisfying.

5 Albums Out Today to Listen To: HAIM, U.S. Girls, Hotline TNT, and More

In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on June 20, 2025:


HAIM, I quit

HAIM, I quitHAIM are back with a new album, I quit. Co-produced by Danielle Haim and Rostam Batmanglij, it sounds as stylish and seamless as you’d expect, yet isn’t afraid to go out on a limb as it throws its hands up in the air; which is to say that it’s also a little unruly. “You can hate me for what I am/ You can shame me for what I’ve done/ You can’t make me disappear/ You never saw me for what I was,” goes the opening track, ‘Gone’. The follow-up to 2020’s Women in Music Pt. III was previewed by the singles ‘Relationships’, ‘Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out’, ‘Down To Be Wrong’, and ‘Take Me Back’.


U.S. Girls, Scratch It

U.S. Girls Scratch ItWhen Meg Remy was invited to play a one-off gig at a festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas, she brought together a band of Nashville musicians that included harmonica legend Charlie McCoy and the Dead Weather/Raconteurs member Jack Lawrence on guitar. The U.S. Girls bandleader was so energized by the performance that she ended up recording a whole new album in Nashville, tracking everything live, with minimal overdubs. Lyrically, it presents a loose catalog of shame, vulnerability, and powerlessness often relating to her life as a performer, but also a diffusion of that same identity through the fuzzy, fascinating lens of history. Read the full review.


Hotline TNT, Raspberry Moon

Hotline TNT, Raspberry MoonHotline TNT rapidly build on the formula of their breakout 2023 album Cartwheel with Raspberry Moon, their thrilling new LP. Produced by Amos Pitsch, it’s love-fuelled and triumphant, unabashedly blowing out every feeling and sound that offers itself to bandleader Will Anderson. Rather than laying down the music by himself, he worked with his touring band — guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel, drummer Mike Ralston. Ahead of its release, Raspberry Moon was preceded by the singles ‘Candle’ and ‘Julia’s War’.


S.G. Goodman, Planting By the Signs

S.G. Goodman, Planting By the SignsS.G. Goodman has released a new album, Planting by the Signs. The evocative, mournful follow-up to 2022’s Teeth Marks features guest appearances from Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matthew Rowan, as well as the early singles ‘Fire Sign’, ‘Satellite’, and ‘Michael Told Me’. “The whole premise behind the practice of Planting by the Signs, is that we can look to nature to understand when would be the best time to do something to get the best results,” Goodman explained. “I am interested in how man is obstructing nature and its ancient knowledge, while the human condition remains the same: that to survive we must be in harmony with nature and each other.”


Yaya Bey, Do It Afraid

Yaya Bey, Do It AfraidYaya Bey has dropped a new album, Do It Afraid, via Drink Sum Wtr. Arriving just a year after the Brooklyn artist’s previous effort Ten Fold, the 18-track LP features the advance tracks ‘dream girl’, ‘wake Up B*tch’, ‘raisins’, and ‘merlot and grigio’. Bey worked with a wide range of producers on the record, including BADBADNOTGOOD, Exaktly, and Virginia musical collective Butcher Brown, with additional guest spots from Rahrah Gabor, Nigel Hall, and others.


Other albums out today:

Karol G, Tropicoqueta; Matmos, Metallic Life Review; Neggy Gemmy, She Comes From Nowhere; Tropical Fuck Storm, Fairyland Codex; Benson Boone, American Heart; Peretsky, It Doesn’t Get Cold in October Anymore; Clara Kim, our little matches.

Amaarae Details New Album ‘Black Star’, Shares New Song ‘S.M.O.’

Amaarae has announced that her next album, Black Star, will land on August 8 via Interscope. Today, The Ghanaian American singer has previewed the follow-up to 2023’s Fountain Baby with a sultry, infectious new single called ‘S.M.O.’. It comes paired with a music video Amaarae shot with director Omar Jones. Check it out below.

“For as long as I’ve made music, fusion has been my strength and I think this comes to full fruition on S.M.O.,” Amaarae said in a press statement. “The song takes inspiration from Ghanaian 80’s highlife trailblazer Ata Kak and blends it with a mean Detroit club bass, a drum roll akin to both Magic System’s ‘1er Gaou’ & Michael Jackson’s ‘Rock With You’ and an infectious zouk melody that sounds like a steel pan lipsing an evil synth. I feel like the new Donna Summer mixed with Control era Janet and the song pretty much speaks for itself. Like Pleasure Principle or Love To Love You Baby, I don’t know how much clearer one can get when they ask you to ‘SLUT ME OUT’. The message can’t be mistaken and the beat makes you move. That’s all I want to do this summer, make people dance & feel things!”

Last year, Amaarae dropped Roses Are Red, Tears Are Blue — A Fountain Baby Extended Play, which made our list of the best EPs of 2024.

Black Star Cover Artwork:

Black Star Cover Artwork

Lorde Shares New Single ‘Hammer’

Lorde has released ‘Hammer’, the final preview of her upcoming album Virgin. “There’s a heat in the pavement, my mercury’s raising/ Don’t know if it’s love or if it’s ovulation,” she sings on the track, which she described as “an ode to city life and horniness” on social media. A music video for the song, directed by Renell Medrano, will arrive soon. Check it out below.

Virgin arrives on June 27. Previously, Lorde shared the singles ‘What Was That’ and ‘Man of the Year’.

YesMovies.ag Alternatives, Mirror Sites & Reddit Updates

0

Streaming now rules the entertainment world. It beats traditional TV, DVDs, Blu-rays, and cinema trips. In that space, YesMovies.ag was once a go-to for online streaming. Also, it was more convenient and budget-friendly. But frequent take downs push users to turn to safer YesMovies.ag alternatives. Good news! You don’t need to look further because we have them right here for you!

This article presents solid streaming choices, mirror updates, and Reddit news.

Top Five YesMovies.ag Alternatives

  • Pubfilm

Pubfilm lets users enjoy a variety of movies. Also, there are new and old titles. Plus, it contains international content. Pubfilm has its content organized into categories, too.

  • BMovies

BMovies is a free streaming platform. Similarly, it offers a collection of films and TV series in high-definition. Its content also includes titles across various genres. There’s even a section for trending and top IMDB movies.

  • MoviesHD

MoviesHD stands out for its simple and basic layout. At the same time, it promises a streaming experience with zero ads. Likewise, the site has more than 10,000 films and TV shows. All of them are of high quality. It’s a good pick for YesMovies.ag alternatives.

  • Classic Cinema Online

Classic Cinema Online is ideal for lovers of vintage films. Also, users say it’s a unique gem in the public domain. Its library mainly offers classics, film noir, and old westerns. The site is free, legal, and fresh in terms of modern streaming. 

  • RainierLand

RainierLand provides a streaming service without the need to sign up. Likewise, the platform is easy to use with minimal redirects and pop-up ads. It’s a great choice for viewers who want a smooth streaming experience.

Mirror Sites for YesMovies.ag

Always exercise caution when dealing with mirror sites. They usually bring harmful scripts and malicious ads. Also, get an ad-blocker installed on your device. Nonetheless, here is the mirror and available domain:

  • https://yesmovies-to.to/
  • https://ww.yesmovies.ag/

Reddit Community Updates

Threads like r/Piracy continue to track updates on streaming platforms. At the same time, users can find new domain links and performance reviews. But there is no information that is specifically about YesMovies.ag.

Legal Matters to Consider

Do not stream from unofficial sources. These websites can put your data and devices at risk. Additionally, there could be legal cases. So, stick with fully legal options and install trusted tools for safety.

Key Takeaways

With streaming taking over, finding backups for your trusty old website is a must. Fortunately, there are strong YesMovies.ag alternatives to fill the void. Further, make sure you stream safely and wisely.

WatchFree Alternatives, Mirror Sites & Reddit Updates

0

The digital world never slows down. And waiting for TV schedules is so last century. Right now, streaming is the new meta. Similarly, WatchFree is a popular choice for viewers. But sites like this disappear out of nowhere. So, users are looking for consistent access to movies and shows. Luckily for them, it’s not a hopeless case. There are many WatchFree alternatives. And we have listed five of them for you!

This article guides you through five streaming options, mirrors, and Reddit updates.

Top Five WatchFree Alternatives

  • WatchSoMuch

WatchSoMuch assures users never get bored. It has a streaming and downloading option. This helps viewers personalize their viewing experience and make it more convenient. Also, each title has different subtitles and resolutions.

  • WatchSeriesHD

WatchSeriesHD is a free website that specializes in TV series. Even if it does not offer movies, its library is more than enough. Likewise, it maintains updated content across many genres.

  • MovieWatcher

MovieWatcher features a solid mix of films and TV shows. At the same time, it contains a combination of fresh releases and old classics. The website description also says that it’s not full of pop-up ads. It’s the closest format among the list of WatchFree alternatives.

  • Screambox

Screambox is probably the most unique suggestion on the list. This website is a subscription-based platform that focuses on the horror genre. Its basic plan starts at $6.99 per month. Similarly, Screambox is best for viewers with a taste for the unconventional.

  • Hoopla

Hoopla works as a public library at your fingertips. The site allows users to borrow movies and TV shows. Also, all you need is a screen, and you can stream content anytime and anywhere. It’s a reliable addition to the WatchFree alternatives.

Mirror Sites for WatchFree

As of now, the only working domain for WatchFree is https://watchfree-official.live/. However, users should proceed with caution. These proxy sites may come with ads, trackers, and unsafe content.

Reddit Community Updates

Reddit users share personal experiences and updates about streaming websites. But there has been no new information regarding WatchFree. Still, you can find other streaming choices on threads like r/Piracy.

Legal Matters to Consider

Unofficial streaming sites operate without legal licenses. So, that puts users at risk of malware and legal issues. It’s wiser to choose trusted platforms for a better streaming experience.

Key Takeaways

Your favorite website may no longer be available, but great WatchFree alternatives still exist. Likewise, this list provides a perfect mix of options. Explore responsibly to watch happily.

The Deep Poetics of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Mengzhu Li’s Work

Mengzhu Li’s Mother-Daughter is a quiet reckoning — a gentle, complex exploration of the emotional geographies of the mother-daughter relationship, particularly within the specific parameters that exist among only-child families in East Asian cultural contexts. Mutual Disconnect offers a quiet reckoning—a gentle, complex look at the emotional landscape of the mother-daughter relationship, especially within the unique dynamics of only-child families in East Asian cultural contexts. At first glance, the photographs may seem simple—muted palettes, sparse rooms, and figures often turned away from the camera. Yet beneath this surface, Li opens an intricate conversation about intimacy and distance, love and estrangement, duty and desire. The work moves us through moments suspended between gesture and stillness, body and boundary, connection and separation.

The series won’t give an inch to melodrama, to dramatizing the frictions involved. Instead, it presents a visual language at once fragile and freighted, hovering between exposure and obfuscation. Li’s pictures do not scream or flour their arms. They whisper. They linger. They ask for sustained, up-close attention to the subtleties of family dynamics that so frequently resist articulation, particularly in cultures that privilege harmony, understood but unspoken agreements between parties, and careful management of emotional expression.

An entire world can fit into a single image. Think about the two women, side by side but facing away from the viewer. One hand grips her hip as though embedded in it; the other hand’s fingers flirt with her hair, no more than a suggestion of a touch, in a moment that is both strained and sweet. Their bare skin leaves them exposed but protected, an open state mitigated by the invisible lines drawn to keep them apart. These physical postures — frozen, static — emerge as eloquent signs of a difficult balance: the tension between longing for proximity and the assertion of independence. The exposure in their nudity is not rawness but an invitation to witness an emotional landscape defined by boundaries overt and hidden.

Li’s decision to shoot from behind is a conscious one, and there is plenty of meaning in why. The viewer is denied the immediate clues of facial expression or direct gaze, and hence must read such passages only through body language — stark, minimalist body language, laden with unspoken significance. And in stripping the face, a conventional window to emotional truth, this denial of full expression resists easy interpretation or voyeuristic consumption. Instead, it invites empathy. We are invited not to spectacle but to the weight of what is held in silence: histories, cultural imperatives, and personal struggles encoded in posture and gesture.

In Break, two women, a mother and daughter eat bananas, facing each other in near-mirror symmetry. It’s a visually provocative image, highly loaded, deliberate, and unsettling in its ambiguity. The act is at once mundane and charged: the banana, a familiar fruit, becomes a cipher for themes of nurture, consumption, sensuality, and power. Their mouths are open but not speaking; their gazes distant, perhaps inward. The mirrored posture evokes a silent confrontation. One that makes the viewer question where play ends and tension begins. This image is a moment suspended between imitation and rebellion, intimacy and estrangement, drawing attention to the blurred line between motherly caregiving and a daughter’s search for autonomy. The discomfort is the point. I feel Li uses that discomfort to force us into deeper engagement.

Break

Moving on, In Two in One, the message is stark, brutal-like in its clarity: the mother’s mouth is sealed with red-taped Xs, while the daughter, turned in profile, looks on, her lips painted a bold, uncompromising red. It’s a striking reversal of traditional roles. The mother’s silence is not self-chosen; it’s enforced, a visual metaphor for emotional suppression, for the generations of women told to hold their tongue. Meanwhile, the daughter’s gaze is unreadable, confrontational or detached.

Two in One

The cultural antecedents of these images are crucial. The long shadow of the one-child policy. As China officially moved away from a one-child policy in late 2015, there remains a strong cultural legacy that influences family structure and expectations. In these households, the only daughter is frequently tasked with multiple responsibilities: caregiver, cultural preserver, emotional enabler. These roles help to create an intricate emotional geography, where love is also an obligation — a geography that is both sacred and asphyxiating. Li’s raw, intimate images conjure this world with a quiet intensity, in which the joys of familial love are haunted by the way it can weigh on individual lives.

But Mother-Daugther won’t stay pinned down to cultural specifics. Underneath its specific setting emerges a universal exploration of family as a precious, precarious emotional economy. Li charts the spaces in which love and conflict can coexist, where aspiration swirls with regret, and silence is the heaviest of all. These images do not dramatize conflict with angled edges but trace it with soft hands, between shared silences and spatial tension. The silent tension between figures points toward the still-evolving, fluid work of selfhood — an ongoing self-negotiation enacting itself within the web of familial kinship.

Li’s own stance — navigating life in both China and the U.K. — provides a multilayered resonance to the work. As a subject navigating a web of cultural terrains, she conveys the emotional truth of diaspora and hybridity with the insider quality of nuance and an outsider’s sharpness. The liminal space her subjects occupy — in between tradition and modernity, belonging and estrangement — is a metaphor for what many experience by living between worlds. The photograph she composes feels both personal and fragmented, reflecting the multiplicity of selves such a life leaves behind.

The emotional punch is deepened by aesthetic decisions. The muted color palette, the quiet interiors — often uncluttered, hushed — draw attention acutely to the bodies and their gestures. The windows allow soft, natural light to shed shadows that play to contemplative melancholia. The emptiness is not lack but plenitude, a conscious minimalism that makes it possible for the posture and behavior of the actors to bear the meaning. Every fold of skin, every curve of an arm, every brush of a fingertip is freighted with significance.

But Mutual Disconnect is more than just photography. Li’s multidisciplinary strategy — video, text, handmade books, and installation — deepens the emotional and conceptual textures of the project. Her small, handmade books have a tactile intimacy analogous to the physical proximity installations, while the gallery installations remake spaces into immersive environments, in which viewers are not merely spectators but participants, enveloped in a subtle dance of closeness and distance. These spatial encounters expand the work’s subject matter outside the frame, inviting the viewer physically into the tensions and harmonies found in family relationships.

This cross-disciplinary approach reflects Li’s interstitial identity — a negotiation of many different cultural and artistic traditions. Just as she is torn between China and the U.K., between tradition and modern life, she melds together disparate artistic disciplines to show the layered, frequently conflicting truths of identity and family. Her art is a crucible within which intimate personal stories match with striding social commentary, creating a rich and nuanced understanding of what it means to be an East Asian woman grappling with the demands of tradition, individuality, and obligation.

Ultimately, Mother-Daughter  is a call to look—not just outward, but through the many layers of relationships as delicate equilibria shaped by love, strain, and culture. The show moves beyond its cultural specificity to reveal universal truths about identity, belonging, and the emotional labor that family demands. This labor is especially intense in the mother-daughter relationship, where love and frustration coexist—where a daughter can both love and resent her mother at the same time. In traditional Chinese families, mothers often seek to protect their children but also exert control, believing it is for their child’s own good, without fully considering how the child might feel. Li’s images capture this complex emotional conflict, striking a delicate balance between tenderness and tension. They convey the hopes and regrets, the reaching out and pulling back, that swirl within these bonds. The body becomes a site of memory and feeling—a meeting place of past and present, shown through gestures of approach and withdrawal.

Mother-Daughter  also speaks to the ethical responsibilities of artistic creativity. Li’s work recognizes art’s power to foster empathy and dialogue, bridging cultural divides and highlighting our shared humanity. In this way, the series is more than a personal story; it opens a broader conversation about femininity, ethnic identity, and the complicated ways women navigate their sense of self and family.

The polarization and potentiality of the cultural mestizo are embodied in Mengzhu Li herself. Having lived in Beijing for most of her life and now based in London, her perspective is rooted primarily in her Chinese experience rather than Western cultural influence. Instead, this project was created to be shown in the West, aiming to bring greater awareness to the struggles that many Chinese families face today. This intention gives Mother-Daughter  its emotional charge—a heartfelt meditation on the paradoxes of identity in a place where cultural boundaries are porous yet deeply felt.

With an expanding body of work being showcased both in London and Milan, Ardda now emerges as a force to be reckoned with in 21st-century photography. Exhibitions such as Dreams and Nightmares at Boomer Gallery and Conceptual Erasure at Blank Canvas Fulham situate her work solidly within discourses about psychological and social identity. Her inclusion in international art weeks is further evidence of how far her gift for articulating urgent cultural questions in an original and complex visual language is being recognised.

Graduating with a Master’s degree in Contemporary Photography and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins has profoundly influenced her artistic vision, allowing her to explore the intricate dynamics of belonging – particularly within mother-daughter relationships in only-child families. Her work reflects a blend of personal narrative and wider societal themes, using photography alongside video, text, handmade books, and installations to create immersive experiences. These multidisciplinary approaches invite audiences to engage deeply with the emotional nuances of identity, culture, and family, reinforcing her growing reputation on the international stage.

In the end, Mother-Daughter provides a profoundly humanitarian portrait of life straddling worlds — culturally, emotionally, artistically. It dares its audience to look beyond superficial judgments and consider the subtle layers of family, identity, and place. Li’s stories are an invitation to accept the ambiguities of relationships and cultural narratives, and they encourage us to educate empathetic muscles in a world that is so often torn apart by difference.

In one frame, one simple gesture, Li reveals the weight of history and expectation faced by women who love fiercely but have to practice the delicate art of separating themselves. That tension — between the connected and the disconnected — is what drives the series and, as we see, perhaps human nature.

Cleo Reed Announces New Album Featuring billy woods, Nick Hakim, and More

New York-based artist Cleo Reed has announced a new double album called Cuntry. The self-produced effort drops on July 17. It boasts contributions from billy woods, Nick Hakim, Elliott Skinner, Momo Boyd of Infinity Song, Isa Reyes, Matthew Jamal, Annahstasia, and more. Today’s announcement comes with the release of two new songs, ‘AMERICANA’ and ‘DA DA DA’, which are both woozy and alluring. Take a listen below.

Cuntry Cover Artwork:

Cuntry Abum Cover

Cuntry Tracklist:

1. Salt N’ Lime
2. I Been Out Here Hustlin’ [feat. Isa Reyes]
3. Women At War
4. Ninelives [feat. Michele Rosewoman]
5. Tally The Bill [feat. Momo Boyd, Malaya, Harlem Farr, Matthew Jamal, Kyle Kidd, Isa Reyes]
6. Sleep Song [feat. Elliott Skinner]
7. Always The Horse, Never The Jockey [feat. Iwewe]
8. Americana
9. Da Da Da
10. Wash All Over Me
11. Baseball
12. Strike! [feat. billy woods]
13. No Borders
14. Nona’s Jam

Watch Model/Actriz Perform ‘Cinderella’ on ‘Colbert’

Model/Actriz made an incendiary TV debut last night (June 18) on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, performing ‘Cinderella’, an abrasive highlight from their new album Pirouette. Watch it happen below.

Pirouette, the follow-up to Model/Actriz’s 2023 debut Dogsbody, came out in May. “If Dogsbody sheepishly lurks in the dim corners and questionable bathrooms of gay clubs, Pirouette is the infallible star everyone clamors to see,” Giliann Karon wrote in her Our Culture review, and on Colbert last night, bandleader Cole Haden certainly played the part.

Album Review: U.S. Girls, ‘Scratch It’

Over the past decade or so, U.S. Girls have carved a lane as one of the most critically acclaimed alt-pop projects thanks to Meg Remy’s graceful, razor-sharp, and increasingly accessible songwriting. But what if, as Remy puts it on the final song of their new album Scratch It, “to live is to lose face”? For the Toronto-based artist, the question extends from a loose catalog of shame, vulnerability, and powerlessness often relating to her life as a performer, but also a diffusion of that same identity through the fuzzy, fascinating lens of history. We follow, on ‘Emptying the Jimador’, an individual musician baring out her soul at a tequila-fueled gig at Toronto’s Massey Hall; but we listen, throughout the album, to a bandleader so energized by a single festival performance (and likely also the release of U.S. Girls’ first live album in 2023) that she decided to channel it into a new album, recording the follow-up to Bless This Mess on 16-track tape in Nashville with Dillon Watson on guitar, Jack Lawrence on bass, Domo Donoho on drums, and Jo Schornikow and Tina Norwood on keys. Co-produced with her partner Maximilian Turnbull, it’s unburdened and free-flowing, suggesting there’s so many ways to make a U.S. Girls record; and so many ways, of course, to live and grow yourself without losing it.


1. Like James Said

More overtly than previous U.S. Girls records, Scratch It finds Meg Regy in constant conversation with her sources of inspiration. “No one’s original anymore,” she said in a recent interview. “We’re always paying tribute and referencing someone. It felt very transparent for me. I’m very much made up of the things that I love and worship, like a giant bulletin board.” Meeting our gaze first is James Brown, whose ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’ gives way to a RuPaul’s Drag Race-worthy dance workout in which Remy proclaims herself “the queen of exercising pain.” The pain in question is interpersonal: “Just give me space,” she sings on the first verse, “I’m doing my own thang/ I don’t owe you anything.” The lack of elaboration is proof that the groove is strong enough to at least cast the argument away.

2. Dear Patti

The conversation becomes more direct, regretful, and frustrated: “Patti, I didn’t get to hear you play/ I was making sure my kids didn’t fall in the lake,” it begins. U.S. Girls were playing the same Arkansas music festival as Smith, opening for the National (“Only two women on the stage that day,” she laments), which is also the same festival that prompted Remy to book a studio in Nashville. Beyond the urgencies of motherhood, she gets into the power dynamics at play and stitches a thread to the previous song: rather than simply demanding space, she expresses the smallness this one is reducing her to. The band fashions a pristine glow as she dreams of getting higher, and then it’s just her voice and keys, just two women, “anyway on any day.”

3. Firefly on the 4th July

Remy offers her take on a song given to her by Russian songwriter Alex Lukashevsky, which includes lines like “Nuclear fear from the rear/ Spoils the atmosphere.” The song retains its soul influence but stabs harder on each beat, making way for a brief noise section that captures the anxiety without, well, spoiling the mood too much. “A hit so big/ That no one wants to dance to its music,” she sings. The comedy is dark and off-putting, yes, but it lands.

4. The Clearing

Another cover, this time of a song by Micah Blue Smaldone, who also wrote the final track on In a Poem Unlimited, ‘Time’. Though the poetry flows nicely, conjuring images of liberation and resistance, it’s the harmonica solo by Charlie McEvoy, who has performed with the likes of Elvis, Bob Dylan, and Roy Orbison, that gives the song a timeless feel.

5. The Walking Song

Remy counters the headiness of the past couple of songs by grounding herself back to the present moment, offering even simpler instructions than the opening “Stretch/ Move/ Pose/ Groove.” Sure, the refrain might just be her repeating the word “Walk,” but it’s followed by Remy using the Greek word for “descent,” which, as a Greek person, is quite funny: “I was gratified to find/ Katabasis was not his vibe.” What good is there in journeying to the underworld when “eternity is everywhere”? Of course eternity, under these conditions, is simply marked by the point your feet fall off, “savouring every stride,” or “just two-footing time.” Or just being young. Either way, it’s quite a vibe.

6. Bookends

Surprisingly, ‘The Walking Song’ and ‘Bookends’ were co-written with the same person, Edwin de Goeij. But you get why the latter – a 12-minute psychedelic ballad that reflects on the death of her friend and Power Trip frontman Riley Gale through a reading of John Carey’s Eyewitness to History – was the lead single. It’s an unconventional lead single not just in its sprawl, complexity, and surreal flow, but because it is a uniquely unconventional way of paying tribute. “70,000 men, why am I still wondering where Riley went?” she sings. It could be a figure plucked from today’s media cycle or one of the firsthand accounts of historic events documented in the book, yet the philosophical quandary remains: why does this one person – someone whose life wasn’t even closely entwined with Remy’s – weigh so heavy on her mind? U.S. Girls double down on the absurdity of it by segueing into a disco groove for the song’s most vocally potent section, in which Remy delivers one of her most primal, embittered performances. It may not sound like metal, let alone the kind Gate made with his band, but it’s heavy.

7. Emptying the Jimador

After the wide, disorienting scope of ‘Bookends’, U.S. Girls zoom back into a specific, though still disorienting, moment: a performance and after-party at Toronto’s legendary Massey Hall, in which her tequila consumption prompts an interrogation of the artist’s very relationship with alcohol. “It’s not the bottle I adore/ It’s the way/ It makes me say just what I mean,” she admits, and the evidence is in the songwriting itself, the directness of lines like “Still if language is a gift/ I’ll always be the shoplifting.” Her cadence is forthright yet somber, the feeling magnified by a spare rhythm section and languid guitar. For just a few minutes, it takes you somewhere else entirely.

8. Pay Streak

Rather than filtering a current event through several historic ones, Remy and her co-writer on the album’s penultimate song, Canadian folk musician Kim Beggs, focus on the Canadian gold rush through the perspective of a worker waiting tables in the country’s westernmost territory. There are a few lyrics that stand out – “My heart is camped out/ On that frosty road of truth” – but despite another stirring harmonica performance, the song itself feels a little undercooked.

9. No Fruit

Slinky and a little silly, you could look at ‘No Fruit’ as an argument finally unfurling. You can certainly hear it: the thumping bass, the wah-ed up guitar, the confrontational bite of Remy’s poeticism: “Man, if you don’t plant with the moon in mind/ You will surely suffer shallow roots.” But you could cut the song out much earlier, when Remy warns, “You better hope/ That’s not the last thing you say to me,” and get the point. In fact, those first three words alone are sufficient.