The War on Drugs are back with ‘Who’s That’, their first new music in four years. The stirring, steadily explosive single comes paired with a Max Flick-directed video, which you can check out below.
“’Who’s That’ was written in 10 minutes somewhere between first coffee and school drop off,” band leader Adam Granduciel explained in a press release. “It’s a song about trying to love yourself despite things we can’t always control, like the anxiety, depression and self-doubt that may stand in the way of living the life we truly desire.”
The War on Drugs’ last album was 2021’s I Don’t Live Here Anymore. Last year, Granduciel additionally co-produced and performed across Sam Fender’s People Watching.
Lucy Dacus has announced a reissue of her debut album, No Burden, to celebrate its 10th anniversary. It arrives on December 4, and today, the singer-songwriter has unveiled the previously unreleased fan-favourite ‘No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye’, which was recorded with Adrian Olsen and guitarist Alan Good Parker. Check it out below.
A campaign can begin in many places: on a rough sketch, a passing thought, or an image stored up for later. Soon, that humble start can appear on screens, city walls, social media feeds, and magazine pages. Though the format can vary, a great idea should sound familiar in any context in which people hear it.
Tianyi Xie spends much of her time helping ideas make that journey. As a Senior Art Director at BBDO Chicago, she develops campaign concepts and shapes how they look and feel from the first presentation to the finished work. Her projects have involved brands connected with Brown-Forman, Bayer, and Mars Wrigley.
Her own journey into advertising began with a camera. It later took her from China to the United States and into creative rooms where she gradually learned to trust her instincts and speak up for the ideas she believed in.
Discovering a Feel for Images
Xie began taking photographs in high school after her parents gave her a camera. She shared the images on Instagram, where people began commenting on her work and asking how she had captured certain shots.
She had yet to study photography formally, but she already understood how light, composition, and emotion could work together. Much of it felt intuitive.
Over time, individual photographs began to feel limiting. Xie wanted to use her visual instincts on something larger, with more room for storytelling and problem-solving. Advertising gave her that space. It connected creative decisions to a clear purpose and allowed one idea to take different forms across several channels.
That shift gave her photography a wider context. A strong image still mattered, though it now belonged to a campaign with an audience, a strategy, and a larger visual identity.
Learning to Think Across Formats
Xie’s approach to work took root at Michigan State University, where she graduated with a BA in Creative Advertising, an Art Direction concentration, in 2019.
The course was practical in nature since its inception. Students wrote campaigns, answered real-life briefs, pitched clients, and produced work for film, print, digital, and other media. Xie also learned graphic design and photography, developing her understanding of typography, color, lighting, camera angles, and composition.
Together, these subjects trained her to see a campaign as a connected body of work. A commercial and a social post might require different creative choices, but audiences should still be able to recognize that they belong to the same idea.
Xie later worked at Güd Marketing and FCB Chicago. At Güd, she contributed to statewide public-information campaigns. Her work at FCB included health and wellness brands. She was also part of the creative team working onKotex’s “Own Your Flow” platform, contributing to its launch film and campaign activations.
Finding the Look of a Campaign
At BBDO Chicago, Xie often becomes involved while an idea is still taking shape. She works alongside her copywriter partner to turn a brief into a campaign concept. From there, she helps define how that concept should look and feel. For Xie, a good campaign makes people feel something. “If a piece of work leaves people with nothing in their chest, it hasn’t done its job,” Xie says.
One of her most substantial recent projects was Extra’s “Chew Into It.” The campaign introduced Chewbert, a mascot resembling a piece of chewed gum. Xie developed the platform through its national launch, establishing its design system and art-directing assets for film, photography, social media, and a mural activation.
A character such as Chewbert gives a campaign a recognizable center, but every execution still has its own demands. A mural works at a different scale from a phone screen. Film brings movement, timing, and sound into the picture. Xie’s role involved adapting the idea while keeping its personality intact.
She also served as a lead creative on the global “Claritin Clears” platform, overseeing production for key markets. Her other responsibilities have included projects connected with Brown-Forman brands and established consumer products.
Carrying the Idea Through Execution
Idea development is only one stage of a campaign. The original idea then has to move through shoots, edits, client feedback, deadlines, and the needs of different platforms.
Xie works with directors, photographers, animators, and post-production teams during that process. Depending on the project, she may guide a live-action shoot, review large-format creative, or discuss how styling and color should support the intended mood.
Clear vision and communication matters here. Everyone involved must clearly understand what is critical and where they can be flexible. Art direction becomes an endless stream of creative decisions, ranging from big choices to small ones, that can take just a few seconds on screen.
The work also calls for creative agility. A director’s treatment or production realities can reshape how an idea unfolds, and collaboration often reveals possibilities that were not visible in the first sketch or moodboard. Xie’s responsibility is to keep the core vision anchored while allowing those discoveries to improve it.
Learning to Speak Up
The most challenging thing for Xie to learn was confidence. Imposter syndrome often came up in her early career when she needed to sell a big idea or explain a creative choice to senior stakeholders.
“Confidence doesn’t arrive before action; it’s built through repetition,” she reflects.
She started to take presentations seriously as another mode of the creative process. She carefully planned and rehearsed what she wanted to say about the visual intention and took every opportunity to speak to clients, even when it was uncomfortable for her. Each presentation made the next one more manageable.
Her willingness to question familiar answers reaches back further. Xie grew up in China and moved to the United States alone at 16. Living in a new country demanded resilience and brought pressure to fit in. She eventually decided to put more energy into strengthening her own creative perspective than hiding the qualities that made her different.
The independent streak she had as a child now helps her examine briefs from less predictable angles. Xie hopes to become a Creative Director and produce meaningful, award-winning work while making room for curiosity, health, and enjoyment throughout her career.
“My creative process is a lot of love and also a lot of labour,” Xie reflects. “It’s exhausting sometimes, but it’s also a privilege to live a life doing what you love.”
Besides melody, harmony, rhythm, beat, and bass, lyrics are what make songs ormusic captivate listeners. And often, people wonder what it takes to be able to write lyrics that work. Especially when you know you’re not as gifted when it comes to songwriting as Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Joni Mitchell. In 2026, it turns out you don’t necessarily have to be. Because AI tools for writing music lyrics can give you just the push you need.
Sometimes words won’t come. The hook sounds forced. One line sounds too cheesy. But withAI tools, you can get help with writing lyrics or even all the way to a finished track. And using them doesn’t make the creative process any less valid. A study fromBerklee College found that 31% of surveyed musicians used AI to generate lyrics.
Here are five tools to choose from that keep the words flowing.
Top Five Best AI Tools for Writing Music Lyrics
Suno
Suno houses a powerful lyric workspace. One that lets users fully generate lyrics with natural-language instructions. They only have to type and describe the topic and theme of the song. Suno writes structured verses, a chorus, and a bridge. On the other hand, songwriters who have already written lyrics can paste them into the chat and have the AI enhance them. But lyric generation isn’t the only impressive part of the pipeline. It can then turn those lyrics into a complete song with vocals and production.
Key Features:
Full control over the AI-generated lyrics
Supports a wide range of genres, moods, and vocal styles
AI chat for refining lines, rhymes, and sections
Pricing:
Free Package
Pro Package – $10 per month
Premier Package – $30 per month
Real Use Case:
Independent songwriters can write a two-line prompt and have Suno complete unfinished verses. They can also quickly produce song demos by having the AI create a finished track before recording a commercial version.
LyricStudio
Image Credit: LyricStudio
LyricStudio skips music generation entirely and pours its capabilities into songwriting. But it’s not a lyric generator. LyricStudio works more like a writing partner. The process begins with the AI asking users to define the topic and the genre. For the foundation of the lyrics, users can either start from scratch or use Verse Gen to generate the initial verse or chorus. With the provided guidelines, LyricStudio helps users develop lyrics line by line. It does so by giving smart suggestions for rhymes, phrasing, and synonyms.
Key Features:
Built-in thesaurus and rhyme dictionary
Supports multiple writers collaborating
AI assistant for brainstorming
Pricing:
Free Trial
Pro Package – $9.99 per month
Gold Package – $16.65 per month
Real Use Case:
LyricStudio enables duos to get over the songwriting slump. They can feed it their first verse in and explore the AI’s relevant suggestions or let Verse Gen make a complete first pass that they can edit afterward.
Udio
Udio puts emphasis on deep creative control when approaching the process of writing music lyrics. It begins with having the user describe the nature of the song in detail. That includes specifying the topic and theme. To further match the user’s vision, Udio lets them choose a specific mood and style. It then offers tools to generate the full song, including lyrics. For more adjustments, it has a built-in editor that lets songwriters revise specific lines, verses, or sections.
Key Features:
Quick lyrics and song generation for testing musical directions
A library of generated output for later revisiting
Creative workspace for manually editing lyrics
Pricing:
Free Package
Standard Package – $10 per month
Pro Package – $30 per month
Real Use Case:
Songwriters planning to make a moody pop track could generate breakup-themed lyrics and a song using Udio. After listening to the output, they can rewrite the verse to match their intended emotion better.
Lyrical Labs
Image Credit: Lyrical Labs
Lyrical Labs sits at the sweet spot between lyric generation and a songwriting partner. Users just need to enter a topic, genre, artist reference, and creativity level. The AI returns a full song, complete with verses, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, and an outro. Writing Station is one of Lyrical Labs’ standout offerings. Songwriters can paste sections of the generated lyrics and input specific instructions for improvement. Like adding more detail or improving rhymes. Next line suggestions and related word search are also available.
Key Features:
Built-in smart dictionary for finding relevant words
Supports over 100 languages
AI companion for chat-based back-and-forth collaboration
Pricing:
Free Package
Hobbyist Package – $25 per month
Songwriter Package – $70 per month
Professional Package – $245 per month
Real Use Case:
Lyrical Labs can help aspiring hip-hop artists write the lyrics they want. They can define the topic and genre and specify artists within modern hip-hop as inspiration. Afterward, they get a rough draft to chop up for their own bars.
MusicGPT
MusicGPT includes an AI chat workspace where users can enter prompts to generate a complete set of lyrics. To make sure the output aligns with the intended creative vision, they just need to make the instructions clear and detail what the song is about. This makes MusicGPT excel at turning a short idea, story, or mood into structured lyrics. Beyond that, the AI tool is also capable of pairing the lyrics with AI vocals and instrumentals.
Key Features:
Broad library of AI-generated outputs for inspiration
Turning short concepts into lyric drafts
Supports text-to-speech workflow
Pricing:
Free Package
Plus Package – $11.99 per month
Pro Package – $21.99 per month
Ultra Package – $49.99 per month
Real Use Case:
A newbie songwriter hired to write a rushed jingle for an advertisement can make use of MusicGPT to speed up the process. They can provide the product, audience, and desired mood, then generate lyrics instantly.
Choosing the Best AI Tools for Writing Music Lyrics in 2026
With AI tools for writing music lyrics within reach, the blank page may no longer be so daunting. Suno, LyricStudio, Udio, Lyrical Labs, and Music GPT help you write a killer chorus, a catchy verse, the right number of syllables, or a way out of writer’s block.
When choosing, always put your creative goals, level of experience, and preferred workflow into consideration. More importantly, be mindful of the AI tool’s terms and conditions when planning to publish the output commercially. Because when the last line hits, AI should be treated as a songwriting partner. Not a replacement.
What do scanning, modelling, replication, prediction, memory and planning have in common? Each creates a version of reality through which something can be viewed, entered or used. A building may be encountered through a digital model before it is physically reached. An inaccessible landscape can become legible through remote sensing, while a disappeared place may return through archives, reconstruction or memory.
Yet these versions do more than provide access. Each selects and organises what it represents, and eventually enters the decisions made around it. Reality Overwriting, held at Indra Gallery in London from 31 July to 4 August 2026, brought together thirteen artists and spatial practitioners to examine this movement. Across the exhibition, representations gradually shift from ways of seeing reality towards processes that participate in its formation.
This begins with technologies that make otherwise inaccessible realities visible. Claude Dutson’s The Platform reconstructs Meta’s MPK20 campus from more than 3,500 publicly available photographs and video stills. Dutson has never entered the building, yet OSINT, PAI and Unreal Engine allow these dispersed fragments to become a navigable environment. The work reverses an existing imbalance of visibility, turning information circulating through digital platforms into a means of examining the architecture of the company behind them.
Tiancheng Zhao’s Operational Landscapes extends this question from architecture to territory. Developed through research into Camp Century and nuclear waste governance, its suspended aluminium images combine remote sensing with environmental information. Glacial movement, contamination and long-term risk acquire visual form through technical systems that also participate in monitoring and planning. Here, representation already carries an operational role.
Wimolrat Poolsiri’s Para-orama complicates this confidence in technological vision. Using DJI photography and 3D point-cloud scanning, she retains ruptures and distortions usually treated as errors. Bodies fragment and architectural space loses its apparent continuity. These failures expose the position of the machine itself, revealing that the technologies used to make space legible also construct particular versions of it.
Versions can also bring realities that have slipped from direct experience back into the present. Valeriia Chemerisova’s How to Circle Forward in Time? moves between archival photographs of Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, AI-generated reconstructions and image-to-model transformations. Historical periods overlap and reorganise one another, allowing the site to remain open to changing interpretations of its past and future.
A similar movement takes spatial form in Lia Penela’s Bishopsgate Low Level: Between the Visible, Invisible and Possible. The London site has remained inaccessible for more than half a century. Penela works from surviving structures, vegetation and lines of sight, translating them through drawing and modelling into a possible public landscape. Reconstruction becomes a way of carrying what remains into what may come next.
Shirin Naveed’s Black Country to Bhangra brings another history into material presence. Tracing Bhangra from Punjabi harvest traditions through post-war migration to Smethwick, the project connects music with industrial labour and architecture through film, etched steel and South Asian metalwork. Her living counter-archive gives migrant cultural experience a spatial role within the history of British deindustrialisation. Across these works, reconstruction changes the present by determining which histories can regain form and how they can continue to act within a place.
Elsewhere, the exhibition brings this process closer to the object and the body. Madeleina Foley’s The Good is Goodremoves a section of Victorian architecture from its familiar setting and reconstructs it inside the gallery. Once detached from the street, the replica acquires a different scale, function and relationship with the viewer. Copying becomes productive, giving an existing form another spatial reality.
Xuening Wang’s Impossible Reality makes this feedback immediate. Participants observe themselves through a screen with slight latency and gradually adjust their posture according to the delayed image. Each bodily response returns to the screen and influences the next movement. A mediated version of the body therefore becomes one of the conditions producing physical behaviour.
Kawai Chan’s Red locates this process inside perception. A continuous red screen is accompanied by narration and music, leaving viewers to construct absent people and spaces through their own memory. MemoryPics Studio’s Sensory Communion moves from individual perception into global infrastructure, considering how supply chains translate land, labour and embodied experience into information. Together, these works show reality being shaped through systems of perception that operate both intimately and across vast networks.
The final movement of the exhibition concerns versions that actively propose what reality might become. Robin Swartz’s Ports of Return reconfigures the cocoa warehouse in Côte d’Ivoire as infrastructure for local processing and trade. Maps and logistical interfaces first reveal how land and labour are organised across distance, while the architectural proposal intervenes in that structure by redistributing decision-making and economic value.
Shirel Tzfania’s Situated Rituals begins from a very different source. Iranian Jewish domestic rituals, family archives and personal memories are translated into textiles, drawings and installation. Knowledge carried through food, gathering and climate-responsive domestic practices becomes material for contemporary architectural thinking. Here, memory functions as a design resource with consequences for future space.
Songyan (Edwin) Tan’s Egg Park completes this movement through a particularly clear feedback loop. Lost towers, maps and urban fragments from Bologna are reorganised into a proposed public landscape, which is then developed as a VR environment. Twelve participants move through the virtual park while gaze, route choice and hesitation are recorded. Their responses return through Python and Grasshopper to influence geometry, slopes and visual cues. Historical traces generate a model, the model produces behaviour, and that behaviour reshapes the future design.
Across Reality Overwriting, a version begins as a means of encountering reality, and gradually gains the ability to organise it. Images define what can be seen, reconstruction determines how the past returns, mediated environments influence bodies, and models enter decisions about future spaces. Reality therefore emerges through an ongoing exchange with the forms created to represent it. The exhibition asks what happens when these versions become embedded deeply enough in everyday life that encountering the world also means encountering the interpretations already shaping it.
Curatorial Team
Lead Organizer / Curator Yu He
Co-Curators Tan Yuran (Ryan) Guodong Yang
Design Directors Jiawei Wan Neko Zhang
Visual Designers Junyi Liu
Exhibition Installation
Huicong Wang, Yi Zhou, Zihao Wan
Participating Artists
Claude Dutson Kawai Chan Lia Penela Madeleina Foley MemoryPics Studio Robin Swartz Shirin Naveed Shirel Tzfania Songyan (Edwin) Tan Tiancheng Zhao Valeriia Chemerisova Wimolrat Poolsiri Xuening Wang
Reality Overwriting | Artwork List：
Valeriia Chemerisova, How to Circle Forward in Time?, 2025
Wimolrat Poolsiri, Para-orama, 2025
Claude Dutson, The Platform (Part 1 of Seeing Through the Walls of Silicon Valley), 2026
Xuening Wang, Impossible Reality, 2023
Madeleina Foley, The Good is Good, 2026
Tiancheng Zhao, Operational Landscapes: Sensing, Mapping, and the Governance of Nuclear Territory, 2025
Robin Swartz, Ports of Return: Rerouting Value in the Afterlives of Extraction, 2026
Shirel Tzfania, Situated Rituals, 2026
Shirin Naveed, Black Country to Bhangra, 2026
Songyan (Edwin) Tan, Do You Want to Join Egg Park, 2026
Kawai Chan, Red, 2026
MemoryPics Studio, Sensory Communion, 2025
Lia Penela, Bishopsgate Low Level: Between the Visible, Invisible and Possible, 2026
A truck crash can turn an ordinary day upside down, leaving you to deal with injuries, missed work, and questions about what happens next. On Long Island, at least 163 people died in roadway crashes in 2025, while Nassau County recorded 78 traffic fatalities, up from 67 the year before. When a large commercial truck is involved, determining exactly what went wrong can require looking beyond the crash itself.
Figuring out who is responsible after a truck accident is not always as simple as pointing to the driver. The trucking company, vehicle owner, maintenance provider, cargo loader, or another motorist could also share fault, depending on the circumstances. If you are dealing with the aftermath of a crash, a Long Island truck accident lawyer can help review the evidence and identify every party that may be legally responsible. This matters because each party can have different insurance coverage and legal obligations. Confirming how multiple parties may contribute to a crash can make it easier to see how liability works in a truck accident case.
Multiple Parties Can Share Responsibility
A truck accident claim often involves more than the driver behind the wheel. The trucking company, vehicle owner, cargo loader, maintenance contractor, or manufacturer can also face liability when their conduct caused the collision. Identifying every responsible party matters because each defendant could provide separate insurance coverage and evidence. A careful investigation examines the truck, the driver’s records, company policies, and all events that occurred before the crash.
A truck accident investigation should examine driver qualifications, dispatch instructions, inspection reports, maintenance logs, cargo documents, and available electronic data. Victims who need guidance about New York claims can consult a truck accident lawyer to assess how those records connect each party’s conduct to the collision. That review can help identify additional defendants before evidence disappears or insurers influence the account.
The Truck Driver
A driver can face liability for speeding, distracted driving, impaired driving, unsafe lane changes, or violations of federal and state trucking rules. Fatigue also matters when a driver exceeds permitted hours or drives without taking the required breaks or rest.
The driver’s statements, citations, phone records, logbooks, and electronic logging data can help establish what happened. Employment status alone does not determine responsibility. The facts surrounding the crash also control that issue.
The Trucking Company
A trucking company can be responsible for an employee’s negligent driving while discharging their work duties. The company can also face direct liability for negligent hiring, inadequate training, poor supervision, or failing to remove an unsafe driver from service.
Company records can often prove whether management knew about prior violations, medical concerns, problems with driver’s licenses, or repeated safety complaints. A company that pressured a driver to meet an unsafe delivery schedule faces further scrutiny if that pressure contributed to the collision.
The Truck Owner or Leasing Company
The truck owner or leasing company can share liability when defective equipment, neglected repairs, or unsafe leasing practices contributed to the crash. Ownership records help determine which business controlled inspections, repairs, and equipment decisions.
A lease agreement can help divide responsibilities between the owner and the carrier. Investigators therefore review the written contract, inspection history, repair invoices, and communications about mechanical problems.
The Cargo Loader or Shipper
Improperly loaded cargo can shift, fall, exceed weight limits, or affect a truck’s steering and braking. A shipper, warehouse, broker, or loading contractor can face liability when careless loading caused those conditions.
Evidence includes bills of lading, weight tickets, photographs, loading instructions, and the cargo’s condition after the crash. The party that physically loaded the trailer is not always the only responsible party. Instructions from another business can also establish fault.
Maintenance Providers and Parts Manufacturers
These claims require preservation of the failed component and a detailed examination by qualified professionals. Here are some examples:
A repair shop can face liability when defective work leaves a truck unsafe. Examples include improperly serviced brakes, loose wheel components, or missed defects during an inspection.
A parts manufacturer can be liable when a defective tire, brake component, steering part, or other product fails during normal use.
Replacing or discarding parts can destroy evidence needed to determine the true cause of the failure.
How Courts Allocate Fault
New York generally applies comparative negligence rules. A court can assign percentages of fault among multiple defendants and the injured person. The final recovery then reflects the injured person’s assigned share of responsibility.
Each defendant can present separate arguments about causation and damages. One party might dispute the driver’s conduct, while another challenges the claimed medical losses. A strong claim therefore connects each act to a particular injury, property loss, or financial expense.
Evidence That Identifies Responsible Parties
Prompt evidence preservation can affect a claim’s outcome. Attorneys often seek driver qualification files, drug and alcohol testing records, maintenance documents, dispatch messages, surveillance video, onboard data, and inspection materials.
Witness accounts also matter, especially when a truck changed lanes, stopped suddenly, or carried unsecured cargo. Medical records connect the collision to physical injuries, while wage records support lost-income claims. Photographs should show the vehicles, roadway, visible injuries, and damaged equipment before repairs begin.
Conclusion
A truck accident claim should begin with a liability investigation rather than an assumption that the driver alone caused the harm. Available records can reveal company negligence, loading errors, equipment failures, or unsafe maintenance.
Injured people should preserve photographs, medical records, contact information, and insurance correspondence, then seek legal advice before giving a recorded statement. A prompt review helps identify every responsible party. It also protects the evidence needed for a fair financial recovery.
There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
Your Old Droog – ‘I Don’t Care’ [feat. Georgia Anne Muldrow and Flying Lotus]
Your Old Droog has announced a new solo album, Bread & Butter, which is out September 25 and features contributions from Evidence, Oddisee, Conductor Williams, and more. Along with the news, he’s shared the snappy, hypnotic ‘I Don’t Care’, which boasts production from Flying Lotus and vocals by Georgia Anne Muldrow.
Gilla Band – ‘Alogia’
Dublin noise quartet Gilla Band have previewed their upcoming LP Pugnello with a new song, ‘Alogia’. Following lead single ‘Placeholder’, the dancey, whirring track arrives with a video directed by Cuan Roche. “Alogia means poverty of speech linked to mental health conditions,” vocalist Dara Kiely explained. “I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia while writing the lyrics. I thought I could just walk off the old mental illness but alas!”
Purple Pilgrims – ‘Innocence Lost’
Purple Pilgrims – the New Zealand-based dream-pop duo of sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon – have announced their third album, Given to the Night, arriving November 27 via AD 93. To mark the announcement, they’ve shared the spacious, mesmerizing ‘Innocence Lost’, along with the statement: “It often feels like our songs are little messages from our futures selves, communications from the other side of things. The meaning tends to reveal itself with time. This song was very much that. Heartbreak is an ultimate inevitability of love – the discomfort in trying to accept that duality, and the idea that even at one’s lowest ebb, it’s still possible to maintain a spark of hope, an endless fascination with life. Night as a metaphor in various guises appears throughout Given to the Night – in this song nighttime feels abundant with magic, mystery, possibility – albeit coloured with sorrow. ‘Innocence Lost’ is a smoldering spark of hope in the darkness, the feeling that although it’s pitch-black there might be something glowing just beyond, out of view.”
John Legend – ‘Daylight’
John Legend’s last album was an unlikely collaboration with Sufjan Stevens, who produced 2024’s My Favorite Dream. Now, he’s teamed up with Pharrell Williams for the new album Muse, which is led by the single ‘Daylight’. “I think my repertoire has always been very diverse, but the piano-driven ballads have gotten the most traction throughout my career,” Legend explained. “I wanted to shake up the formula and do something fresh and new.”
Ratboys – ‘Fix My Brain’ (The Marked Men Cover)
Ratboys have today announced a deluxe edition of their latest album, Singin’ to an Empty Chair, to coincide with the release of their NPR Tiny Desk Concert. The expanded album features covers of tracks by bands including PUP, Ducks Ltd., Wild Pink, Bad Bad Hats, and Free Range. Today, they’ve shared a raucous take on ‘Fix My Brain’ by The Marked Men, recorded during a SiriusXM Session. “The guys, especially Marcus, were already long-time fans of The Marked Men (and of Jeff Burke’s other band Radioactivity), but when I first heard it more recently, ‘Fix My Brain’ was a total revelation to me,” singer Julia Steiner recalled. “I hyper-fixated on the song in ways that are pretty rare for me these days: I would find excuses to steal away and listen to it on repeat, and, when we got home from tour, I immediately sat down with my acoustic guitar to learn the chord changes.”
Wishy – ‘Mona Lisa’
The rollout for Wishy’s new LP Nature’s Pill continues with ‘Mona Lisa’, which follows ‘All The Rage’, ‘Lovesick, and ‘Sensational’. Singer/guitarist Kevin Krauter described the track as such: “A courtroom drama starring love and apathy. Was all that pleasure worth all that pain? Will the opposing witness withstand cross-examination? You be the judge!”
Sports Team – ‘Billy’
Sports Team have returned with a rambunctious new single, ‘Billy’, which comes paired with a music video. “It’s a love letter to getting desperately, insanely drunk at a carpeted pub on a Tuesday night,” songwriter Rob Knaggs explained. “We recorded it live at RAK studios over the first weeks of summer with Seth Evans and Adele Phillips. It felt like a return to how we made the first album. Fast, and loose and loud.”
M(h)aol – ‘Scam Manifesto”
M(h)aol have dropped a twitchy one-off single called ‘Scam Manifesto’. “‘Scam Manifesto’ is a song I wrote during one of my semi-regular social media breaks,” singer/drummer Constance Keane explained. “My entire feed was ‘how to lose the last 5 lbs’ and obituaries for people I didn’t know. It’s about the guilt I feel about my own hypocrisy. Publicly, I say that as a woman it’s my right to be as ugly and old as I want and still value myself, while privately I was consistently fixating on a list of things I would change about my appearance. It’s about having one rule for others and another one for yourself.”
Charlotte Greve – ‘Lighter Blue’
Brooklyn-based, German-born artist Charlotte Greve has unveiled ‘Lighter Blue’, the entrancing final preview of her debut album WATERBODIES. “Tiptoeing around, feeling lost and ungrounded because something essential is missing,” Greve said in a statement. “In that state, doubt about all things arises, making space for insecurity to flourish. The moment music arrives again, suddenly everything makes sense, the path is lit and you can just walk on it. The forever torch, showing you the way to live your life, gifting you melodies that carry you through the day with purpose.”
Clara Mann – ‘Go Getter’
Clara Mann wrote ‘Go Getter’, the latest single off her forthcoming Wishbone, after cancelling a show for reasons out of her control. She remembers calling a friend who “had dreamt of her last night, well and laughing, in a room full of light somewhere in Europe,” according to a press release. “I really felt in that moment that I was not without hope,” Mann explained, “I wasn’t ok, I couldn’t see my way out of this, but someone else could.”
Kyla Marlena – ’21’
Toronto-based cellist and songwriter Kyla Marlena has announced her debut full-length, Hold Time, arriving November 6 via Idee Fixe. It’s led by the cathartic opening track ’21’. “To me, this record feels alive. Like it has a pulse,” Marlena remarked. “Its dynamic within and between songs, it can be unpredictable.”
Purple Pilgrims – the New Zealand-based dream-pop duo comprising sisters Clementine and Valentine Nixon – have announced a new album, Given to the Night. It’s set to arrive on November 23 via AD 93. Check out the mesmerizing lead single ‘Innocence Lost’ below.
Opening up about the new song, the duo said in a statement:
It often feels like our songs are little messages from our futures selves, communications from the other side of things. The meaning tends to reveal itself with time. This song was very much that.
Heartbreak is an ultimate inevitability of love – the discomfort in trying to accept that duality, and the idea that even at one’s lowest ebb, it’s still possible to maintain a spark of hope, an endless fascination with life. Night as a metaphor in various guises appears throughout Given to the Night – in this song nighttime feels abundant with magic, mystery, possibility – albeit coloured with sorrow.
‘Innocence Lost’ is a smoldering spark of hope in the darkness, the feeling that although it’s pitch-black there might be something glowing just beyond, out of view.
While crafting the new record, the sisters deleted social media and retreated into the woods of their native New Zealand. The title can be read in two ways, according to the duo: “Being taken by, or being inclined towards nighttime, preferring its blurry cloak of shadows to the harsh light of day; or giving oneself up to night, in sacrifice, letting go of fear and melting into the darkness.”
Given to the Night Cover Artwork:
Given to the Night Tracklist:
1. Innocence Lost
2. Outside
3. Look to the Moon
4. Angel (Passing through this Scene)
5. Love Arrived
6. Echo
7. Wherever You Go, There You Are
8. Receive
9. Windows
10. Universal Love
11. Unseen
John Legend is about to follow up his Sufjan Stevens-produced 2024 LP My Favorite Dream with a new one produced entirely by Pharrell Williams. Muse is set for release on October 23 via Republic Records, and the lead single ‘Daylight’ is out now. Give it a listen below.
“I think my repertoire has always been very diverse, but the piano-driven ballads have gotten the most traction throughout my career,” Legend reflected in a press release. “I wanted to shake up the formula and do something fresh and new.” He continued: “There are plenty of artists who get to a point in their career where they don’t make anything new. We can just play the hits; we can stay in our comfort zone. But I believe it’s important to keep the mindset that I have to continue to prove myself. I wanted this album to have that sense of urgency — to feel like something that needed to be made and is fully worthy of my audience’s attention.”
The new album took shape after Legend appeared on Let God Sort ‘Em Out, the 2026 LP by Clipse, who deliver Muse‘s sole guest feature. “When Pharrell called me, I thought, let’s do this,” Legend recalled. “A lot of people would have imagined we’d done something like this already, but we hadn’t. It felt past due.”
He added, “Pharrell’s idea from the beginning was that we would create something with all of these classic, cinematic elements, this Black James Bond aesthetic, but with a modern backbeat at its foundation. You can hear traces of me and traces of him, but it sounds like something new for the both of us. The combination of me and Pharrell, on paper, I think, is a good idea. And the execution is even better.”
Muse Cover Artwork:
Muse Tracklist:
1. Muse [feat. Pharrell Williams]
2. Pray For Ya
3. Her Introduction
4. Her [feat. Pharrell Williams]
5. Daylight
6. Get Back [feat. Pharrell Williams]
7. Are You OK? [feat. Pharrell Williams]
8. Under The Bridge Introduction
9. Under The Bridge
10. Next Time [feat. Pharrell Williams]
11. Bodies On The Floor – Taps Introduction
12. Bodies On The Floor [feat. Clipse]
13. Doing Me
14. Fireflies [feat. Pharrell Williams]
15. Everything
16. Sail Off
In contemporary glass practice, technical complexity is only one measure of significance. Equally important is an artist’s ability to bring material, process and lived experience into a meaningful relationship. For artists at the beginning of their professional careers, this relationship is rarely fully formed from the outset. It develops through sustained practice, as technical decisions acquire conceptual purpose and the behaviour of the material begins to redirect the work. Gao Yanjie’s practice over the past two years reflects such a development. Drawing on familiar motifs, including greenhouse plants, sweets and seeds, she uses enlargement, fragmentation and reassembly to translate family relationships, sensory memory and the tensions of personal growth into glass. From Greenhouse Plants to Sweet Teeth and Fumble, her work reveals a gradual shift from readily legible symbolism towards a more integrated material language.
Gao graduated with first-class honours from the University of Sunderland’s BA (Hons) Artist Designer Maker: Glass and Ceramics programme. Working primarily in blown glass, she has developed a strong foundation in hot-glass processes. Studio experience, specialist courses and exhibitions in China, the United Kingdom and the United States have also introduced her to different working methods and studio cultures. More importantly, these experiences have encouraged her to move beyond technique as an end in itself and to consider glassmaking as a means of examining personal experience, uncertainty and constraint.
Greenhouse Plants (2025) is an early instance of Gao translating her experience of family relationships into the language of glass. Comprising five blown-glass sculptures, the series places red, plant-like forms within vessels that both host and contain them. This relationship gives material expression to the coexistence of care, expectation and constraint within family life. Although the red forms appear to press against or extend beyond imposed boundaries, they remain physically and visually connected to the vessels around them. This ambivalence prevents the work from becoming a straightforward narrative of confinement followed by escape. Rather than rejecting family ties, Gao considers how an individual might renegotiate personal boundaries without relinquishing emotional connection. Independence emerges not as a decisive rupture but as an ongoing negotiation between attachment and autonomy, shaped both within and against inherited structures.
Greenhouse Plants (2025). Blown and coldworked glass with cane work. Five pieces. Dimensions (H × W): 47 × 10 cm, 55 × 13 cm, 42 × 16 cm, 57 × 18 cm and 39 × 13 cm.
The optical properties of the opal glass reinforce this tension. As light is transmitted, diffused or obstructed, the visibility of the internal red forms changes according to the viewer’s position. Their partial concealment gives visual form to pressures within intimate relationships that may be strongly felt without being immediately visible. At this stage in Gao’s practice, the correspondence between vessel, plant and family structure remains relatively explicit. Even so, Greenhouse Plants establishes a concern that continues through her later work: internal growth unsettles external order, while established glassmaking processes are adapted to articulate personal experience.
In Sweet Teeth (2026), Gao turns from family relationships towards sensory memory and the emotional associations of sweetness. The work draws on childhood memories of sweet jars and the intense anticipation attached to their contents. Rather than reproducing particular confectionery, she isolates remembered qualities such as saturated colour, gloss, rounded forms and spiral patterns, then reconstructs them in glass. Filigrana cane creates the swirling linear detail, allowing technique to operate not merely as ornament but as a material equivalent of attraction, repetition and craving.
Sweet Teeth (2026). Blown and coldworked glass with filigrana cane. Three pieces, each approximately 7 × 3 cm.
In this work, sweets are associated with the direct pleasure of childhood, but they also suggest the adult use of sweetness as a temporary source of comfort under pressure. The series therefore occupies an unstable position between pleasure and dependence, gratification and excess. A seemingly light-hearted memory acquires a more ambivalent psychological character. Glass is particularly effective in sustaining this ambiguity. Its colour and lustre invite visual desire, while its hardness and fragility resist the softness, taste and consumption ordinarily associated with confectionery.
Compared with Greenhouse Plants, Sweet Teeth relies less heavily on the symbolic opposition between an enclosing vessel and the form held within it. Instead, colour, reflected light, pattern and scale act more directly on sensory recognition. The work marks an important transition in Gao’s practice because material effects begin to carry emotional meaning in their own right. At the same time, the series reveals a difficulty that remains productive rather than fully resolved. Its vivid colours and intricate surfaces can draw attention towards decorative appeal, potentially obscuring the less comfortable themes of dependence and psychological compensation. This tension identifies the work as transitional. Gao is beginning to use material qualities as carriers of affect while still developing a structure capable of binding personal memory, process and concept more tightly together.
In Fumble (2026), Gao moves away from the comparatively direct symbolism of her earlier work and towards an approach structured through process. The three seed-like sculptures combine blown forms with digitally modelled and waterjet-cut components. Although these methods establish a degree of precision, the final structures remain subject to temperature, timing and the changing viscosity of glass during hot assembly. The work therefore develops through negotiation between planning and material response rather than through the straightforward execution of a predetermined design.
Fumble (2026). Blown and coldworked glass with filigrana cane and waterjet-cut components. Three pieces, each approximately 35 × 20 cm.
The visible variations between the components are not simply technical imperfections. They record the practical judgements required as digital design is translated into hot glass. Gao’s role shifts from executing a fixed model to responding to the material as the work develops. Technical control remains important, but it becomes conditional rather than absolute.
Seen alongside Greenhouse Plants and Sweet Teeth, Fumble marks a change in where meaning is located. Greenhouse Plants uses the recognisable relationship between vessel and plant to address care and constraint, while Sweet Teeth relies on colour, lustre and pattern to activate sensory memory. In Fumble, meaning emerges more directly through designing, cutting, heating and joining. Process no longer serves only to realise an image but becomes a means of testing and revising the artist’s original intentions.
It would therefore be premature, and critically unhelpful, to define Gao’s practice through a settled signature style. More significant at this stage is the changing relationship she establishes between experience and material. In the earlier works, established glass techniques organise form, colour and imagery. In Fumble, risk, irreversibility and the resistance of hot glass to predetermined plans become part of the work’s content. Technical skill is no longer presented primarily as evidence of mastery. It becomes a means of testing an idea and discovering its limits.
This trajectory is still developing. Some of the symbolic relationships remain explicit, and the interpretation of family, childhood and growth continues to be guided by the artist’s stated narratives. A future challenge will be to retain the specificity of lived experience while allowing greater interpretative space for both material and viewer. Nevertheless, the methodological shift visible in Fumble is substantial. Gao no longer treats glass simply as a medium through which a predetermined subject is communicated. She increasingly allows its physical properties, risks and transformations to redirect the work. Her practice occupies a productive space between inherited craft knowledge and contemporary artistic enquiry, in which technique, memory, judgement and contingency jointly determine how meaning takes form.
