Ben Marc Announces New Album Glass Effect, Shares New Song: Listen

Ricky Gardiner, a guitarist for Iggy Pop and David Bowie, has died. Iggy Pop and producer Tony Visconti shared the news on social media on Monday (May 16), with the former writing, “Dearest Ricky, lovely, lovely man, shirtless in your coveralls, nicest guy who ever played guitar. Thanks for the memories and the songs, rest eternal in peace.” A cause of death was not disclosed, but Gardiner’s longtime friend Visconti noted that the guitarist had been living with Parkinson’s disease. Ricky Gardiner was 73 years old.

With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Kendrick Lamar, the Smile, Ethel Cain, Leikeli47, Kevin Morby, Say Sue Me, Quelle Chris, and Phelimuncasi. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)

Burna Boy has shared a new song, “Last Last.” The Chopstix-produced track samples Toni Braxton’s 2000 single “He Wasn’t Man Enough” and will land on the Nigerian singer’s upcoming album Love, Damini. The song arrives with a music video directed by Burna Boy. Check it out below.

Arcade Fire appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon yesterday. The group performed their WE track “Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole),” watched over by a Big Brother–style eye on the moodily lit stage. Watch it happen below. Earlier this week, the band played a cover...

Last year, Los Angeles music collective Wild Up issued studio recordings of late composer Julius Eastman’s work Femenine. Now, the group is coming back with Julius Eastman, Vol. 2: Joy Boy, the second entry in its seven-volume anthology celebrating Eastman. The new album arrives June 17 via New Amsterdam. The collection includes never-before-recorded compositions such as “Joy Boy” and “Buddha.” Today, Wild Up have shared a recording of Eastman’s piece “Stay on It.” Find that below, and scroll down for the album art and tracklist.

The 2022 Billboard Music Awards were star-studded this year — and this one moment got everyone talking: Janet Jackson made a surprise appearance to present the Icon Award to her friend Mary J. Blige! The “Feedback” singer wore a deconstructed tuxedo look by Thom Browne, consisting of a tie, cropped jacket and skirt. Janet herself took home the Icon Award in 2018. Notably, the award has only been given out 11 times.

Too $hort has worked with a score of legendary producers throughout his almost 40-year career, from Jermaine Dupri and Lil Jon to Daz Dillinger and DJ Pooh. But one big-name beatsmith he passed up the opportunity to work with was Kanye West. During a recent interview with VladTV, the Bay...

Flo Milli is setting some boundaries. The Alabama native is known for hits like "In The Party," "May I," and "Not Friendly," and while she loves to see fans in the audience having a good time and turning up at her shows, she's not impressed with watching them snort lines from up on stage.

Benzino is once again airing out some family business. After previously calling 50 Cent the “first hip-hop rat,” and getting into various other conflicts with his daughter Coi Leray, the rapper has now name-dropped both of them in a Twitter tirade. On Sunday, Fif took to Instagram to...

Ghostly International and Secretly have announced the formation of All Flowers Group, a new group of record labels. In addition to Ghostly artists, All Flowers Group will also oversee the New York–based hip-hop and R&B label Drink Sum Wtr. The latter’s roster includes its first signee Deem Spencer and a single series featuring songs by Shelley FKA DRAM, Sol Galeano, and Wahid.

Japanese Breakfast has been announced as the musical guest for the May 21 episode of Saturday Night Live. Natasha Lyonne will make her hosting debut on the episode, which is also the Season 47 finale. Funny enough, it’ll mark the second straight SNL episode to feature a nominee for the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. This weekend, musical guest Post Malone will bring Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold onstage to play a new song.

Arcade Fire were the latest guests on the BBC radio series Live Lounge. Alongside airings of WE tracks for BBC 6 Music, the group covered Harry Styles’ recent single “As It Was,” from the forthcoming Harry’s House, for BBC Radio 2. Win Butler sang lead, with Régine Chassagne stepping up for the bridge. Watch the cover below, and scroll down to see them do “The Lightning I, II” and “Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole).”

Despite PC Music’s high-concept visuals, shapeshifting production, and ambitious collaborations with multinational beverage corporations, the aims of the label are modest. For founder A. G. Cook, running the boundary-pushing record label has always been about releasing music that feels honest and intimate, first and foremost. He told Interview Magazine that when he makes tracks, it’s as if his computer is an extension of himself. “My brain is just operating on a different level,” he said. “[My computer] feels like a part of me.” Over the years, he’s made it clear that if he and his collaborators are making “personal computer music,” the emphasis is first and foremost on the “personal.”

Despite the sweetness of their sound, Say Sue Me are an unstoppable force. The South Korean indie rockers wrote and recorded half of their international breakout, 2018’s When We Were Together, while their original drummer, Kang Semin, was in a coma; they called in another drummer to help finish the album, and the songs they recorded with him took on a wistful remembrance for their ailing friend. Right before the band’s first North American tour was set to kick off, around the end of 2019, Semin passed away. Still, they soldiered on. When the pandemic put a halt to their touring, the band kept working. With time to reflect on the whiplash of sudden success accompanied by the loss of a friend, they retreated to their Busan studio to work it all out. The band’s third LP, The Last Thing Left, is the result of their soul searching.

Adia Victoria has released a B-side from her latest album A Southern Gothic. Proceeds from “In the Pines”—which is available exclusively on Bandcamp—will benefit the Carolina Abortion Fund. “The song centers the stories of those who fall victim to the ideologies of emotionally stunted men,” Victoria said of the track in press materials. “I dedicate ‘In the Pines’ to every teenage girl who is desperately scratching at the walls of ideological imprisonment.” Find her full statement, as well as the new track, below.

Sudan Archives has shared a video for her new song “Selfish Soul.” She wrote the song with Dexter Story and Ben Dickey. In the Trey Lyons–directed clip, Sudan Archives plays her violin upside down on a pole and standing on a roof and dances in the mud with her girlfriends. Check it out below.

Burna Boy performed at the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday night (May 15), performing the Toni Braxton–sampling “Last Last” (from his forthcoming album Love, Damini) and the 2021 single “Kilometre.” Watch him take the stage in Las Vegas below. Burna Boy’s stop at the BBMAs...

When Thom Yorke introduced his new band at their first gig a year ago, he took a moment to explain their name. “Not the Smile as in ha ha ha,” he said, his faux laugh echoing eerily, “more the Smile of the guy who lies to you every day.” Of course, no one figured that the most uncannily accurate doomsayer of the modern age was taking a sharp left to clown town with his latest project, but the Smile are not just aimed at shifty politicians, either. Their pearly grins are myriad, taking inspiration from smiles of love and deceit, bloody smiles and blissful ones, smiles that mend and smiles that destroy. At 53, Yorke has seen them all. And once again, he’s battling the absurdity of existence the only way he knows how: by offering a salve for his anxieties without letting anyone off the hook for turning everything we hold dear into one big joke.

Pitchfork has partnered with the 2022 Tribeca Festival to present the first-ever Music Lounge. A slate of live performances from Onyx Collective, duendita, Show Me the Body, YL, Huerco S., Matt FX, and others will take place June 9-12 at Brooklyn club Baby’s All Right. The weekend will culminate with “How Long Gone” Live featuring hosts Chris Black and Jason Stewart with a live performance from experimental drummer Eli Keszler, followed by a “Battle of the Bands” contest and after party with Drunken Canal. Partners for the event include Diageo, UnitedMasters, Bulleit Frontier Whiskey, Crown Royal, Buchanan’s, and Johnnie Walker. Tickets are now on sale here.

Black Mirror will return to Netflix for a sixth season, Variety and Deadline report. The dystopian sci-fi series will likely follow a similar format to Season 5, which had three episodes, each running at just over an hour. Creators Charlie Booker and Annabel Jones are bringing the series back to Netflix, despite leaving the production company that owns the Black Mirror rights; their new company, Broke & Bones, eventually reached a deal with rightsholder Banijay to license the show to Netflix, Variety reports.