On AHHCade, PNAU’s forthcoming seventh studio album, the Australian electronic duo is going for the heart.
“There is a sense of belonging about music, about the journey we have taken. Both Peter and I and our collaborators, creating a home on the dancefloor, between the ears of the listener,” PNAU’s Nick Littlemore explains, as he introduces the new collection, due out July 31 via Sydney-based indie label etcetc, part of TMRW Music.
“We are making heart songs,” he continues. “While, yes, they have electronics and they have technology, they are essentially expressions of the heart.”
The fresh set houses the recently-released “Tu Corazon (Your Heart)” featuring Mexican rock act The Warning, alongside the slappy new single “Nirvana” with EARTHGANG and sadMONTH, which arrives, fully formed, today (May 8).
“Nirvana” is a collaboration up with Atlanta hip-hop duo EARTHGANG, and a first of its kind collab with sadMONTH, a new project from the creative mind of Littlemore and Toronto’s Dom Dias.
The tune “represents the birth of a new era,” notes Littlemore. “It’s fierce, feverish and harks back to the shape of punk electronic yet to come. Get ready to be uptight, upgrooved and unhinged for a new disorder.”
Adds EARTHGANG: “For ‘Nirvana’ we tapped the euphoric and enlightened energy with PNAU, and surfed the electro crush. We appreciate everybody who poured their energy into making it a banger.”
More “surprising” collaborations will be announced in due course, reps say.
PNAU is the project of high school besties Littlemore and Peter Mayes, and is the followup to 2024’s Sambanova. The way forward has been dotted with awards and hits. An international breakthrough came when PNAU joined forces with Elton John on the Rocket Man’s 2012 remix album Good Morning to the Night, which went to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart. PNAU and Elton teamed up again for the 2021 remix “Cold Heart” with Dua Lipa, and landed a bonafide global smash.
To support the new album, PNAU will embark on the Australian leg of their Nirvana Tour 2026 from next month. The East Coast regional run gets underway Friday, June 19 at Gilligan’s in Cairns, and wraps July 4 at Woodport Hotel, Erina.
Charli xcx is living the year of going all-out. With the release today of “Rock Music,” the British singer, songwriter and producer switches gears, cranks up the amps and rocks it with electric guitars.
One of those amps goes out the window at the top of the official music video. Shot in black and white, and directed by Aidan Zamiri, the clip follows Charli as she gets up to rock ‘n’ roll stuff, strutting around central Manhattan wearing fewer clothes than anyone else, smoking up a storm, and unleashing a moshpit.
At its musical core, “Rock Music” has a throwback edge, its guitar riff slotting into what is essentially a mid-paced electronic track in which Charli splices and dices her vocals in the chorus. No, it’s not heavy. “Rock Music” has more in common to Daft Punk than it does to Deep Purple.
Charli first teased her new era, new sound in an April interview with British Vogue, which premiered one of the new song’s lyrics: “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music.”
She told the publication, “if I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad. That’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.”
Charli has since clarified that she isn’t necessarily performing an about-face for what would be album No. 8. On Instagram, she recently shared a clip of herself in the studio and wrote, “a video of me making a song called ‘rock music’ that is not actually rock music which is funny because i never said i was making a rock album.”
“Rock Music” is Charli’s first release since the Wuthering Heights companion album arrived in February, and dropped in at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 chart. Before that, her 2024 Brat album peaked at No. 3 on the all-genres chart, peaked at No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart and ARIA Chart, and caught the zeitgeist.
Charli’s busy year includes a starring role in A24’s The Moment, based on her original idea and the first co-production from her new studio365 venture. Also, she appears in Daniel Goldhaber’s remake of the 1978 cult horror Faces of Death, Greg Araki’s erotic thriller I Want Your Sex, Cathy Yan’s independent film The Gallerist, Julia Jackman’s period fantasy 100 Nights Of Hero, Romain Gavras’ satirical action Sacrifice and Pete Ohs’ intimate drama Erupcja.
Stream “Rock Music” below and watch the official music video.
“Dis is so tight thank u for having me apart of it I love you Bhrisssssss,” Sexyy Red wrote in CB’s comments on Instagram May 5 in appreciation of being invited into his world for the album.
Out of the 27 songs, Brown included four singles — “Obvious,” “Fallin’,” “Holy Blindfold” and “It Depends” — which were previously released.
Chris Brown is slated to hit the road later this year for the blockbuster R&B Tour with Usher. Across 33 dates, the pair of R&B dignitaries will bring their influx of anthems to North American stadiums. The trek will kick off in Denver on June 26, and wrap up on Dec. 11 in Tampa Bay, Fla.
In between, the duo will be making stops in New Jersey, Detroit, D.C., Cleveland, Toronto, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami.
The 37-year-old recently welcomed a baby boy with influencer Jada Wallace in April, making Breezy a father of four. CB’s also dad to 11-year-old Royalty Brown, 6-year-old son Aeko Catori Brown and 4-year-old daughter Lovely Symphani Brown.
No one moves like Mick Jagger. Or sings like him. When the legendary Rolling Stones frontman stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jagger also showed his funny bone.
On Wednesday night, May 6, the “Satisfaction” singer stopped by for one of Fallon’s goofy sketches, a British soapie themed spot called Jacob’s Patience, in which he plays Tony, the shopkeeper at Hackney Diamonds, a chap who speaks in Stones lyrics and holds aloft mannequin arms.
“Pleased to meet you, I hope you guess my name,” he says at the top (quoting his band’s classic from 1968, “Sympathy For The Devil”.) No guesses needed; he’s wearing a nametag.
Jagger, 82, is gearing up another studio album with the Stones, the band’s 25th. As previously reported, the forthcoming release, Foreign Tongues, is due out July 10, featuring the core crew of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, along with a who’s who of rock music in support, including Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, The Cure frontman Robert Smith, and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith.
It’s fair to say, no one acts like Jagger, either. The rocker has an impressive filmography, including credits in 1970’s Ned Kelly (playing the titular bushranger), 1992’s Freejack, and he was cast in Werner Herzog’s 1982 jungle drama Fitzcarraldo, for a role that was scrapped when Jagger was unable to complete filming, due to commitments with the band.
Foreign Tongues is the followup to 2023’s Hackney Diamonds, the band’s first album in nearly 20 years. The collection reachedNo. 3 on the Billboard 200, No. 1 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart (for two weeks), and went on to win a Grammy Award for best rock album.
Ahead of Foreign Tongues, the band has released two tracks from the project: album opener “Rough and Twisted” and lead single “In the Stars.” The full project was created in less than a month at Metropolis Studios in West London — as seen in a new album trailer featuring footage of the trio working hard and goofing off in the studio — with Hackney Diamonds collaborator Andrew Watt returning to produce.
Late owls will get another glimpse of a Rolling Stone on Thursday night, May 7, when Keith Richards stops by NBC’s The Tonight Show.
Watch Mick Jagger’s sketch with Jimmy Fallow below.
Justin Bieber is many things. A pop icon, a heartthrob, a hitmaker. A “yes man” he is not.
The Kid LAROI recently sat for a chat with Carter Gregory for The Set List, on which he recounted working with Justin Bieber on the mega-hit “Stay.” Were it not for Bieber convincing LAROI he was sitting on a piece of platinum, “Stay” might not have reached our ears.
“That song came about because he sent me the song for his album and I was kind of like alright I gotta send him back one now from mine,” LAROI explains. “I don’t know, there was a part of me at that point in my career I think I was very in my head about like, ‘oh is this too pop of a song? Is this gonna be weird if I put this out?’ I think I was overanalyzing things, I remember asking him ‘do you want to put this on your project or something?’”
Biebs laid it out. “He was like ‘bro, are you out of your mind? You have to release this, you keep this for you,’” says LAROI. “He literally was like ‘Bro this is a smash, you gotta put this out.’”
That was some good advice. Following its release in 2021, the collaboration went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and stayed there for seven weeks), won ARIA and APRA Awards, and is one of the top 10 most-streamed songs in Spotify history, chalking up more than 3.9 billion plays on the platform (it’s currently at No. 10 on the all-time leaderboard).
Bieber is always there with good advice, even if that is to rip LAROI’s work. “He’s always dropping some really good stuff. I think though, the most helpful and useful thing is something that you wouldn’t think of, maybe off rip, but something I think he does so well is that he just listens really well. He’s really good at just being like ‘man, I’m sorry. That sucks, let’s talk about it,’” LAROI remarks. “He always has great advice but just talking about something and being acknowledged like ‘damn that sucks’ you know, that’s a thing in itself that sometimes.”
He continues, “I find it helpful when he shares his experiences with me. He just cares too which is cool, he’s never approaching it from like ‘I know everything’ which is really cool. He’s very honest about things and if he doesn’t know something he will always be like ‘I don’t know, but I’m here for you.’”
Canada and Australia have a special relationship, a human connection we see flow through with Bieber and LAROI, who also teamed up on “Unstable,” a track housed on Biebs’ sixth studio album, Justice from 2021.
LAROI (real name: Charlton Howard) is currently working his way across the United States on his A Perfect World tour, in support of his third full-length project, Before I Forget, which debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year.
From their late-1980s beginnings in Anaheim, California, to their 2024 reunion at Coachella, No Doubt had a lot of ground to cover during night 1 of their 18-show residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere, and they took fans on a tour through the Orange County groves (and beyond) with their 21-song set on Wednesday night (May 6).
But there was one era that clearly reigned supreme, and that was the songs of their breakthrough album Tragic Kingdom. In fact, the Gwen Stefani-fronted band kicked off the show around 8:50 p.m. PT with the non-single title track from that 1995 album, also running through the project’s most memorable hits: “Just a Girl,” “Don’t Speak,” “Spiderwebs,” “Sunday Morning” and “Excuse Me Mr.” But wait, there’s more! They played “Happy Now ?,” “Different People,” “The Climb” and “End It on This” as well, for a grand total of 10 of the album’s 14 tracks on the night.
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As for their other five studio albums, there was one song apiece from their pre-Tragic work — 1992’s self-titled project and 1995’s independently released The Beacon Street Collection — while their turn-of-the-millennium tunes were better represented, with four songs each from 2000’s Return of Saturn and 2001’s Rock Steady.
The only album omitted from the setlist: The 2012 comeback project Push and Shove, which followed a decade of solo success for Stefani.
Below, find the full setlist from night 1 of No Doubt’s Sphere residency, which has dates through June 13, including two more shows (on Thursday and Saturday night) this week.
