Loidis: From the Toolkit of Lovers review – epic 111-minute album is a teeming universe of detail

Brian Leeds, AKA Huerco S, keeps raising the temperature on his once-chilly ambient on an ambitious record full of delightful detail and ASMR-inducing sound design

Weird Baile: Collected Rips 2004-2024 review – a hallucinatory trip to baile funk’s outer limits

Two decades of work from producers JLZ, VHOOR, Mu540 and DJ RaMeMes strips the Brazilian genre to its essential parts until it chimes with grime and drill

‘I need to prove my family’s sacrifice was worth it’: how pop auteur Shygirl slogged her way to the top

Adored by Madonna and Charli xcx and buoyed by finding true love, the Londoner is branching out into rock and breaking the mainstream. She explains how her working class upbringing made her so fearless

Angèle: Instinct review – Belgium’s biggest star is determined to do pop differently

Massive in her home nation but less so outside, Angèle is aided by Justice, Soulwax and Caroline Polachek in ​a bold bid for broader appeal – but her resultant album ​can be generic as well as daring

Finding the groove: what’s the best genre of music to dance to?

What is it about music that makes even non-professionals want to hit the dancefloor, and is it disco, funk or even classical that does it best? Four leading choreographers discuss their theories, with the science to back them up

‘My hips can’t help but move’: readers on the songs that always get them dancing

From Northern soul and 90s bangers to disco classics and indie anthems, readers share the floorfillers that never fail to start the party

‘We wanted it to be a battlecry’: how Republica made 90s anthem Ready to Go

‘The day Saff came into the studio with red hair, I said, “We’re gonna be massive!” It was the missing link’

MTV VMAs 2026: full list of winners

Taylor Swift and Madonna were the big winners, with Swift now the recipient of the most MTV VMAs in history

MNEK on writing smash hits, battling self-doubt and his solo struggles: ‘I’m a fat Black gay man. Try selling that’

The artist has written for Beyoncé and been nominated for two Grammys, yet individual success has eluded him. Now he’s back with a new album that puts queer joy in the spotlight – and, he says, he’s finally ready to enjoy himself

The rise of Dom Dolla: what the DJ’s record-breaking stadium show for 60,000 fans tells us about music today

Dom Dolla’s enormous show in Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium set a new record for a solo EDM artist in Australia, and proves how the genre is dominating

‘It’s about being loudly visible’: Ahadadream, the British-Pakistani dance star defanging racist slurs

Like many south Asians in the UK, he kept creativity separate from a corporate career. But after co-signs from dance music’s A-list, he’s releasing a defiant – and daringly titled – debut album

Fancy a pint … at Lidl? The bizarre battle over Northern Ireland’s stifled nightlife

The country’s licensing laws mean the supermarket has opened a pub so it can sell alcohol, while campaigners are fighting to help other venues open and get people dancing

Singer Becky Hill looks back: ‘Aside from the music I was making, I hated every minute of my 20s’

The Brit award winner on being scammed by a model agency, coming to terms with sexual assault, and wrestling with impostor syndrome

Empress Of: Dream House review – a tender and openhearted rebirth after wildfires razed her house

Lorely Rodriguez contemplates the meaning of home – both physical and emotional – on a gorgeously humid, hopeful album that makes a virtue of her searching nature

‘Very authoritarian, very brutal’: three decades after the UK’s anti-rave crackdown, why is France doing the same?

With tear gas, grenades and a new law, French authorities are targeting unlicensed music gatherings. Those in the rave scene explore the parallels with the UK in the 90s