‘It’s scary how many St George’s flags there were’: Blood Orange on coming home to Essex and mourning his mother

After grief brought Dev Hynes home, he reconsidered the county that shaped him. The result is a masterful new album – made with a little help from Lorde and Zadie Smith

Where’s her Pulitzer already? Joanna Newsom’s 20 best songs – ranked!

Ten years on from the release of her rococo masterpiece, Divers, we count down the singer-songwriter-harpist’s most beautiful and devastating tracks

The Last Dinner Party: From the Pyre review – baroque’n’roll band’s speedily released second album is overheated

The London five-piece throw the kitchen sink at these dizzyingly dense songs, often crushing their melodic pleasures in the process

Sam Fender wins 2025 Mercury prize for his album People Watching

Geordie singer-songwriter’s album reached No 1 on the UK album chart, and led to a series of stadium-sized concerts this summer

The Fiery Furnaces reissue a cult classic: ‘We knew we wouldn’t seem like an also-ran NYC band in leather jackets’

As the divisive duo re-release Blueberry Boat for its 20th anniversary, they talk being unfit for success, how indie got soft and the ‘dream come true’ of getting 1/10 in NME

Hannah Frances: Nested in Tangles review – ramshackle arrangements power restless revelations

Wayward tempos and snapping drums break fresh ground in this unruly release from the Vermont musician

‘The lyrics were throwaway. I never intended keeping them!’ How Feeder made Buck Rogers

‘My wife finds the whole thing hilarious. She was the girlfriend who inspired it. We’ve now been together for 30 years’

The Kooks review – a triumphant and touching mass singalong

Playing to the biggest crowds of the careers, the 00s indie stalwarts perform like they’re loving every minute – although there is also raw emotion in Manchester on the night after the synagogue attack

Sigur Rós and the London Contemporary Orchestra review – crashing waves of refined harmony

Perhaps the band that can best justify a mid-career gig with classical backing, the extra heft of the orchestra adds power to the Icelanders’ beautiful crescendos

Geese: Getting Killed review – Cameron Winter and co’s surreal, swaggering spectacular

Opaque but brilliant, the Brooklyn indie-rock band’s fourth album is full of the dread and dark absurdity of our current moment

Add to playlist: the crisp conviction and poetic intrigue of Feeo, and the week’s best new tracks

Theodora Laird’s serene vocals navigate delicate, textural atmospheres like a breath of fresh air on a beautiful debut, with support from her regular collaborator Caius Williams

‘We’d play for a frozen burrito’: post-rockers Tortoise on the changing face of Chicago, Steve Albini and their new-gen fans

Informed by everything from jungle to Krautrock and musique concrète, Tortoise broke new ground 30 years ago. Returning after nine years away, ‘it’s a different world’, they say

Supporting the Jam, sausages with the Bay City Rollers and defying skinheads: post-punk girl group Dolly Mixture look back

The all-girl trio gave punk a playful spin and drew admirers in Paul Weller and Captain Sensible – but, singer Debsey Wykes recalls, faced confusion for being out of step with era’s noise and anger

‘The epitome of amazingness’: how electroclash brought glamour, filth and fun back to 00s music

Witty, foul-mouthed, camp and punky, it was the 00s answer to slick superclubs and the rock patriarchy. As its rough, raw sound returns, the scene’s eyeliner-ed heroes, from Peaches to Jonny Slut, relive its excesses

‘Indie boy gone bad’: the Hidden Cameras on their kinky, clubland inspired new sound

From his early 00s ‘gay church folk music’ via country-tinged indie, Joel Gibb has always been an outlier. Now he is back with an album of synthy pop pumpers