Waterbaby: Memory Be a Blade review – stellar singer-songwriter pieces post-breakup life back together

The Stockholm musician’s debut album is a fascinating character study with improvised lyrics and a light, pretty sound that belies its emotional depth

Cruz Beckham review – son of David and Victoria transcends nepo-baby tag with intriguing psych-pop

His music is still all over the place, lurching from landfill indie to solipsistic ballads, but the youngest Beckham son can certainly play guitar

Lala Lala: Heaven 2 review – brooding alt-popper fights the urge to run

Lillie West’s fourth album is a hazy, mid-tempo meditation on escape that gets stuck in a numbing mid-tempo mode – though there is a gorgeous moment of release

‘We’re a pub friendship – with songs attached’: deadpan dazzlers Black Box Recorder return, thanks to Billie Eilish

Their unnerving songs about car crashes and suburban ennui, sung in a sparkling yet unemotional RP, stood out from the Britpop bloat. Now, thanks to a certain singer taking their streams stratospheric, the trio are back

‘Musicians drank too much and slept on my barn floor’: Andrew Bird on making cult album The Mysterious Production of Eggs

‘I was playing all day and night in a kind of fever, throwing in pop, jazz, violin, guitars and polyrhythms, while wrestling with some demons’

Hen Ogledd: Discombobulated review – a manifesto for collective action from Richard Dawson’s folk-rockers

Featuring taunts in Welsh, ‘bard rap’ and spirited jigs, the British quartet’s ragged, rich music underpins their vision for change

Mitski: Nothing’s About to Happen to Me review – mordant, melodic melancholy from the best songwriter of her generation

The US singer-songwriter’s latest album flits deftly from horror to humour, with threads of melancholy and desperate unhappiness binding the tracks

‘It’s a nice surprise to be treated like kings!’ Why are mid-level British indie bands massive in China?

My group, Swim Deep, plays to crowds of hundreds across the UK – but in China, we play to tens of thousands. And we’re not the only ones

Mandy, Indiana: Urgh review – grimy, thrashing, purgative attack on injustice is the year’s first great album

The Manchester/Berlin band’s second album refines their industrial-club sound, as physical and hyper-detailed as being dragged under by a wave and admiring the flotsam

Yumi Zouma: No Love Lost to Kindness review – New Zealand dream-poppers’ reinvention doesn’t go far enough

The quartet edge away from their trademark sound with louder guitars and bolder intentions – but their reinvention is more gradual than radical

‘Some artists thought it was too political’: can Jarvis, Damon, Olivia Rodrigo and Arctic Monkeys reboot the biggest charity album of the 90s?

Oasis, Macca and Radiohead made Help a smash for War Child in 1995. A new reboot packs comparable star power – and was partially produced from a hospital bed

Olivia Dean and Lola Young lead 2026 Brit award nominations

Singer-songwriters each receive five nominations at British music industry’s flagship awards – where Jarvis Cocker will return 30 years after Michael Jackson incident

Between the bars: theatrical gig about life after prison reveals hard truths of homecoming

A Giant on the Bridge, performed by a ‘Scottish indie folk supergroup’, draws on dozens of interviews about the confines former prisoners experience on the outside

Sleaford Mods: The Demise of Planet X review – vulnerability and versatility widen potty-mouthed appeal

The duo’s 13th album finds Jason Williamson as baffled and infuriated as ever at the state of the world, with help from some unexpected collaborators

The Cribs: Selling a Vibe review – songs of lost innocence and bitter experience strike a perfect, punchy balance

The Jarman brothers’ ninth album adds a little 80s pop sheen to their distorted guitars and confident songwriting, while always sounding exactly like the indie stalwarts