Sam Fender donates his £25,000 Mercury prize winnings to Music Venue Trust charity

Chart-topping singer-songwriter adds to his previous support of charity that works on behalf of small UK venues

‘Most of it was the conga preset on Prince’s drum machine’: how Fine Young Cannibals made She Drives Me Crazy

‘Prince’s Purple Rain guitar was in the corner of the studio and his lava lamps were everywhere. You couldn’t help but be inspired’

Bread of Angels: A Memoir, by Patti Smith review – a wild ride with the poet of punk

Smith’s incantatory voice shines through in this surprisingly revelatory follow up to Just Kids and M Train

Richard Ashcroft review – uplifting epics and rocket-boosted confidence reminiscent of 90s Verve heyday

The perma-sunglassed singer tries to transport himself and the audience to a higher plane, culminating in a cathartic sing-along like a gigantic Last Night of the Proms

The Mountain Goats: Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan review – shipwreck songs from a master storyteller

The latest themed album from John Darnielle’s band – with some help from Lin-Manuel Miranda – takes them on a sumptuously crafted and surprisingly upbeat voyage to a desert island

A voice that still carries: Aimee Mann’s greatest songs – ranked!

Thirty years on from the release of her acclaimed album I’m With Stupid, we count down the sucker-punching best tracks by the US singer-songwriter

Michael: first trailer unveiled for controversial Michael Jackson biopic

Star will be played by the real-life singer’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in a film that will ‘humanise but not sanitise’ him

Paul Kelly: Seventy review – reflections on ageing from a musician bigger than ever

After five decades, the songs are still memorable, warm and a little sex-mad. It’s classic Kelly – and Joe’s back, too

Hatchie: Liquorice review – dizzying dreampop with welcome flashes of depravity

Eschewing the fairyfloss hooks of her earlier work, the Australian’s third album is both more mature and less immediately palatable

Radiohead review – bards of the apocalypse return for a brutal bacchanal

Powered by a pounding rhythm section, the crowd dance to even the tricksiest drum patterns at Radiohead’s first gig in seven years – one that demonstrates the pure joy this band can bring

Radiohead’s 2025 tour: the opening night setlist

From The Bends to A Moon Shaped Pool, nearly the whole album discography was accounted for at the art-rockers’ first gig since 2018

Donna Jean Godchaux supplied steel and soul to the Grateful Dead in their prime

Godchaux sang on classics by Elvis and Otis Redding and had a long solo career, but it’s as a member of the Dead’s classic, acid-drenched 70s lineup – and as the band’s only female member – that she will be remembered

Smyth’s Der Wald and Respighi’s Lucrezia review – Wagner’s spirit presides over double bill

The UK premiere of Respighi’s 1937 work was paired with Ethel Smyth’s dark and dramatic Der Wald, both imaginatively staged by Stephen Barlow

‘I want to ride out on a unicorn every night’: swords’n’sorcery heavy metal band Castle Rat

Wielding fantasy weapons and splashing fake blood, the New Yorkers have even learned how to make chainmail outfits – and they’re already aiming to conquer stadiums

Rosalía: Lux review – a demanding, distinctive clash of classical and chaos that couldn’t be by anyone else

The Catalan star’s monumental fourth LP features lyrics in 13 languages, references to female saints, the London Symphony Orchestra – and Björk on ‘divine intervention’