WEGL-FM (Auburn, AL)

Throughout the week, our inbox fills with dozens of singles and albums from people we've never met. Most arrive digitally with the same handful of words. For fans of...RIYL… A short, buffed out bio with a release date. Maybe a blurry press photo standing against a brick wall somewhere in Brooklyn, Austin, or Los Angeles with a wide list of tour dates below. By the next week, another hundred will have replaced them.

For a band whose most famous record was written before many of its current listeners (including me) were born, American Football has avoided being trapped inside it as they continue to move. And at their rather hot stop at Marathon here in Nashville, they made a convincing argument that growing older has not diminished what made them impactful in the first place. It has finally given them more to write about.

$TARFLOP: Why Tyga’s Latest Album Proves That AI Shouldn’t Exist in Music Pitchfork went viral a few weeks ago after a drop in their latest circulation of ratings uncovered the publication’s first zero in twenty years. Garnering a notorious past amongst their pretentious, mu-core journalists, the critic giant hasn’t had the most popular opinions when it comes to recent releases.

When I first downloaded Christian Taylor’s new EPprecious for our new music programming, I wasn’t really expecting to listen to an albumrecorded by someone living out of their car. Christian Taylor spent two years living in an LA studio parking lot to make this project happen.

Tame Impala's sold-out July 9th performance at Benchmark Arena in Tampa, Florida was nothing short of transcendent. The show was not only a vivid display of Kevin Parker’s world, but also a look inside his personal creative process. DJO opened the evening with one of his vampiest tracks, "Awake," immediately establishing the dream-like atmosphere. "Roddy" washed over the crowd with cinematic energy; both moody and emotionally charged.

I’ve been completely spun out listening to the new Chanel Beads record this past week, but I while I was writing about that album, I kept seeing people call Sweet Fortune Ryan Beatty’s "happiest" album on the subreddit popheads. On first listen, I get it. It’s definitely lighter than Beatty’s previous album Calico. The music breathes a bit more, his voice feels less strained, and he isn't pulling you down into the same emotional pits that defined his last album.

Few artists are able to capture the inner workings of their chaotic brain as precisely as Matt Proxy has on his debut album Trojan Horse. The 19-year-old, Minneapolis born rapper has been releasing truly undefinable music since 2021. While his Spotify backlog only reaches back to 2024, his SoundCloud showcases a work ethic that is beyond impressive for someone who has made music since before they could drive.

After releasing their genre-bending third album, “Ugly Duckling Union”, Lowertown put on, in the words of band member Olivia Osby, “the best show of the tour.” in their hometown of Atlanta. And while I can’t vouch for the other shows, I can most certainly claim Lowertown’s June 17th show at The Masquerade was a homecoming like no other. The first opening act, a local rock band, Strumbrush, brought the room’s lively energy to the forefront.

For years, being a Choker fan required patience. After building a strong following with "Peak", "Honeybloom", and a trio of experimental EPs through 2019, the alternative R&B artist largely disappeared from the spotlight. While comparisons to Frank Ocean followed him from the beginning, Choker's appeal has always come from the unpredictable nature of his sound.

Released on June 12, 2026, Olivia Rodrigo’s third studio album “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” gives audiences a look into Rodrigo’s new perspective on love after going through her first “big girl” relationship as she describes it. Alongside her new outlook, she also breaks the capital four letter word naming convention of her previous chart-topping albums, SOUR, and GUTS, joking in her Saturday Night Live monologue that she “Learned more words!”.