Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Philadelphia’s Soul Glo Teams Up with Tunde Adebimpe on Bruising Yet Vulnerable “Ppl Worried”

Since forming in Philadelphia back in 2014, rising punk outfit Soul Glo — currently Pierce Jordan (vocals, bass), GG Guerra (guitar, bass, vocals, programming) and TJ Stevenson (drums) — was dubbed the “future of hardcore” by Pitchfork after the release of 2022’s breakout effort, Diaspora Problems, a culmination of nearly a decade of playing basements, small clubs and DIY spaces and creative development.

Diaspora Problems has amassed over 14 million streams and critical praise from the likes of BrooklynVegan, who called it “. . . one of the best punk albums released in recent memory” and Pitchfork lauding its mix of ” . . . radical, actionable rhetoric, absurdist humor, and breathtaking vulnerability.” And building upon a rapidly growing profile, the band has been touring extensively, including opening for My Chemical Romance, paying Coachella’s Sonora Stage in 2023 — and they played the first hardcore set at NPR Tiny Desk.

The Philadelphia punks are currently on your with Chat Pile, Virga and Shallowater. The tour includes a November 10, 2026 stop at Brooklyn Steel, a hometown show on November 11, 2026 at Union Transfer, and more. Tour dates are below. And for more information, including tickets, check out: https://soulglophl.com/tour

The band’s newest album, NA I’M GON GRAB ALLAT is slated for a January 15, 2027 release through Epitaph Records. Simultaneously more intense and more approachable than Diaspora Problems, Recorded at Philadelphia-based Foto Club, NA I’M GON GRAB ALLAT isn’t all guitar-driven wth frenetic drum patterns and heavy hip-hop beats. The album features guest appearances from Commitment’s Tati Salazar, Mannequin Pussy’s Bear, New York-based experimental rapper MIKE, Chattanooga-based genre-defying rapper BbyMutha, Whipping Boy, OXBOW, and Buñuel frontman Eugene Robinson, and TV On The Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe. But the band retains the familiar elements of their sound: fast, frantic playing, Jordan’s mile-a-minute delivery and Stevenson’s imitable drumming. The result is more than just a collection of 14 songs, but a profound and compelling journey through the complexities of surviving modern existence — hopefully with your dignity and sanity intact.

Throughout the album’s runtime, community is front of mind on the album’s lyrics, which the band’s Jordan Pierce describes as being “largely about failures, mine and others, in my relationships with different men in my life.” Having a long-held reputation as a vulnerable, funny and soul-baring lyricist, Pierce’s lyrics explores the idea that men live “constantly at the expense of everyone” while speaking of the Black experience within the punk and hardcore scene and everything life, resentment, relationship anxieties, drug abuse, self-discovery and breaking down the “male loneliness epidemic.” Pierce dedicates the album to “everyone, who has known the joy and pain of loving a man. All different types of love: platonic, romantic, familial, self.’

NA I’M GON GRAB ALLAT‘s latest single “Ppl Worried” feat. Tunde Adebimpe is frantic, swaggering and bruising, mosh pit friendly ripper anchored around the lived-in, deeply confessional thoughts of a dysfunctional yet very human narrator, wrestling with losing oneself in grief and heartbreak, the numbing solitude of addiction and cycles of self-sabotage with a vulnerable, self-awareness that’s unvarnished and all too real.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 76th Birthday, Tom Petty!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 76th anniversary of the birth of Tom Petty.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 55th Birthday, Snoop Dogg!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Snoop Dogg’s 55th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: AN_NA Shares Glitchy Visual for Seething “Too Much”

French-born, Montréal-based married couple and electronic music duo AN_NA formed over three decades ago. And over the course of their lengthy careers, they’ve used their experiences within electronic music, industrial and experimental music scenes to create a unique sound that sees them frequently experimenting with different styles and genres. Their long-held penchant for experimentation has given them the space to evolve as artists, while keeping them open to new ideas and influences that they readily incorporate into their own songwriting approach. 

If you’ve worked in the music industry long enough, you’ll recognize that surveying longer than a few seconds in a hyper-competitive and often cutthroat industry is extremely difficult. But for the Montréal-based duo, they’ve credited their longevity to being true to their art — and to making music that they’re passionate about. 

“Too Much,” is the French-born, Canadian-based duo’s latest single — and the first since the release of 2024’s sophomore album More Pills. Arguably one of the more confrontational songs of the duo’s catalog to date, “Too Much” is a seething song, featuring propulsive, tweeter and woofer rattling, industrial thump and scorching synth oscillations beneath an unhinged Nicola Kuperus-like vocal performance that’s defiant, furious and paranoid within a turn of a phrase. 

While being a club banger for a dystopian age that’s inching ever so much closer to the apocalypse, “Too Much” as the duo explains finds them moving a bit closer to their punk roots. “Having lost none of our rage, ‘Too Much’ explores, without embellishment, the questions surrounding violence.”

The accompanying video for “Too Much” features the duo performing the song in a darkened club with hot, analog/VHS fuzz and glitch that undulates with the song’s propulsive thump.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Mother Soki Shares Atmospheric “Mussel”

Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Annie Tammeru is the creative mastermind behind the rising dream pop/electro pop recording project Mother Soki. Tammeru’s Mother Soki project received attention with last year’s “Rivet Gun,” a track built around beguiling, otherworldly textures and production paired with the Minneapolis-based artist’s velvety vocals caught the attention of millions across social media platforms, amassing over 26 million streams on Spotify.

Quickly building upon the growing momentum, Tammeru closed out last year with her debut EP, Fantasy, which she supported with a fall tour opening for Towa Bird.

The Minneapolis-based artist’s sophomore EP, Act 2 is slated for a November 20, 2026 release through Mom + Pop. Working with producers Jack Pfeffer and Bradley Hale, Tammeru set out to make something “uncanny and uncomfortable, that’s also very beautiful and digestible.” She goes on to describe the EP as a list of mantras and counter-mantras tied to the same world,” with repeated thoughts that mirror a ruminating mind. Sonically, sterile, computer-recorded stems were run through a multitrack tape machine, with speed adjusted on the fly, to pick up analog artifacts — and to blur past and present. Her mood board for the EP included The Cocteau Twins, Prince and Joni Mitchell’s experimental 80s records to David Lynch and the puppetry of The Neverending Story and Labyrinth.

“I like to think of Act 2 as like a journal entry,” Tammearu says. “I think it really speaks to where I’m at right now — I’m sort of at a crossroads of becoming a person.”

The EP will include the previously released “The Rot” and “Thicken,” as well as the EP’s third and latest single “Mussel.” Sounding a bit like a Jorge Elbrecht-produced tune, “Mussel” is built around atmospheric downbeat synths, twinkling electronics and crackling and metallic beats beneath Tammeru’s delicate delivery singing the mantra “Nothing’s ever gonna change” until it stops sounding like a statement and stars sounding more like an incurable symptom.

Tammeru says of the new single “Everything is different. Everything is the same.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Shudder To Think Shares Atmospheric and Intimate “Release The Ball”

Back in 2024 Shudder To Think — currently Craig Wedren (vocals), Nathan Larson (guitar), Clint Walsh (guitar), Jherek Bischoff (bass) and Adam Wade (drums) — celebrated the 30th anniversary of their groundbreaking 1994 effort, Pony Express Record, their Epic Records debut, which followed several releases on Dischord Records. 

After the initial release of Pony Express Record, the band dove into the world of scoring films and creating music for soundtracks with the 1998 releases of Jesse Peretz’s First Love, Last Rites, Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art and Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine. Shudder to Think’s Wedren and Larson have gone to be prolific film and television with Wedren working on YELLOWJACKETS, Wet Hot American Summer, School of Rock, Laurel Canyon and more; and Larson working on Our Idiot Brother, The Skeleton Twins, Juliet, Naked, the High Fidelity TV series and a list of others. 

Last year, the band made their first live performances in over a decade and released the “Thirst Walk”/”Playback” 7 inch, which drew on the band’s classic, beloved sound — melodic, unpredictable and unmistakably their own. The 7 inch vinyl sold out quickly and was repressed for the band’s most recent run of live dates. And if you’ve been frequenting this site, you’d recall that the band recently released the three-song Who Sent You EP, the first new effort from the band in almost 30 years. The EP includes the previously released, semi-autobiographical EP title track ““Who Sent You,” their cover of Depeche Mode’s “Something To Do” off 1984’s Some Great Reward and the EP’s third and final single “Release The Ball.”

“Release The Ball” is a stark, atmospheric tune built around a looping, metronomic-like guitar figure, bursts of caterwauling synths and a metronomic drum patterns beneath Craig Wedren’s yearning delivery.

“Craig had a little looping guitar figure inspired by Arthur Russell,” the band says. ” He threw the idea down so as not to forget it, sang a mostly-gibberish vocal, and sent it to the band as something that could be turned into something. But Adam was like ‘no, leave it! It’s cool.’ So we added some rhythm and texture to the demo, served with love.”

Directed by the band’s Craig Wedren, the accompanying black and white video reflects the song’s stark, intimate nature, featuring live footage of the band projected onto a glittering disco ball.

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 100th Birthday, Chuck Berry!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Chuck Berry.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Allegories Return with Ethereal “Glorious Vanity”

Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — just released their newest album, By accident, On purpose on this past Friday.

The album includes ““Honestly, that’s enough honesty” “They’ll Never Suspect Us” “Pure Comedy” and the album’s latest single “Glorious Vanity.” Arguably, one of By accident, On Purpose‘s most minimalist and ethereal songs, “Glorious Vanity” serves as one of the more extreme examples of the JOVM mainstay’s experimental creative process with only the title remaining from the initial composition. The result is song that’s a hauntingly eerie, slow-burning, half-remembered dream rooted in palpable yearning.

The song captures the duo’s willingness to abandon a predetermined designation that largely came to define the album. Rather than ruthlessly potting their original idea, the duo allowed instinct and experimentation to dictate what the song needed to become, crafting a weightless entry point into the album.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Belgium’s Solarski Shares a Punchy, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

Mysterious and emerging Belgian trio Solarski is inspired by post-punk and indie but steadfastly refused to be easily categorized. Their latest single “Do You Need a Riot?” is a punchy, mosh pit friendly ripper with […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Zacchae’us Paul Returns with Swaggering “TEN outta Ten”

Atlanta-born and based producer, singe/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Zacchae’us Paul released his highly-anticipated sophomore album JAZZ MONEY VOL. 2: SWINGIN’ R&B this past Friday. Sonically, the album sees the rising Atlanta-based artist effortlessly crafting a seamless blend of jazz, R&B, neo-soul and hip-hop that features razor sharp beats complementing nimble, acoustic jazz drumming, emcees effortlessly spitting bars alternating with jazz solos.There’s R&B-styled crooning and sangin.’ There are producer tags, interludes and spoken word sections. And it’s all anchored in jazz improvisation and cinematic storytelling influenced by hip-hop’s golden age.

JAZZ MONEY VOL. 2: SWINGIN’ R&B includes the previously released “LOOK TO THE SKY” “SHE F*CK WITH THE RACKS,” the Zacchae’us Paul and DJ OOOCHILD co-produced “BETTER MUST COME” feat. happy qavah, donSMITH, Keenyn Omari and Derzon Douglas, the Down To Mars-produced “STAY” feat. donSMITH and the album’s release day single “TEN outta TEN.” “TEN outta TEN” is a sleek and effortless blend of trap, R&B and jazz that pairs thumping, eardrum shattering low end and trap beats with soulful crooning, thoughtful lyricism, hip-hop swagger and lounge-ready sophistication.

As a Georgia native, Paul created the song to pay tribute to legendary local hip-hop producer Zaytoven. “I’ve always felt a connection to Zaytoven,” Paul explains. “We’re both preacher’s kids and organists whose musical foundation was built in the church. Even after all of his success, he still plays in church today. That has always inspired me because it reminds me that your gift belongs to God before it belongs to the industry.”

He continues, “Ironically, trap was the first style of music I ever learned to produce. I started making beats in middle school before I ever considered myself a jazz musician. From there, I became obsessed with exploring every branch of Black American music—jazz, gospel, blues, R&B, soul, funk, hip-hop, and beyond. To me, they’re all connected. This record is where those worlds meet: a tribute to one of Atlanta’s greatest producers through my own musical language.”  

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Monølo Shares Driving and Hypnotic “A1”

Monølo is a French classically trained pianist and electronic music artist, who has built a career exploring the intersection of acoustic piano and contemporary techno. Throughout his career, his work has seen him crafting a sound […]