The shots are coming faster and getting more intense. Minutes after Drake dropped his seven-minute diss track “Family Matters,” which targets many of his superstar enemies and concludes with an allegation that Kendrick Lamar physically abuses his fiancA(c)e, Kendrick has released this third Drake diss of the week. This one has a bombshell allegation of its own.

And so it continues. After Kendrick Lamar emerged from the shadows with the extremely angry Drake diss “Euphoria” this week, Drake responded with a video clip from a teen rom-com. Tonight, less than 24 hours after Kendrick hit him with another diss track, “6:16 In LA,” Drake has returned to the field of play with his latest song in this ongoing feud.

“Am I battlin’ ghost or AI?” Kendrick Lamar asked Drake on “Euphoria,” and he wasn’t the only one disappointed by our new non-reality this week. FKA twigs testified in a Senate committee hearingA about how the AI industry needs regulation while Youth Lagoon slammed WashedA OutA for using Sora to make a music video. On the other hand, today Randy TravisA used voice-cloning tech to release his first song since a stroke took away most of his speech, so I don’t think the AI discourse is ending anytime soon. As far as I know all the comments on this site are written by humans and you can read the best ones below.

Trophy Eyes’ show Tuesday in Buffalo quickly took a devastating turn. The Newcastle, Australia pop-punk/melodic hardcore band had just begun their set at Mohawk Place when singer John Floreani stagedived into the crowd, flouting the venue’s policy prohibiting the maneuver. In the process, a woman named Bird PichA(c) was badly hurt. On Reddit, someone who claimed to have been standing next to her wrote, “As soon as we heard her say she was scared and couldnat move we knew it wasnat good.”

After going quiet for a few years, the singular Chicago rap stylist Valee is suddenly very busy. Valee returned to action with 2022’s Vacabularee, which was actually his first full-length album. Last year, he released collaborative LPs with producers Harry Fraud and MVW. Today, he’s got a new EP with Nova Scotia-born, Detroit-raised producer Black Noi$e, a regular Earl Sweatshirt collaborator.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this weekas picks below and on Stereogumas Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

Bad History Month, the longstanding and oft-morphing Philly indie band that used to be based in Boston and called Fat History Month, have been on a low-key prolific run lately. Last year they gave us the True Delusion EP and the full-length God Is Luck. The To Be Free EP followed this past winter, and now they’ve announced a new cassette with cover art similar to that one.

The two twin Dessner brothers are always up to something. These days, Aaron continues to work with the biggest pop star in decades, while Bryce continues to operate in the classical and film-score zones, at least when they’re not too bush with their band. Bryce’s soundtracking work recently led him to collaborate with Bruce Springsteen, and now he’s signed with Sony Music Masterworks and announced a new classical album.

For about a decade, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires were an alt-country power couple and one of music’s feel-good stories. Isbell credited Shires with helping him break free of addiction, she played fiddle in his band, he took a supporting role in some of her music as well, and together they provided some of the most pleasant livestream experiences of the COVID lockdown era. Isbell also wrote “Cover Me Up” a an instant classic from 2013’s Southeastern, later brought to greater prominence by Morgan Wallen a for Shires. So it was depressing to learn a few months ago that Isbell had filed for divorce from Shires.

Earlier this year, ’90s alt-rock greats released a Record Store Day-exclusive four-song EP called Lie To Me. Today, that EP is up on streaming services, and it’s got four previously unreleased tracks from the band, including a couple of collaborations with fellow veterans.

Sam Ash, the music-instrument chain retailer first founded in 1924, is closing all of its remaining stores. In a statement on Facebook, the Ash family writes, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce that all Sam Ash Music store locations will begin store closing sales today… Thank you for allowing us to serve musicians like you for 100 years.” They also say that the closures represent “a fantastic opportunity for great deals” as they liquidate their stock.

New York rap titans Ghostface Killah and Nas first joined forces 29 years ago, when both of them rapped on the classic Raekwon track “Verbal Intercourse.” Ghost and Nas have intersected a few times in the past few decades, and now Ghost has signed with Nas’ Mass Appeal label, and he’s announced his intention to release Set The Tone, his first new album. Now, they’ve got a new single together.

Ever since 2018, the Compton singer and rapper Channel Tres has been cranking out exciting, impossible-to-categorize dancefloor anthems. Now, after eight years, he’s finally ready to unleash his debut album. A few months after releasing the Kaytranada collab “Lover/Friend” and the solo single “Walked In The Room,” Tres has announced plans to drop his long-awaited LP Head Rush next month.

Agriculture, the exciting self-professed “ecstatic black metal” band from LA, have a new EP out today. Living Is Easy is being packaged with Agriculture’s 2022 EP The Circle Chant as one LP-length release, but on Bandcamp the new one exists on its own. They’ve already shared two of the new project’s four songs: “Living Is Easy” (the one with the video where Agriculture and Chat Pile murder each other) and “In The House Of Angel Flesh.” Now that the EP is out, we can hear the other two.

Phil Elverum has been playing a new Mount Eerie song called “& Sun” at recent live shows, and now a studio version of the track has made it into the world. The recording appears on Merciless Accelerating Rhythms a Artists United For A Free Palestine, a new gargantuan 55-track compilation organized by HATETOQUIT and Brooklyn band Hiding Places. All proceeds from the album will be donated directly to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and Palestine Legal. In addition to the Mount Eerie song, the comp has music from Little Wings, John Andrews, villagerr, h. pruz, and more. Check out “& Sun” in its studio and live formats below, and buy the comp here.

Gary Floyd, lead singer for the hugely influential hardcore punk band Dicks, has died. Floyd’s contemporary Mike Watt broke the news on Facebook. No cause of death has been reported. Floyd was 71.

Traditionally, RXKNephew is best consumed one video at a time on YouTube, but the prolific Rochester Artist To Watch does release albums now and then. His next one will be Till I’m Dead 2, the sequel to last year’s supposed “debut” album Till I’m Dead. It’s coming at the end of this month, preceded today by lead single “Money Can’t Replace Time.” Over a Brainstorm-produced soul loop, Neph shows that he can succeed with straightforward bars about coming up in the world, even if I prefer his less, uh, linear approach to rapping. Watch the RX Papi-directed video below.

Justice released their new album Hyperdrama one week ago. To promote the record, they gave an interview to NME, which led to some reflections on Justice’s 2008 documentary Across The Universe a specifically an “embarrassing” scene involving Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis.

On October 2004, Ted Leo and his band the Pharmacists followed their classic Hearts Of Oak with Shake The Sheets, which might be an even better album. Next month, Leo and the Pharmacists will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Shake The Sheets with a tour where they’ll play the LP in full every night. Today, for Bandcamp Friday, Leo has shared the previously unreleased demos that he recorded for every Shake The Sheets track.

Uncut Gems star and constant gossip subject Julia Fox has plenty of connections the music world. She briefly dated Kanye West, and she did a podcast with Grimes where they talked about cancel culture. Today, she’s kicking off some kind of music career, releasing her debut single “Down The Drain.”

Several prominent indie musicians have released AI-generated music videos in recent months, and every time, the reaction within their fan bases has been extremely negative. Last fall the emo supergroup L.S. Dunes had to post a statement defending their use of AI for the “Old Wounds” video. Earlier this year, Mannequin Pussy tweeted through the backlash for their AI-assisted “Nothing Like” video. Now it’s Washed Out’s turn to learn that indie audiences really, really don’t want to see creative jobs replaced by AI.

In 1964, the great New Orleans R&B singer Irma Thomas released her version of “Time Is On My Side,” a song that Danish-American jazz trombonist Kal Winding and his orchestra first released a year earlier. (The singers on that first recording were Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick and their cousin Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother.) Over in London, the Rolling Stones heard an imported record of Thomas’ “Time Is On My Side,” and they immediately recorded their own cover, with Mick Jagger doing his best imitation of Thomas’ vocals. The Stones’ cover was a top-10 hit in the US, and the versions from both Thomas and the Stones are now considered classics.

Joey Vannucchi is currently rolling out the new From Indian Lakes album Head Void, which has thus far yielded such promising singles as “The Flow,” “The Lines,” and “The Wilderness.” But Vannucchi is not limiting himself to one exciting new record. He’s also formed a new band called Hard Chiller with Steve Choi of RX Bandits and the Sound Of Animals Fighting, backed by Casey Deitz of the Velvet Teen on drums and Roger Camero of the Warriors and No Motiv on bass.

Kendrick wasn’t done. Earlier this week, Kendrick Lamar, currently embroiled in an extremely newsworthy rap feud with longtime rival Drake, released his furious six-minute attack “Euphoria.” That song is currently on streaming services and doing big numbers, and Kendrick didn’t wait for a Drake response to unleash another volley. Today, Kendrick posted a new volley called “6:16 In LA” on social media.

In June of 2002, after six years broken up, the great DC noise-pop band Velocity Girl got back together to play a benefit show at the Black Cat, raising money for some legal expenses incurred by Bridget. They wrote three new songs for the show and ended up recording them at Maryland’s Omega Studios that August and September. One of them, “It’s Alright By Me,” made it online as a free MP3 download in 2006. The other two are live now.

Of my 10 tattoos, I would only describe one as truly bad. It’s a smudged collection of lines that (sort of) make up the image of a human figure crying into its hand. It sits on the right side of my ribcage, which, at 19 years old, I learned the hard way is a painful spot to be hit with a needle for an hour. The mediocre rendering resembles the cover of Panda Bear’s 2011 album, Tomboy, less and less with each coming year. It’s not exactly a horrible tattoo a people can usually figure out what they’re looking at if I explain it very directly. But it hardly does justice to an album by an artist I love. Thirteen years ago, this very website proclaimed that Tomboy’s album art would “make a decent tattoo.” Yet here I sit, proving former Stereogum Executive Editor Amrit Singh’s headline wrong.

In 2013, the country music legend Randy Travis suffered a near-fatal stroke, which took away most of his speech and singing ability. Travis has released a few archival recordings since his stroke, and he’s made a few public appearances. In 2016, for instance, Travis sang “Amazing Grace” at his Country Music Hall Of Fame induction ceremony, but he needed the crowd’s help, and he clearly struggled. This morning, Randy Travis released a brand new single. How is that possible?

During the second weekend of Coachella, Lil Nas X joined Kevin Abstract on stage and the pair debuted a collaboration called aTennessee.a Today, they’re officially releasing that track.

After finishing her 48-date Las Vegas residency, Miranda Lambert surprised Stagecoach concertgoers by joining Reba McEntire on stage and debuting a new song called “Wranglers.” Today, the country musician is announcing her signing to Republic Records and releasing “Wranglers.”

Four years after Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa’s third album is finally here. She’s been rolling out Radical Optimism for six months now, starting with the release of “Houdini” in November. She’s since released “Training Season” and “Illusion,” but none of the three have reached the top 10. Maybe they’ll pop a bit more now that we can hear the album in its totality.