​With her roots stretching from the Catholic church to riot grrrl, the US singer-songwriter explains how sobriety and self-analysis powered her classic new Waxahatchee-produced album

The songwriting on Brennan Wedl’s new album is so ironclad that I kept checking the credits to see if any of its songs were actually covers of peak Lucinda Williams tracks that I’d somehow missed. Nope: all originals by a 29-year-old songwriter whose radiant, hooky, tough Americana puts her toe-to-toe with genre godheads such as Williams circa Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, or Sheryl Crow had she grown up playing church basement punk shows; also, a vision of Courtney Love in cowboy boots.

“I love Lucinda’s very earnest way of looking at daily life, and I hoped to achieve that on this record,” says Wedl, calling from her Nashville home, surrounded by vintage magazines and tchotchkes. Wedl is warm and dudely; she answers almost every question with an exuberant “toootally!”. She cites her favourite of her new songs, the absurdly immediate Just Another Daddy Who Did Me Wrong, a bittersweet number that questions her self-destructive appeal. “It’s a very harsh look at reality, but also about how our minds can create so much fantasy around reality. I’m working on not projecting too much on reality these days.”

The annual rundown of Guardian writers picking their most played tracks of the season goes from club-ready pop to sunny tech house

• Check out a Spotify playlist of the choices

Kim Petras’ greatest song to date is also the best outsider country song in recent memory: if Ethel Cain and Lana Del Rey could ever put the beef behind them and duet, the dusty gutter romance of Jeep is exactly how you’d want it to sound. The song creates a flyover state love story in a strangely effective union of hyperpop and Americana, creating a windswept fantasy of “doing some middle America shit” with your man: Four Loko-fueled hookups, gas station canoodling and screaming along to rage music beneath the stars. The truly audacious thing is the bridge, a whispered and impressionistic slur that feels like Petras is eight drinks deep, doing donuts in her car until everything blurs. It’s total make-believe, but Petras is so good at making you feel her longing that it gets me choked up. When she recently came out at a Charli xcx show to perform Jeep unannounced, it already felt like an anthem. Owen Myers

(Interscope)
Despite their goth-coded attempts at emotional turbulence, the saccharine songs of Abrams’ third album feel adolescent in their melodrama

Gracie Abrams’ third album is a full-blown crime scene. Across 16 songs, the US songwriter catalogues slip knots, blades, bullets, knives, more knives, ghosts, cages, drugs, car crashes, blood, burial, flaming tyres, choking, burning houses, sinking ships, drowning, more blood, bloody knees and even more knives. It’s called Daughter from Hell to acknowledge how much the 26-year-old frayed her parents’ nerves as a reckless teen, part of a wider theme about working out when to blame others for her pain, and when to accept responsibility. Clearly, there’s a lot of poetic licence involved in dramatising these mature revelations, but the dissonance between Abrams’ goth-coded emotional turbulence and the music’s insistent, quivering prettiness is the real uncrackable case on this bloodless record.

In one way, Abrams has had an outsized influence on pop. Her early bedroom songs inspired Olivia Rodrigo to write Drivers License, which kickstarted the former Disney star’s dazzlingly quick and continuing act of self-redefinition. Mostly, though, Abrams is the sum of her influences: you needn’t listen hard to clock Lorde’s vocal harmonies, Phoebe Bridgers’ intimacy or the tightly packed storytelling of Taylor Swift, who had Abrams support on the Eras tour. In Swift she also shares a producer in the National’s Aaron Dessner, a collaborator in Bon Iver (his jump-scare falsetto appears on two songs here, and he plays all over the record), and certainly a sound in Folklore’s pearlescent acoustics, injected with a whisper of stomp-clap vigour. That mix of melodrama and songs sung like secrets means Abrams’ audience skews young: her music carries the sensation of being the only person in the world grappling with huge emotions, as life often feels in adolescence. For anyone older, her music can feel a little starter pack.

Housesharing brought the south London trio’s sounds – classical vocals, violin, clubby production – together as they bled through the walls, to shapeshifting effect

From South London
Recommended if you like FKA twigs, James K, Anysia Kim
Up next Debut album Underlight out now

There are many ways to deconstruct club music. On Bristol label Illegal Data, releases might take explosive approaches to scary (Ship Sket) and whimsical (Mun Sing) extremes. More recently, the same label finds Stolen Velour, Floco and Aria SL filling the club chest-high with liquid: you hear elements sink, dissolve, or float past serenely on the surface.

The Irish fiddler brings pop exuberance to traditional songs that range from disco to haunting a cappella with a fearless sense of genre fluidity

From Carlow, Ireland
Recommended if you like The Mary Wallopers, Chappell Roan, Anohni
Up next SlutTrad EP out now, UK and Ireland tour starts in October

At a recent London show, SexyTadhg – real name Tadhg Griffin – appeared in a glittering pink corset, channelling high-camp cabaret. And then, they started playing the fiddle.

After exchanging vows with Travis Kelce, the workaholic pop star probably won’t be staying home to admire the wedding silverware

No speculation is too harebrained when it comes to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding. Are they getting married at the gigantic Madison Square Garden arena? What initially sounded mad is apparently quite true. Will she perform? Will Paul McCartney? All bets are off – and given the level of secrecy, maybe we’ll never actually know what does happen.

Only one recent report has made me go: yeah, as if. Gossip site DeuxMoi claims that Swift recently met 50 country radio execs to pitch an alleged upcoming country album, a return to her roots 20 years after she started in the genre. This strikes me as potentially true: even the world’s biggest pop star will glad-hand when needed, as it usually is in the always-traditional Nashville industry. But the report also claimed the rumoured album – Swift’s 13th, famously her lucky number – would be her last “for a while”, presumably because of her impending nuptials. So much of the discussion around the couple’s wedding is focused on what it will mean for Swift’s job. Will she take a break to “enjoy” marriage? Will it change her ambition? Will her songwriting suffer?

Laura Snapes is the Guardian’s deputy music editor

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The co-writer of enduring hits such as YMCA and Macho Man, who struggled with drug use and legal issues for years, passed away after ‘short but aggressive illness’

Victor Willis, the lead singer of the Village People, has died age 74. The group shared the news in a statement: “Victor passed on Monday 30 June 2026 of a short but aggressive illness,” they said. “Privacy is requested.”

The writer of what were widely accepted as canonical gay anthems in YMCA and Macho Man – also performed in costumes of hyper-masculine male stereotypes – Willis refuted the idea that YMCA was a gay anthem and threatened to sue “each and every news organisation” that made the claim.

For anyone furious about the state of the world, the London band offer a welcome – and unsparing – blast of catharsis

From South London
Recommended if you like Converge, Trap Them, Misery Index
Up next No One Is Coming to Save Us released 25 September, touring the UK from 26 September

Burner are the extreme musicians we need. They’re observing the world around them, they’re furious about what they see and they don’t feel much hope for the future. Much like the rest of us.

Over the past two decades, Taylor Swift has changed the music industry, and how we think about girlhood. From songs like Fifteen about first love and heartbreak to introspective tracks like Mirrorball from Folklore, Swift has chronicled the emotional lives of young women in a way few artists have. Her music says that the experiences of girlhood deserve to be immortalized. But as fans celebrate her upcoming marriage and the 20th anniversary of her debut album, Carter Sherman and the Guardian's deputy music editor, Laura Snapes, ask: is she leaving that stage of her life behind, and if so, what's in store for her next era?

• 20 ways Taylor Swift remade pop culture in her image (2026)

• Taylor Swift: ‘I was literally about to break’ (2019)

Correction note added 26 June 2026: This video incorrectly says Taylor Swift's jet has burned hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel since March. The figure is actually reported to be tens of thousands of gallons.

(Dead Oceans)
The US singer took years away from public life after her silvery balladry reshaped pop. Her return is an ornate reinvention

Since her Boygenius supergroup with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus went on hiatus in February 2024, Phoebe Bridgers has taken a wholehearted break from life in the public eye. Who could blame her? Bridgers became a figure of invasive parasocial behaviour from fans after her spooked, sad second album, 2020’s Punisher, resonated with life under lockdown and made her a superstar. In recent years, young women making introspective and ornate indie-rock songs have risen to startling, pop star levels of fame and scrutiny – and none more so than Bridgers and her peer Mitski. When Bridgers was rumoured to be engaged in 2022, fans possessed by her devastating music rued her happiness; when she started a new relationship, the gossip mill churned. In 2023, she castigated the so-called fans who aggressed her in an airport while on the way to her father’s funeral.

Even her recent analogue return has prompted reactions that might have a less self-possessed artist wondering why they bother. Last month, mysterious posters started appearing in small towns across the US advertising surprise $1 Bridgers shows in intimate venues later that night, before a concluding gig at New York’s gigantic Madison Square Garden. Phones were banned, along with any kind of recording device, including pen and paper, to stop audience members from writing down lyrics from her third album and sharing them online. The backlash to this – some fans accused her of ableism – prompted its own backlash, a tiresome Russian doll of discourse that’s still dragging on.

She has won acclaim and countless awards for her body-tapping, raspberry-blowing music. Now she has spent 15 years making her boldest work yet – an epic about birth, infancy and adolescence

It took Camille 15 years to make her new album. The Sound of Milk is a triple record, each part documenting a distinct stage of the French musician’s experience raising two kids with composer Clément Ducol: Naissance is from 2015, Enfance 2020 and Adolescence 2025. She could have put each one out when it was complete, she says, but realised she wasn’t ready. Her son and daughter, now teenagers, “were too little, and I would have felt too exposed to talk about it because it’s about beauty, joy, it’s very deep,” says Camille, calling from her home in the French countryside. “I needed to be able to step back and look at the journey. I needed to feel grounded enough to release it in a world that does not respect children and mothers.”

On the surface, much of Camille’s sixth album may sound very sweet. Naissance features no real instruments – it’s essentially a field recording of raising babies, all gurgles and found sound. Known for her vocal experimentation – beatboxing, raspberries – Camille saw it as a manifesto freeing singing from how disembodied it can be in pop. “As a woman, music is about a way of living,” she says. “It’s about breathing, being with my kids, singing along with what’s going on around me in an open world.” She calls Enfance a “pocket musical”: similarly atmospheric, it’s full of the kinds of ditties parents make up when they’re teaching kids about stairs and the washing machine – raising everyday maternal expressions up as art, I suggest. “I like what you’re saying,” she says. “All families are pieces of art. We create our values, our worlds, a way of talking to each other.”

To mark 50 years since the punk DIY publishing explosion, we want to compile a map of the UK’s contemporary zine scene

This year marks what is officially considered the 50th anniversary of punk: five decades since the Sex Pistols played Manchester Lesser Free Hall and allegedly inspired everyone present to start a band; and since the Ramones acted as a similar catalyst at London’s Roundhouse.

Although zines – self-made magazines – had existed for at least a decade prior to that, punk’s DIY spirit manifested in an explosion of homemade publications documenting the scene, its mores, norms and beefs – most famously Sniffin’ Glue.

Davis, who discovered many of the defining musicians of the 20th century and helmed major record labels, said he ‘never’ tired of the music business

• Clive Davis predicted music’s biggest stars like no one else

• Clive Davis: a life in pictures from Diana Ross to Aretha Franklin

The famed US music industry executive and record producer Clive Davis has died aged 94, his family has confirmed.

He had recently been hospitalised with respiratory problems and was recovering at home. He had also been diagnosed with neurological condition Bell’s palsy in 2021.

The Chinese-Danish artist wrote nine 10ths of Larsson’s breakout album then got a Grammy nod. It’s a fine springboard for her own revelatory pop

From Aarhus, Denmark
Recommended if you like Caroline Polachek, Zara Larsson, Grimes
Up next Debut project coming later this year

You could hardly make a better professional songwriting debut than co-writing nine 10ths of a moment-defining album – namely Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun – then getting a Grammy nod for it. It’s an enviable springboard for the relaunch of Helena Gao’s solo career. Over the past few years, the Chinese-Danish artist has released a handful of singles and EPs – standout God’s Favourite split the difference between NewJeans and R&B, and comes with an excellent Sims-referencing video – but her new music feels like a real flourishing, sidelining her older sweetness for a freakier braid of heavy bass, stuttering trance and a pitch-bending falsetto to rival that of Caroline Polachek, singing in English and Mandarin.

Ahead of the band’s first new album in 16 years, the hugely influential guitarist will be taking your questions for the Guardian Film & Music reader interview

At the end of July, the Durutti Column will release their first new music in 16 years: the stunningly beautiful Renascent. It’s a prime time for Vini Reilly, Bruce Mitchell and Keir Stewart to return as the Durutti influence is everywhere: sampled by Blood Orange on his latest album Essex Honey; cited by Harry Styles on his new LP Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, as well as by Mark William Lewis and Yung Lean; played on The Bear.

Not that the group need the endorsements: since 1978, they have been one of the UK’s most distinctive acts, their dreamy instrumentals offering a sunlit alternative to the crags of post-punk, as last year’s reissue of their debut, The Return of the Durutti Column reminded us. The record’s deviation from the norms of the era, wrote Alexis Petridis in a five-star reappraisal, “ultimately worked in its favour: other than the sound of the primitive rhythm tracks, there’s nothing to tie the music here to a specific era, which means it hasn’t dated.”

Eras. Easter eggs. Masters. Monoculture. It has been 20 years since Swift released her debut single, setting in motion a career so extraordinary, it permanently redefined the concept of pop stardom. Not only did her fight to own her music educate a generation of fans in how the music industry works, she also bent that industry to her will, outwitting the competition and defying norms to reset its terms. This is how she did it

From Thundercat’s all-star funk to Kacey Musgraves’ hymns to solitude, we look at some of our favourite music of the last six months from across the pop spectrum

• Listen to a Spotify playlist of every album here

Full of handcrafted care and the rootsy soul of her country origins, this gently elated song is a reminder of what fans love about Swift … and the film series

Taylor Swift does not fear a challenge. She’s broken records then broken those records; taken Grammy snubs as a sign she just has to work harder; mounted probably the most physically exhausting tour of all time. But in writing a song for Toy Story’s cowgirl Jessie, she’s set herself a deranged task: how could anyone outdo Randy Newman’s devastating When She Loved Me, Jessie’s song about being abandoned by her owner, Emily, from Toy Story 2?

Newman’s songs for the Disney Pixar series are some of the greatest film soundtrack work of all time, and Swift knows it. In a post about her song, she acknowledged the “incomparable” Newman: “You created the Toy Story musical world, and we are lucky to get to live in it.” Her own ventures into soundtrack work have never had much staying power (beyond Zayn collab I Don’t Wanna Live Forever from Fifty Shades Darker).

The loud online hate aimed at two pop stars with polar-opposite styles suggests a shrinking realm of acceptability in which women can exist. That is, you suspect, the point

For an eye-catching spring/summer 2026 look, why not try one of the infinitely fun ways you can dress up misogyny? There’s buttoned-up faux concern. The haughty pince-nez of high dudgeon. The splashy feather boa of outrage. If you’re really bold, why not the full birthday suit of naked disgust? There are far more acceptable options, apparently, than there are for actually dressing as a famous female pop star in 2026. Between the parallel uproar over extremely different outfits worn recently by CMAT and by Olivia Rodrigo, it almost seems as though there are in fact no options at all for how a woman should look in public. Funny, that.

Yesterday, the Irish and American musicians each commented on recent backlash over their appearances that came from the scummy bottom of the internet. On Sunday, CMAT performed at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland. When the BBC posted clips of her performance on Instagram, comments about her body were so vile that the broadcaster had to disable them; tellingly, clips from the same festival featuring smaller-bodied female performers still have comments enabled. “It’s been very hard to try and describe how difficult the last few days since the bbcr1 big weekend have been,” CMAT posted, saying the commentary caused her “deep sadness”.

There’s nostalgia to the New York/London duo’s lo-fi laptop sound, but their second album pushes them into vivid, weirder new territory

From Hudson valley, New York, and London
Recommended if you like the Books, Leila, Worldpeace DMT
Up next Rumspringa released 29 May

Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan recorded their first ever track as Ear on an iPhone in the Bard College library. That song, Nerves, pits their murmuring voices against weightless strings and barely perceptible drums. Just as it seems poised to float away altogether, the track is suddenly overtaken by a blaring bass synth that cleaves the first act’s aching plea into an emotionally fraught, black-lit banger.