The Cribs: Selling a Vibe review

(PIAS)The Jarman brothers’ ninth album adds a little 80s pop sheen to their distorted guitars and confident songwriting, while always sounding exactly like the indie stalwarts

Blue: Reflections review

(Blue Blood International/Cooking Vinyl)The four-piece try to tap into modern pop’s deep well of nostalgia but come off like Westlife on a bad day

Dry Cleaning: Secret Love review

(4AD)The standout act in the sprechgesang wave, the four-piece’s newly expansive sound carries singer Florence Shaw’s distinctive tales of mundane lives spiralling out of control

Eddie Thornton obituary

Trumpeter who contributed to Georgie Fame’s Blue Flames and later became a member of Aswad

Songs about new beginnings – ranked!

From CMAT and the Carpenters’ fresh starts to the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun and Nina Simone’s Feeling Good, starting again is a rich theme in pop. Here are some of the best examples

‘Being annoying is worse than being evil’: the high-octane, low-culture genius of indie duo Getdown Services

Scatological lyrics, social conscience and a shoutout from Walton Goggins – 2026 is going to be the laptop garage band’s year

‘By 15, I was hanging out with Skrillex’: the idiosyncratic club music of reformed EDM kid Villager

Disillusioned by his early EDM success, Alex Young bought hardware, embraced UK dance culture – and reinvented himself

Songs about love, poverty and swimming in Bacardi lemon: Dutch ‘levenslied’ captures a new generation

The Netherlands’ guttersnipe answer to French chanson and German schlager is as popular as ever – but has it lost its roots as the defiant voice of the working class? Our writer sways along at the Muziekfeest van het Jaar to find out

‘A lot of men don’t open up’: Kidwild, the UK rapper unafraid to bare his soul

As a child he performed in the West End and appeared in a Stormzy video. But after his early music career faltered, he began to write about his troubled childhood – and hit a nerve

Perry Bamonte, guitarist and keyboardist for the Cure, dies aged 65

Starting as a roadie and guitar tech, Bamonte joined the band in 1990 after its breakthrough album Disintegration

The best songs of 2025 … you may not have heard

From a folk murder ballad to an impassioned call for peace, Guardian writers pick their favourite lesser-heard tracks of the year

Perry Bamonte, guitarist for The Cure, dies after "short illness" at 65

December 26, 2025 / 4:01 PM EST / CBS/AP