Everything Everything haven’t had the best start to 2020: in fact, it has been downright atrocious. If you’d have told the Manchester art-rock quartet at the start of the year that they’d have been dealing with fires, floods and an actual pandemic – well, they’d have said it sounds more like something from one of their apocalypse-fearing songs than real life...

This was one of the fastest tracks I ever produced. It was 1999, the night before I was due to fly to Miami for the Winter Music Conference, where all aspiring DJs and producers went. I was trying to stay awake for my early-morning flight and put on an unreleased version of Carol Williams’ Love Is You. I ended up sampling it and, in a couple of hours, I had Groovejet more or less written....

Jade Anouka hasn’t stopped during lockdown. In the space of three months, she starred in Aisha Zia’s powerful isolation video, Bedlam Before the Burnout, produced a Shakespeare video which went viral (helmed by Judi Dench, no less), as well as writing, directing and starring in her own powerful new short film, Her & Her – and all from her south London flat...

Elisabeth Moss’ latest release, 'Shirley', sees her playing one her most fascinating characters to date: notorious American horror author, Shirley Jackson. Josephine Decker’s thrilling film sees Moss and co-star Michael Stuhlbarg (he’s playing Shirley’s philandering husband, Stanley) blur fact and fiction in a film offering an imaginative re-working of the traditional biopic. Here, Moss explains why she’s always drawn to playing complex characters, her naturally instinctive process and how she thrives under pressure...

As dream starts to careers go, 24-year-old Tiana Major9’s is certainly up there. Last year, her emotive song ‘Collide’ – a collaboration with Dreamville rap duo Earthgang – soundtracked one of the biggest cinematic hits of the year, Queen and Slim. She was personally chosen by Stormzy to appear on ‘Heavy Is The Head’ album standout ‘Rainfall’ and a show-stopping performance with the grime star at this year’s BRITs followed. Now she joins forces with the iconic Motown Records for new EP, 'At Sixes and Sevens'...

Parisian space-pop group L’Impératrice should be on a world tour right now. They should be in the thick of delivering 60 dates across the globe – including a headline slot at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire: it would have included their biggest shows to date. But you know by now, that socially-distanced live gigs are scarce – even if backed by the UK government. the world stopped through coronavirus and live music as we knew it ground to a halt...

Stuck in lockdown in Colorado, renowned stuntwoman and actress Zoe Bell saw a video where a group of French stunt artists created an incredible mass fight scene. Filmed individually in the safety of their own homes, the clips were edited into one cohesive whole proving that lockdown need be no barrier to creativity...

For the past 20 years, Simon Pegg hasn’t stopped. From Spaced to Star Trek and Shaun of the Dead to Star Wars, Pegg’s ascent from cult television hero to red carpet regular has been a breathless watch. It’s no wonder then, that when he greets NME on the phone from his home in Hertfordshire, where he’s staying with his wife and daughter, Pegg sounds grateful for the enforced rest that lockdown has brought...

“I’ve been finding it hard to put words to how I feel in lockdown,” Lucy Dacus tells NME from her home in Richmond, Virgina. “I think a lot of people are existing in a fog and that’s where I am too. At my best, I’m focusing on work, writing and doing some other projects. The most important work going on now is educating myself further about systemic racism, how to be a better anti-racist, and how to show up for my community more tangibly..."

Right about now, many of us would have been getting ready to jet off on our holidays. But instead of sun-soaked, cocktail-fuelled evenings on the beach, we’re stuck indoors contemplating the very nature of our existence as lockdown citizens. It sucks, to be honest. However, if anything has made life more bearable since Contagion ceased to be a fictional account, it’s TV. In fact, there’s one TV show in particular that has made us all feel a bit more vibey. Yup, we’re talking about White Lines...

Julia Bardo should be preparing to tour her newly released, debut solo E.P ‘Phase’. Instead, the Italian-born, ex-Working Men’s Club musician is stuck inside her Manchester flat on lockdown unable to think about music at all. “I just feel very unlucky,” Bardo sighs, knowing that the E.P. she’s been working on for over two-and-a-half years has been released at the worst possible time as the world shuts down through the coronavirus pandemic. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment to come...

A Very English Scandal garnered much acclaim upon its release in 2018. The BBC1 series, written by Russell T Davies and directed by Stephen Frears, saw Hugh Grant star as the late Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe whose alleged part in a plot to kill his lover, Norman Scott (played by Ben Whishaw), rocked the British Establishment in the mid-1970’s. Yet BBC4’s airing of a documentary exploring the true-life tale behind the dramatisation received just as much acclaim – especially because of the extraordinary history behind it...

The coronavirus crisis has left hundreds of grassroots music venues across the UK with uncertain futures. Struggling to pay rents and wages as lockdown continues, more than 556 venues are currently at risk of imminent and permanent closure. Last week, Music Venue Trust – a charity set up in 2014 to help protect the long-term futures of grassroots music venues in the UK – launched a new initiative to help collectively support those most in need via its #saveourvenues campaign...

Moses Sumney was broke and hungry when he took to the stage for the second solo performance of his professional career back in 2014. A room full of representatives from major record labels packed into the performance, hoping to sign the prodigious young talent they’d already heard so much about. Yet Sumney turned down each and every one of them – but not before they’d bought him dinner...

Moses Sumney has spent his life on the margins, living in the in-between spaces that defy simple categorisation. His groundbreaking debut, 2017’s ‘Aromanticism’, a genre-less album that blurred 1970s-inspired soul with alternative jazz, was well-received but saw the musician widely labelled as an R&B artist – much to his dismay. His parents are Ghanian and Sumney grew up in California (at various points he lived in Riverside and San Bernardino) and he’s often asked to describe his heritage in singular terms...

“As soon as I read the script, I just knew,” says actor Daniel Mays, remembering his first encounter with Netflix mystery-thriller White Lines. “I got to the scene with the banana, the cocaine and the dogs and that was it: I was sold.” In the eagerly-anticipated new show, which is already being hailed as the hit of the summer, Mays plays Marcus – a washed-up, 40-something DJ living in Ibiza who dabbles in drug-dealing to make ends meet...

Simon Pegg was the first person I’d ever met who was as obsessed with George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead as I was. One evening, I was round at Simon and his pal Nick Frost’s flat for drinks when I said we should make our own zombie movie, a horror comedy. It would be from the point of view of two bit-players, two idiots who were the last to know what was going on, after waking up hungover on a Sunday morning...

It feels like a miracle to be talking to Joe Seaward, drummer of Oxford’s indie quartet Glass Animals. His bandmates tell NME it is a miracle. Seaward himself is certain it is. “I think that my accident shook everyone to the core,” he says, balancing his head in his hand, his fingertips tracing the outline of a deep scar on his skull. “Everyone was very close to losing a friend, a brother, a boyfriend, a son and a bandmate.” His eyes fill with tears. In July 2018, Seaward was hit by a truck whi

When not touring with Tame Impala and Pond, Jay Watson has been writing music for his solo project GUM whenever he can. “Because of Tame and to a lesser extent Pond, I don’t have a day job,” laughs Watson. “I haven’t had one now for a long time, almost a decade. I’m really lucky in that respect so I think I actually have heaps of free time but in tiny little blocks, not necessarily a huge chunk.” Despite a busy few years with his other bands, he has still managed to find time to release four s

Nazar was an exile in Belgium when he first experienced racism, aged 10. Asked by a teacher why his dad wasn’t around, Nazar explained he was in Angola, a soldier in the civil war. The teacher sniggered and accused him of lying, prompting ridicule from his class-mates. “They were so used to judging the parents of black kids and assumed that because mine weren’t around, they must be in prison,” he explains. “My father was deep in the jungle, fighting. I stopped attending classes.”