December 21 marked the start of Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. On that long, dark night a week ago, the Imagine Peace Tower lit up in Reykjavik, Iceland. An artwork conceived by Yoko Ono in 2007 in memory of her late husband John Lennon, the Imagine Peace Tower beams a huge, intense light into the sky from the start of Winter Solstice until New Year’s Day each year...

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

Brighton rockers Black Honey are a band of dandy dreamers living the DIY dream on a shoestring – but the album they’re working on, with strings and horns and ‘Parisian noir’ inspiration – sees them reaching for the sky. As they play NME’s Girls To The Front, Elizabeth Aubrey meets them to hear how ADHD, Billie Eilish and a hatred of the pop world forged their sound and fuels their work.

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...

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...

Brooklyn-based dancer Reggie “Regg Roc” Gray never imagined that a street dance style he invented during his lunchtimes at school would go on to become a global craze. Used by Madonna, Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj, to name a few, Gray’s “flexing” dance became a phenomenon thanks to the audacity of its moves – many of which look physically impossible – and its powerful political comment.

The last time Janelle Monáe visited Manchester, in Sep- tember 2018, the 33-year-old Prince protege delivered a powerful statement of intent: “We all need to embrace who we are, even if it makes others feel uncomfortable.” Celebrating difference via flesh-and-blood humanity, Monáe dispensed with the flawless futurism of her fiction- al android alter ego, Cindi Mayweather – a Bowie-like per- sona who’d graced her music since her Fritz Lang-inspired 2007 debut, Metropolis...

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...

When it comes to America, Garfield is clearly upset about the toxicity of the current political climate. It’s the day after the Las Vegas tragedy and Garfield is clearly stung....

“I’ve always said, even when I was a young woman, I said I don’t worry about the variety of roles available for women on screen. I worry about roles for women in real life. As we see women enter into major roles in real life, drama will follow. There are still not enough roles yet, but they’re coming. The unfairness and the prejudice of the lack of roles for women has always driven me crazy, it’s enraging. But things are slowly changing.”

Part of the program’s enduring popularity is because of the relatability of the characters, particularly the manner in which their flaws often turn out to be strengths.

Like C.S. Lewis’ 'A Grief Observed', this devastating album is the work of an artist attempting to make sense of loss. "Peace will come," Nick Cave assures us, although it never really does The last few years have seen Nick Cave engage with fans more directly and openly than ever before. “You can ask me anything,” was the simple and direct message he posted to fans on the launch of his Red Hand Files website. Over the past 12 months, Cave answered questions from fans on everything from the bana

Looking ahead even as he evokes the work of greats as such as Bill Withers and Gil Scott-Heron, Michael Kiwanuka's bravura self-titled record sees him fiercely reclaim his identity “Are you really giving up? Are you really going to stop right now?” Michael Kiwanuka asks on new track ‘Living in Denial’, the lyrics from his self-titled latest feeling like pages from his diary five years ago. An artist well known for his struggles with self-confidence, Kiwanuka may well have spoken those words to

Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke opens up about Brexit Britain, Brandon Flowers' comments on Morrissey, the artists failing to fight far right rhetoric, and his ambitious new album '2042' On the face of it, Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke has a lot to celebrate. He’s soon to become a father for the second time, his anti-Brexit soundtrack and play ‘Leave to Remain‘ premiered to rave reviews earlier this year, and the first two single releases from his upcoming fourth solo album ‘2042’ have been praised as em

After a disgruntling summer for the UK’s music fans, Elizabeth Aubrey asks when did festivals forget the most important element: fun?

Sons of Kemet bandleader Shabaka Hutchings speaks about his band's Mercury nomination and the London jazz scene.

In case anyone wasn’t clear about the message of Nadine Shah’s latest album, Holiday Destination, she gave an overt and timely reminder in Manchester last night. “This song is for...

A few seconds into a chat with Boxer Rebellion frontman Nathan Nicholson, talk turns to our differing accents. “Man-cun-ian,” Nicholson says, slowly, enunciating each syllable cautiously in a thick Tennessee accent. “Is that how you pronounce it?” he asks, nervously...

A never before heard early interview with Nirvana band members Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic from 1989 is to be released today.

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.”

“People think of beauty as a blessing, but I think for Nico it was definitely a curse,” Maxine Peake says, a few weeks before she’s due to start rehearsals for a play she’s co-created about the German musician, model and muse. The Nico Project, which is currently showing at Manchester’s International Festival, focuses on Nico’s solo work as a musician...

“It’s remorseless,” Ken Loach says with a weary sigh, as talks about the poverty besieging the UK that he and Paul Laverty, his long-term writing partner, witnessed whilst researching his latest film. Sorry We Missed You is the follow-up to 2016’s I, Daniel Blake, and sees the veteran director return to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to document the plight of low-paid workers on zero-hour contracts. What he and Laverty discovered, he says, rivalled the shocking conditions he first documented 53 years ago in the game-changing Cathy Come Home.

Former Sonic Youth legend Kim Gordon and avant-garde experimentalist Bill Nace have combined forces once more for new album The Switch – the follow up to their 2013 debut, Coming Apart and improvisational 2016 experiment, No Waves.

On the cover of Loraine James’ latest album, For You And I, the past and the present blur as the London-born producer holds up a photo from 2006 of the high rise block of flats she grew up in against a picture of the flats as they are now. On the newer picture, there are three towers – one blue, one green and one purple – the latter being the one where James grew up. On the older photo, a fourth, yellow building is missing...

It’s one of the most extraordinary stories of Radiohead’s career. In early June, fans started talking about the theft of scores of the band’s private 1995-1998 recordings, many of which ended up on 1997’s classic ‘OK Computer’. Not only that, the thieves were demanding $150,000 for the recordings to be returned...

I greet Jenny Hval on the telephone in her native Norway and, despite just finishing her new album Blood Bitch, she is already working on more material – just one...

I speak to Yann Tiersen a few hours before he is due to play the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, as he continues to tour his new album Eusa. A collection of...

Camae Ayewa likes to feel out her audience on the night. "I shape what I do because I see maybe a bunch of younger people there," she says, "or I...

“I wrote this song shortly after reading a book that was recommended to me by Björk,” Father John Misty — aka Josh Tillman — announced mid-set yesterday, on the Sunday closer of the inaugural All Points East festival...

In her Baker's Dozen choices, Manson takes us on a journey through the music that shaped her adolescence in Edinburgh – music which spans a range of diverse genres, styles and cultures, from punk to reggae, shoegaze to rock.

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...

“We had left Sgt. Pepper’s band to play in his sunny Elysian Fields and were now striding out in new directions without a map..."

New York native Veronica Vasicka is an expert in musical archaeology, reviving obscure cold wave and 80s electro via her Minimal Wave imprint. Now on debut EP From Here, the producer, DJ and label boss turns to excavating a hidden musical treasure of her own.

NME talks to The Cranberries on the emotional first anniversary of Dolores O'Riordan's death to discuss their new single, how they've coped over the last year and completing their final album without Dolores.

When Whose Line is it Anyway? made its debut on Radio 4 in 1988, creators Dan Patterson and Mark Leveson had no idea the show would be still in performance some 30 years later, nor did they ever expect it to appear on the stage at the Royal Albert Hall. Originally, they weren’t even sure if the show would make it to television after a series of early setbacks...

When Bazil Meade MBE founded the London Community Gospel Choir (LCGC) with three other people in 1982, he had no idea how popular the choir would become – nor did he expect LCGC would one day be celebrating its 35th anniversary – especially after their original plan was for the choir to do just a single, one-off performance. Fast forward 35-years, and the choir has travelled far. They’ve graced the stage at The Brits, Glastonbury and The Grammy Awards...

For years, Angel-Ho has worked in both the music and art industry as a highly regarded DJ, music producer and founder of the NON Worldwide collective – an experimental underground record label, art project and network dedicated to working with artists of the African diaspora...

It’s an unseasonably hot February day in London, spring having seemingly sprung weeks ahead of schedule. “Is it always like this?” Tamino Moharam Fouad – better known as Tamino – enquires, as we sit in a quiet café overlooking London’s hazy, sun-drenched skyline...

Sunday at Glastonbury got off to the brightest of starts thanks to the enduring good weather and a surprise appearance from Sir David Attenborough on the Pyramid Stage. Receiving a welcome normally reserved for rock stars, the 93-year-old praised Glastonbury for its decision to go plastic-free just days after Extinct Rebellion led a procession of 20,000 through the festival’s fields to raise awareness of climate change. Attenborough’s appearance was brief but powerful and the pinnacle of the gr

As statements of intent go, “Hell Song” is fierce and dives, Faustian like, into an immediate exploration of desire at odds with the protagonist’s faith. “That was just super, super, vulnerable sexually,” Collard tells me of the song, a track which explores sexual liberation whilst knotted with guilt. “I just wanted to hit people in the face, straight up, with what I was about...”

It’s perhaps no wonder that Moses Boyd’s debut solo album draws on an eclectic range of influences. Growing up in Catford, south London, Boyd’s music-loving family played everything from gospel, soul and funk to experimental, rock and reggae. On any given day, Boyd said it was normal to hear Björk, Debussy, N.E.R.D., Tupac, Nas and Youssou N’Dour in his childhood home. At school, meanwhile, Boyd was already swapping beats with his grime-loving classmates in his first year and later, after taking up the drums aged 13...

Musicians have been reacting to news that the 2020 edition of SXSW has been cancelled as the coronavirus crisis escalates. The event in Austin, Texas, which features music, film and comedy, was due to begin on March 13 and run until March 22. Yesterday (March 6), organisers announced the official cancellation of the event by the city of Austin. “We are devastated to share this news with you,” they wrote in a statement posted on their website...

Shura hasn’t had much sleep when our interview begins. Just a few hours earlier, she’d arrived at a deserted Heathrow Airport in the early hours of the morning after her flight from Sweden – where she’d been appearing at Way Out West festival – was delayed. After landing in London, Shura and her band were delayed further when they couldn’t exit the plane...

“It was nerve-wracking releasing anything after my first album being as big as it was, “Bay says. “But trying to live up to it was also still exciting. I chose to follow my heart and do something different which felt right at the same time. I didn’t just want to reinterpret the same thing in the same way – that didn’t feel like the most honest move.” Bay wanted his record to reflect the new influences he was discovering at the time, even if that meant gambling on the change in direction...

“Doing the second album could have been me finding a fancy producer in LA and doing the pop s***”, Héloïse Letissier says about the follow up to the enormously successful debut, Chaleur Humaine...

Father John Misty wastes no time: He dropped Pure Comedy just one year ago, but planted the seed about another record around the time of release. But God’s Favorite Customer is nothing like Father John Misty’s other works...

DJ and record label owner Steve Aoki has a reputation for being one of the hardest working artists in music – and with good reason.

Blink and you’d have missed Nika Roza Danilova, aka Zola Jesus, making her entrance onto the stage at Manchester’s Band on the Wall last week. Dressed head to toe in...

With a new album on the way and a much-anticipated set at Brighton's Attenborough Centre at the ready, James Lavelle, the man behind UNKLE and Mo' Wax, takes Elizabeth Aubrey...