February 2026 – Page 4 – 7th Level Music

ADULT. wants you to know that “No One Is Coming” with their new single.

ADULT. is not cooperating. For over 25 years, the dystopian Detroit synth-punk institution founded by Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller has embodied steadfast frustration, distrust, and apprehension. One might expect the edges to soften with time, but ADULT. is not interested in the comforts of legacy. The duo’s music has never sounded as visceral, urgent, and downright angry as it does on the culminating, uncompromising Kissing Luck Goodbye, their scorched-earth 10th LP and fourth with Dais Records.

Built with upgraded gear and a whole new library of sounds, the material is crushingly dynamic, louder yet clearer, with Kuperus’ commanding delivery given greater prominence in the mix, outlining an arsenal of vivid, caustic calls, chants, and musings. Laughter, whether in the lyrics or as a possessed presence, serves as a leitmotif that speaks to the menacing absurdity of modern times.

“No One is Coming”, the album’s lead single is a poignant, bassline-driven industrial anthem that turns feedback into melody, the track attacks inaction in the face of fascism —

NO ONE IS COMING TO YOUR RESCUE… A lyric that was written in early 2025 and is even more relevant on its release date a year later. A song speaking to moral collapse and political corruption “to a T”. These subhumans attempting to run the show are more concerned with cashing in and political cosplay than the well being of mankind. While working on this album, I read an article from an esteemed environmental scientist about “what’s coming in the future”. What stuck with me was their point that we are entering a new phase in existence where the most important thing we can do is know our neighbors and know the strengths of each other and what resources everyone has. Who needs extra care? Who is on their own? This song was written as a call to arms. Be alert. Be aware. Be prepared. Stand up for yourself and look out for your community. We are better when we are united. Social media is wearing us down. Deluding us. The political landscape is horrifying, distracting, deranged and unhinged. We are seeing this go down in real time right now in Minneapolis… NO ONE IS COMING TO YOUR RESCUE… except ALL OF US! Keep speaking up! Keep using your right to protest and most importantly keep showing kindness to one another.

– Nicola Kuperus

Listen / Share / Playlist “No One Is Coming” | Official Video

ADULT. is known for high-stakes catharsis on stage, and recently deployed their back catalog of bass guitar songs from the 2000s, retracing the prescient Anxiety Always era partially out of necessity given the temperature of today’s political and technological dread. The response was instant and palpable: “We were in Paris, and the kids were stage diving. And I was like, this is rad. This is kind of the energy I want to get back into,” Kuperus says. The epiphany coincided with a series of setbacks — Kuperus’ bouts with chronic vertigo, the loss of their close friend and collaborator Douglas McCarthy of Nitzer Ebb, whom the album is dedicated to — all made profoundly worse under the looming regime. “We were stuck in the mud for quite a while after the election,” Miller says. “We had all the concepts, but we would just be like, ‘What’s the point?’” With failing studio air conditioners and dead car batteries (their sacred space for listening back to recordings), they often joked that the album might be cursed. Kuperus adds, “We’re just like everything’s breaking. We’re breaking. We’re broken.”

The sentiment didn’t stick, however, as they found themselves ultimately too super-charged by fury to sit still. From watching Musk’s disgusting nazi salute to seeing their community struggle under the new regime to waiting months for a tariff-inflated replacement subwoofer, the vibe heading into Kissing Luck Goodbye was four middle fingers pointed straight up.

Rather than retreat, ADULT. focused on the process, revisiting their setup, complete with their first new mics in 20 years. They obsessed over textures, amassing a massive sample library taken from old thrift-store albums, previously used and unused ADULT. ingredients and new field recordings, running myriad items, including the buzz of shop vacs, through various pedals. Pause Kissing Luck Goodbye at any moment, and you’re likely to count a dozen things happening at once in strange, dizzying, and dissonant harmony. Together with producer Nolan Gray, whose involvement resulted from a chance encounter (he happened to be the host of the short-term rental property where the two stayed — maybe there is still some luck, after all), the band pushed themselves harder than ever before to build a world with this record.

Songs took shape from unusual places: “No One Is Coming” got its tempo from a skipping record they captured through a cell phone during a bnb stay for Kuperus’ 50th birthday. “None of It’s Fun” blitzes with breathless urgency, high-speed glissades, and pointed lines like “OH I AM TEARING MY GUTS OUT / LOOK AT ME…DO YOU THINK THAT THIS IS AMUSING?” The closer, “Destroyers”, was the last song they recorded and encompasses the techniques that ADULT. has learned not just throughout the making of Kissing Luck Goodbye, but across their quarter-century as a pioneering collaborative project.

ADULT. Live Dates:

Apr 10: Pittsburgh, PA – Spirit Lodge
Apr 11: Baltimore, MD – Ottobar
Apr 12: Brooklyn, NY – Good Room
Apr 14: Raleigh, NC – Kings
Apr 15: Atlanta, GA – The Earl
Apr 16: Jacksonville, FL – Jack Rabbits
Apr 17: Orlando, FL – The Social
Apr 18: Miami, FL – TBD
Apr 21: New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa
Apr 22: Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs)
Apr 23: Austin, TX – 29th Street Ballroom
Apr 24: San Antonio, TX – Paper Tiger
Apr 25: Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
Apr 28: Albuquerque, NM – Sister
Apr 29: Phoenix, AZ – Rebel Lounge
Apr 30: San Diego, CA – The Casbah
May 01: Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Forever (Masonic Lodge)
May 02: San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
May 04: Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
May 05: Seattle, WA – Barboza
May 08: Minneapolis, MN – 7th St. Entry
May 09: Cudahy, WI – X-Ray Arcade

Keep your mind open.

[Do some adulting. Subscribe today.]

[Thanks to Bailey at Another Side.]

Miss Grit returns with “Stranger” ahead of her new album.

Miss Grit—the New York-based, Korean-American musician Margaret Sohn (they/she)—announces their new album, Under My Umbrella, will be released April 24th via Mute, and shares the magnetic new single, “Stranger.” Sohn is a bold experimentalist and architect of sculptural texture, known for deftly moving between analogue and digital, guitar and synths, and creating an immersive cosmos of sound with futuristic frameworks for their searching introspection. For their second full-length album, they’ve lifted the lid on their internal world, lasering in on the anxieties and heartbreak of the past two years. It’s an album that is as immersive and expansive as it is intimate, channeling the noirish atmosphere of classic trip-hop bands, while adding a hefty dose of maximalism and a dream-pop sensibility.

Last year, Miss Grit released a preview of Under My Umbrella with “Tourist Mind.” It was the first taste of new music since Miss Grit’s debut, 2023’s Follow The Cyborg, a concept album in which they built a fluid future beyond the gender and genre binaries, where a non-human machine goes in pursuit of liberation. They were recognized by i-D as a “singular talent” for their “compelling ideas and freewheeling creativity” and by Rolling Stone for their “elliptical, hooky songs that take unexpected turns.” Surrounding its release, Miss Grit was named an “Artist to Watch” by Brooklyn Vegan, a “Breaking” artist by FLOOD, profiled by Rolling Stone as an “Artist You Need To Know,” and beyond. Additionally, they performed for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s LateShowMeMusic series, and toured supporting Nation of Language, Bartees Strange and The Last Dinner Party.

Under My Umbrella began to take shape when Sohn returned from an intense touring schedule where they’d driven themself around North America totally alone. When they returned home, Sohn found themselves yearning to capture that specific, less restrained energy of playing live. Like Follow The Cyborg, its creation mostly took place in Sohn’s Queens apartment. The music came to them quickly, streams of consciousness with one new guiding principle: don’t overthink it. “I tried not to edit too much or force a moment to happen,” they explain, leaning into big choruses where it felt right. Some guitar sounds were first takes, ditto vocals, thus preserving the immediacy and authenticity of the emotion. As such, it’s a densely layered album, charged with electric crescendos that build to moments of unbridled catharsis. “It feels truer to myself, and more of a representation of what is actually coming out of me,” says Sohn.

With its all-engulfing chorus about trying to out-run feeling betrayed, new single “Stranger” is Sohn’s most ambitious song yet. Ethereal and intense, its gritty breakbeat backbone and sparkly synths give way to emphatic industrial-pop. With this track, Sohn’s long-time mix engineer, Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, stepped up to co-produce. “Usually collaboration is a little bit hard for me – there has to be a deeper connection there,” says Sohn. “But really trusting the people I was working with to put their fingerprint on the music, and them also being close friends, was liberating.” Other collaborators include friends from New York City and Los Angeles: electronic visionary and film scorer Sae Heum Han (mmph), bassist Margaux Bouchegnies (Margaux), singer Eva Liu (Mui Zyu), producer Luciano Rossi (Mui Zyu), drummer Preston Fulks (Momma) and violinist Zachary Mezzo (Catcher).

Watch the Visualizer for “Stranger”
Under My Umbrella not only presents Sohn’s gift for complex production, but also the boldness of finding your voice. Many of the songs speak to the idea of trying to wrestle free–of expectations, of being caught up in other people and losing yourself, and of the social anxiety that comes with being overwhelmed by others. “Before, I was really timid about what I said and didn’t say, and that all ended up being molded into something that didn’t feel as relatable to me as it once did,” comments Sohn. “Part of it is due to honoring my feelings and trying to be more honest in my writing. I feel a deep connection to this record that I haven’t felt about my music until now.”

Under My Umbrella will be available digitally and on limited-edition crystal clear vinyl and CD. Miss Grit will play record release shows in NYC on Friday, April 24th at Nightclub 101 and Los Angeles on Saturday, May 2nd at Scribble. Prior, Sohn will appear at Rough Trade in NYC for an acoustic set and signing with free entry along with a pre-order of the album. Fans can RSVP here.

Pre-order Under My Umbrella

Watch Video for “Tourist Mind”

Miss Grit Tour Dates:
Sat. Feb. 7 – Los Angeles, CA @ Banned From Eden
Fri. April 24 – New York, NY @ Nightclub 101
Sat. May 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ Scribble

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t be a stranger to the subscription box.]

[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

New La Peste compilation of rare tracks from 1976 – 1979 due out April 17, 2026.

La Peste were Boston’s first true punk band. The band were born as a group of art students who had never played instruments and over a few short years became a foundational influence for a Boston music scene that would go on to produce some of the most important and boundary-pushing American bands of the ’80s. They played with the Ramones, worked with The Cars’ Ric Ocasek and earned the attention of the legendary BBC DJ John Peel all while releasing only one single (1978’s “Better Off Dead”), which gradually accumulated a reputation as a punk classic, as did the various live and other unofficial recordings that circulated as bootlegs over the years.

In 1996, Matador released a single-disc La Peste collection, primarily of live recordings and with a few studio cuts mixed in, which introduced the band to a new generation of fans but has now been out of print for decades. At the end of 2025, Wharf Cat Records announced the release of a new compilation entitled I Don’t Know Right From Wrong: Lost La Peste 1976-1979 Vol. 1 that aims to tell the full story of La Peste.

This box set focuses on the band’s prodigious unreleased studio work, collecting tracks from the “Better off Dead” sessions, demos produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars, a 1979 session at Electro Acoustic Studios, and 4-track recordings made at the band’s loft. The first disc imagines the mythical full-length the band never made, and the second, equally worth hearing, is more diffusely assorted. Finally, I Don’t Know Right From Wrong gives La Peste the sort of presentation they deserve: not just as Boston’s first punk group, but a band that remains singularly thrilling today.

While bootlegs of many of the tracks on the compilation have circulated in various forms, today the band are sharing a never before released track called “Acid Test” that comes from the sessions with Ocasek. The track is accompanied by a video that pairs live footage shot by Jan Crocker and the MIT film crew with the studio track.

La Peste’s Mark Karl says of the single:

Acid Test is two chord magic. Two meanings. A relentless bass line, angry guitar and pounding drums. Perfect arrangement for a trio. Peter’s lyrics were right on – most of us can relate to a relationship gone sour. Begins simply and then quickly builds in intensity. The live performance of this song always carried the crowd into a controlled frenzy.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe!]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

TarantisT resists oppression in Iran with their powerful single “Freedom.”

arantisT is calling on artists, creators, and cultural voices around the world to stand with the Iranian people, to speak for those who have been silenced, and to help ensure that the suffering of an entire nation is seen, heard, and never ignored.

Iran is currently facing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. What began as peaceful civilian protests against the occupying terrorist regime has escalated into a nationwide massacre, with the regime deploying heavy and military-grade weapons into city streets and brutally killing more than 30,000 people, including children, women, elders, and unarmed civilians. Families are denied the return of their loved ones’ bodies or are extorted for outrageous sums, while reports describe piles of corpses and streets running with blood. In an attempt to conceal the scale of these crimes, the regime has imposed a total digital blackout—shutting down the internet and phone networks across the country—cutting off all communication between Iran and the outside world, and leaving the true depth of the atrocities unknown. Despite this, the Iranian people remain united, calling collectively for Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and demanding an end to the regime’s occupation. Artists and musicians across Iran and the diaspora stand in solidarity with the people; among them, the Iranian rock band TarantisT, which continues to release protest music and material in support of the movement. Their latest release, “Freedom”, incorporates real footage from the current events in Iran, merged with digital technology, amplifying the voices of a nation silenced but unbroken.

Relentless and prolific, TarantisT will be releasing a new single next week titled

“Mission: Bloody Day”. Stay tuned!

Check out “Freedom” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYaFalRTuQ

Formed in 2000 by a group of young underground metal heads, TarantisT originated in the basement alternative rock and heavy metal scenes in their native Tehran, Iran. Having to perform secretly but loudly often proved to be difficult, but after sparking a following via word of mouth in the underground, the band soon began to garner international recognition. Within just a few years, international media correspondents inspired by their story (including BBC, SKY, CNN, NPR, Metal Hammer and Kerrang) started visiting Tehran to meet and talk with TarantisT. These news reports and articles aided TarantisT in cultivating a worldwide following – motivating the band to relocate to the United States Los Angeles in 2008.

Iranian metal band TarantisT have been active with their social-political content and music during all these years, dropping tracks like “Revolution” in 2022. “This is not a protest, this is a Revolution”. TarantisT continues to march towards this Revolution with all Iranians seeking freedom and liberty for their country with the main slogan of “Women, Life, Freedom”.

Instagram, TikTok and some other social medias have put limitation and restrictions to TarantisT’s accounts due to posting images and footages of the protest, violence of the Islamic Republic authorities and due to the use of social-political hashtags.

Since their inception, TarantisT has been invited to play several festivals like SXSW, CMJ, Canadian Music Week and Intergalactic Fest. TarantisT quickly added to their touring repertoire, performing on the same stages as Metallica, Motörhead, Stone Temple Pilots, Muse, Cheap Trick, Voivod, Sum 41, My Ruin, Ben Harper and many more.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe.]

[Thanks to Maria at Adrenaline PR.]

New German Cinema releases her debut single – “My Mistake.”

Today the voice and songwriter of Fear of Men, Jessica Weiss, announces details of her debut solo album under the moniker New German Cinema. Set for release on March 27th via Felte, her new album ‘Pain Will Polish Me’ is preceded today with lead single “My Mistake”, which features guest vocals from Merchandise’s Carson Cox.

Weiss carries lyrical precision and emotional intensity into the stormy dark-pop gems on her debut solo album. ‘Pain Will Polish Me’ has been five years in the making, stretched between London and LA, built from late-night files, long silences and the quiet persistence of trying to finish something beautiful. Produced with Alex DeGroot (Zola Jesus, Cate Le Bon), it feels both forensic and devotional, the product of someone who doesn’t rush catharsis. It presents both solitary and connective, as if built from long-distance transmissions between two dream states.

Weiss calls the album a meditation on pop and European art-house auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It tracks the ways intimacy and control fold into one another until it’s impossible to tell where one ends. The songs are about the parts of yourself that dissolve in love, and the small acts of violence that come with being known. They move through claustrophobic relationships, obsession, surrender, cycles of suffering that start to feel like devotion. The language is pop but the feeling is something stranger, colder, more interior.

The album’s lead track, online today, is “My Mistake” – a collaboration with Carson Cox of Merchandise, who comments “I was going to produce Fear of Men and instead we made something totally different I think. True collaboration which is my preferred way to work on music”. What began as an Italo disco experiment evolved into a goth club anthem, charged and restless. It captures the push and pull of Weiss’s themes – devotion as both destruction and release. Weiss has a knack for making pain feel both exquisite and familiar.

Speaking on the accompanying video, Weiss comments: “The video sets the emotional tone for the record, suspended between eroticism and nightmare. It draws on cropped mirror framing – a favourite device of Douglas Sirk used to explore themes of emotional and physical entrapment and characters’ inner psychological conflicts – moments of dissociation, and the television as a symbol of alienation, inspired by my perennial inspiration, RW Fassbinder.”

Video director Luke Bather adds: “Our initial starting point was, predictably, the New German Cinema movement. However, when we discussed the themes of the song in more depth, the video evolved into its own beast. Sex, death, repressed desire, and good old-fashioned Catholic Guilt all loom large in the video through a series of performance vignettes inspired by everything from the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder through to the paintings of Francis Bacon and everything in between. Adding to this, we have the spectre of Carson haunting the video as a ghostly analogue broadcast interspersed with archival footage of Berlin in the 1970s; an inescapable reminder of the past and a nod to the original New German Cinema movement.”

“My Mistake (ft Carson Cox)” official video: https://youtu.be/3TVLCRnr2KM
‘Pain Will Polish Me’ album links: https://felte.lnk.to/new-german-cinema

The songs on ‘Pain Will Polish Me’ move in shadow. Layers of synth, vocal and guitar fold over one another, drawing from the cinematic tension of Fassbinder’s New German Cinema and the quiet dissonance of modern Berlin, where Weiss recorded fragments of the record, drifting between places that carry uneasy ghosts. Between dinner conversations about the city’s buried history and the surreal comfort of its present, she found herself tracing the outlines of love and loss, identity and dissolution. “Germany’s history is everywhere but it’s unsaid,” she notes. “Fassbinder brought it into view. I wanted to approach the same sense of unease through sound.”

The album artwork picks up these themes, hovering between the everyday mundanity of a Fassbinder domestic scene, and something less recognisable, punctuated by surreal elements that move us into dreamscape, both familiar and disquieting. The shell and sea reference Botticelli’s Venus: a figure born from sea foam created when Uranus’s severed genitals fell into the ocean – an image of creation through destruction. The shell becomes her vessel of birth, representing transformation, protection and fertility – the bridge between divine creation and human life. Weiss extends this theme of renewal to the personal; her baby daughter’s babbles feature on the record.

Weiss has long been fascinated by the seam between pop and theory, art and feeling. While Fear of Men continue to work on their next record, this solo project opens up her own private language- a collection that feels at once personal and archival, haunted and alive. Between finishing a Masters in Early Modern Literature at Oxford, starting a PhD, moving countries and jobs many times, she’s been piecing together a body of work that sits somewhere between diary, research and séance.

It’s an album about losing yourself in order to see what’s left. A document of love as obsession, repetition, survival. A meditation on love as both mirror and undoing, crafted in fragments, then pieced together into something whole.

New German Cinema live dates:
28 February – London, UK @ Sebright Arms
15 April – Brighton, UK @ The Folklore Rooms

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t make the mistake of not subscribing.]

[Thanks to Kate at Stereo Sanctity.]

Lee Lewis’ “White Flag” will have you surrendering to its groove.

Los Angeles-based musician Lee Lewis presents his new single, “White Flag.” Today’s single marks the first taste of new music from Lewis since his striking reimagining of Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater,” praised by FLOOD as a “stirring, soulful examination of queer Black identity.” “White Flag” is atmospheric, guided by a smooth bassline, and inspired by Bond films. The track is Lewis’ most personal song to date, expressing the built-up resentment when his relationship was reaching its breaking point and finds him declaring “enough is enough.”

“In many ways, ‘White Flag’ serves as the preamble to the slow death of something chaotic and toxic, a moment where self-worth finally begins to outweigh the emotional cat chase,” Lewis reflects. “It marks the point where I start to recognize that love should not cost me myself. In the song the chorus sings ‘I’m waving my white flag.’ It’s me saying, ‘I surrender, you win, I lose, I have to let this go.’ Sonically, it’s my take on Bond music: luxurious, sultry, and powerful. The song sits in the richest part of my voice, allowing it to feel warm, buttery, and intimate. ‘White Flag’ is about surrender, not as defeat, but as self-preservation. It’s the sound of laying down my armor after a battle that took far too much from me.”

Watch Visual for “White Flag” by Lee Lewis

Lee Lewis, raised in the historically Black neighborhood of Ladera Heights, discovered his musical talent early. He trained at the Colburn School of Performing Arts and later at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, studying classical voice.

Transitioning to pop music, Lewis overcame the challenge of adapting from classical precision to expressive, varied textures. His emotional delivery, marked by smooth riffs and runs, have captivated listeners and led to sold out shows in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

As a rising star during a time when Black artists are reclaiming genres they pioneered, Lewis believes Black musicians should freely occupy both mainstream pop and R&B spaces. “I just want to exist in both worlds. Black artists should be accepted in both.”

Listen to “Maneater” by Lee Lewis

Keep your mind open.

[Surrender to your desire to subscribe today.]

[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Rewind Review: Rockabilly Psychosis & The Garage Disease compilation (1989)

I picked this up at a record store in Paris because, frankly, the cover looked nuts and the number of great psychobilly, garage, and trash-rock bands on it is stunning.

Starting with The Trashmen‘s classic “Surfin’ Bird,” you know the rest of the album is going to be bonkers. The Sonics‘ “Psycho” lands somewhere between swing-rock and psychedelic fuzz. Up next, The Novas pay tribute to one of their favorite pro-wrestlers on “The Crusher” (“Do the eye gouge, you turkey necks!”). The song is downright weird, and almost drops into monster-rock territory.

“Scream!” by Ralph Neilsen & The Chancellors is a wild one, as guitars run around the room, apparently chasing hysterical women who spend the next few minutes screaming until they’re hoarse. Speaking of people losing their voice, I don’t know how Legendary Stardust Cowboy (who, according to the liner notes, used to perform standing on peoples’ cars at drive-ins during intermission) doesn’t do it during “Paralyzed.” Following him with the legendary Hasil Adkins‘ “She Said” is appropriate. They would’ve made a great double-bill.

Would it be a “garage disease” compilation without Link Wray or The Meteors? Wray’s cover of Willie Dixon‘s “Hidden Charms” is a forgotten classic by him and will, as usual with his material, make you wonder why people don’t speak of him in the same way they speak of Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton. When The Meteors proclaim “My Daddy Is a Vampire” (a live version, no less), you believe them.

You get to hear one of The Cramps‘ earliest recordings when they’re the backing band for Jimmy Dickinson on “Red Headed Woman.” Link Wray returns, sort of, when The Milkshakes perform a cover of his “Run Chicken Run.” The Meteors then come back into orbit for “Radioactive Kid.”

The live cut of Tav Falco & Panther Burns‘ “Dateless Night” is a super-rare cut and worth the purchase price of the whole disc if you’re a rockabilly collector. The Gun Club‘s “Jack on Fire” is almost post-punk, but they never loose their rockabilly swagger. There’s plenty more of that swagger on The Geezers‘ cover of Johnny Cash‘s “Folsom Prison Blues.” The Sting-Rays‘ “Cat Man” is dangerous and gritty, and the closer, “Just Love Me” by The Guana Batz, wraps this up with wild abandon that will have you wanting to loop the album all over again.

It’s a rare find, but worth the digging.

Keep your mind open.

[I might have psychosis if you don’t subscribe.]