COVID-19 is not a sexually transmitted disease, but it hampers all forms of human contact and is cruelly depriving. This is a moment for everyone, whatever their sexual orientation, to acknowledge how diminished life is when touch, closeness and affection is risky and unsafe, whether due to oppression or infection - Ludvig-van.com writes in a spot-on introduction of the article about the homosexuality of Leonard Bernstein and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

"It’s Haim as we haven’t quite heard them before: not just eminently proficient musicians, entertainers, and 'women in music', but full of flaws and contradictions, becoming something much greater" - Pitchfork argues in favor of the third album by the three California sisters. Other critics like it as much: "Haim take us through a dark place and they do it frankly. But they never let the momentum dip. And they never lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel" - Independent; "Experimental, soothing and vulnerable; it’s a thing of great beauty" - NME; "Richly searching, explosively produced third album" - Guardian.

“We wanted to make it more about the music. Not about what anybody knows less or knows more. Just make something that feels good to the heart” - saxophonist and producer Terrace Martin told the Fader about Dinner Party, a new supergroup he shares with pianist Robert Glasper, producer 9th Wonder, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, and The Chicago-based singer Phoelix as an added member. They've known each other for years - Martin and Washington attended high school together; Martin and Glasper attended jazz camp together at age 16; Washington and Glasper used to sit in with each other at The Piano Bar in L.A. Dinner Party’s self-titled debut spotlights jazz and hip-hop’s shared history of protest, and it is due out July 10th.

"It was a blast. It's probably the most fun I've had on a project in a long time" - Savan Kotecha, collaborator to Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato and Ellie Goulding, told BBC about his latest project, Netflix's new comedy 'Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga', which celebrates the world's largest live music event. Director David Dobkin envisioned the film’s songs walking the fine line between satire and homage - “It’s okay if it’s funny, but it has to be really good music. It has to still be great and just kitschy enough to be Eurovision, because that’s part of what’s fun about Eurovision". Kotecha was brought in to oversee every aspect of the film's music - check out the songs on Variety.

Portugal's government announced restrictions on several areas of Greater Lisbon from 1 July, after reports of parties that attracted as many as 1,000 revellers. In Paris, the police clashed with the thousands who thronged to Paris’s Canal Saint-Martin and Marais district for the annual Fête de la Musique. In Berlin, more than 100 officers broke up a demonstration that turned into a spontaneous, 3,000-person party. In England, the police are grappling with a proliferation of illegal parties. In Spain, the authorities slapped a €10,400 fine on Belgium’s Prince Joachim after the royal breached the country’s quarantine rules to attend a party in southern Spain; he later tested positive for the virus. Guardian suggests these parties are to blame for the surge in new Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks.

Kanye West has partnered with Gap to launch a clothing line called Yeezy Gap where the musician will act as creative director, designing “modern, elevated basics for men, women and kids at accessible price points”. According to the New York Times, Yeezy Gap will arrive in stores in the first half of 2021, and Gap hopes the new line will be generating $1 billion in annual sales within five years.

“It can’t be that music is a commodity, or content to use to sell advertising or a subscription plan. Artists have to come first” - Bandcamp founder Ethan Diamond said in a Guardian interview about his service. It's his second internet project actually - he sold his first company, an email service called Oddpost, to Yahoo in 2004. Unlike streaming services, Bandcamp takes the idea of ownership as crucial to its success - “by doing that it makes [fans] feel like they’re part of that music’s creation”. Diamond, a musician himself - saxophone player - believes music “is essential for humanity. If you’re serious about that, then the welfare of artists is essential”. This year he practiced his beliefs by waiving Bandcamp's fees in favor of artists...

K-pop girl band Blackpink has set a new record for the biggest music video premiere on YouTube with a total of 1.65 million fans tuning in for the unveiling of their new song 'How You Like That'. They broke a record set by fellow K-pop stars BTS in February, Soompi reports. Last year, the Blackpink became the first K-pop group to have a video reach a billion views on YouTube.

REDEF has set up a praiseworthy thread about the LGBTQIA community's influence on popular music - From jazz and blues to punk and disco to pop and techno, the past century of music is all but impossible to imagine without the influence, inspiration and point of view of LGBTQIA artists. Even when their lives were invisible, their music was loud and clear and everywhere.

Twenty One Pilots have released a new video that bears the promise of being endless - 'Level of Concern (Never Ending Video)' starts the music anew every three minutes and 40 seconds, but there’s a constant stream of new imagery submitted by fans of the duo, interspersed among occasional shots from Twenty One Pilots’ original 'Level of Concern' music video. The group has a submission page for fan footage of anywhere from 3-30 seconds up at https://loc.twentyonepilots.com/.

Country trio Dixie Chicks is dropping the "Dixie" part from their name, so they will go forward as The Chicks (their website has already adjusted to the new reality). Dixie is a nickname for the Southern United States, especially those states that composed the Confederate States of America.

AccorHotels Arena in Paris on June 18-19 hosted the first big crowd concert in France since the country went on lockdown in March, welcoming 1,000 and 2,000 guests, respectively, Pollstar reports. Tickets for the TV production, recorded at the arena as part of the annual Fête de la Musique celebrations, were free, and the lineup was mostly French artists - Patrick Bruel, Catherine Ringer, Christine and the Queens, Crystal Murray... To ensure physical distancing, people were only allowed to come in groups of two and inside the arena, there was at least one empty set in-between the paired guests, which was easy since it is a 20,000 capacity venue. Wearing a mask was mandatory inside the building, and hand sanitisers were placed at strategic locations.

There are numerous examples of metal bands supporting #BlackLivesMatter and the fight for good in general: Black Sabbath have printed T-shirts altering the logo from their 'Master of Reality' album to read Black Lives Matter; Serj Tankian of System of a Down took a very clear stand: “Coordinate online and block every street everywhere and force the regime to resign. The time has come. Your time has come @realdonaldtrump”; Guns N’ Roses gave support to BLM on Instagram and Axl Rose unequivocally took a side against Donald Trump. But, there are black sheep: John Dolmayan, System of a Down’s drummer, used Instagram to offer his support for Trump’s claim to be the greatest friend to minorities America has ever had; Sandra Araya, the wife of Slayer’s Tom Araya, has been posting racist memes to Instagram. Guardian reports on the clearly dividing issue.

No longer slave to the hustle and bustle of racing to airports, intermittent sleep, adrenalin-driven late nights, criminally early mornings and forced time away from loved ones for weeks if not months, some musician are finding time a commodity that is rich in discovery - The Star wrote about life in lockdown for some artists (the ones who can afford it, probably). “I’ve been in one place longer than I have since 1989. The pace and the motion of my life has downshifted and … it’s nice!” - Barenaked Ladies co-founder Ed Robertson said.

In the wake of #BlackLivesMatter protests, a #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag appeared on Twitter, but it was successfully trolled by American K-pop fans. Soon after, they humiliated Donald Trump - a large number of TikTok users and K-pop fans, it transpired, had registered for tickets to attend the US president’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last weekend, but they had no intention of attending. Trump ended up speaking in front of about 6,200 supporters and organisers in the 19,000-seat BOK Center arena, Guardian reports. New York Times tries to explain why K-pop fans are turning into political activism.

Zora made an unprecedented collection created to honor artists and artworks whose contributions to American culture have not previously been recognized this way, in order to give proper due to Black American women whose monumental influence not only shapes music but is foundational to its past, present, and future. The list goes from 'Ella Sings Gershwin' by Ella Fitzgerald (1950) to 'Jaime' by Brittany Howard (2019). Check out the full list here.

Anthony Garcia melts folk-rock and classical together on 'The Wind'; 'Hard Life' by Sault is a protest song, yet a very beautiful one; The Streets has shared his latest single 'Falling Down', featuring self-proclaimed "G-folk" singer Hak Baker; Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi has released his new single 'Swill', industrial and noisy, with a strong video; Jordan Lawlor of the M83 is set to make his solo debut as J. Laser, 'Waves & Blades' is an up-beat taste from his EP; Fenne Lily's 'Alapathy' is an upbeat indie rock about starting to smoke weed as a means to switch off your brain; math-rock meets noise-rock on 'Worship House' by Sprain; 'Money' by Widowspeak deals with seeing everything in terms of value; Gordi's 'Extraordinary Love', on the other hand, is about making someone feel exceptional.

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello surprised 10-year-old Nandi Bushell with his signature Fender Stratocaster guitar following her viral performance of 'Guerrilla Radio' - she performed guitar, bass and drums in the clip, supporting Black Lives Matter following the death of George Floyd. “I’d like you to have this guitar as a gift from me to you because you rock so great, and to see someone rocking so great who is so young, it really gives me hope for the future” - Morello told her. “Wow, from the actual Tom Morello!” she reacted. “Thank you so, so, so much for this beautiful guitar. I can’t wait to jam with you!”.

"It's not often that a film leaves you totally envious of the people who were there, but this is one of them" - Brooklyn Vegan writes in a review of new documentary 'Desolation Center', a series of DIY shows put on in the California desert in the 1980s. Desolation Center shows were the brainchild of Stuart Swezey who has now made a documentary about the concerts and the time. Those desert shows were highly influential, BV argues - among those in attendance at least one of the Desolation Center shows were Perry Farrell who would go on to found Lollapalooza, and Gary Tovar who would go on to found Coachella.

Live Nation has announced its first drive-in concert tour, headlined by country star Brad Paisley, rapper Nelly, Darius Rucker, Jon Pardi, and more, Variety reports. The shows, dubbed Live From The Drive-In, will take place in parking lots at stadiums in St. Louis, Nashville, and Indianapolis July 10-12. Concertgoers will be arriving in their cars and have a designated parking lot space that includes an area to set up chairs outside; mingling between spaces is not allowed. Guests are allowed to bring their own food, drinks, and alcohol. The sound will function much like a regular outdoor concert with very loud speakers. Tickets start at $125 per car, with each vehicle limited to four people.

The Soundflowers is the new musical project of Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris Jackson and her partner Gabriel Glenn, and this week they released their self-titled debut EP. The duo plays acoustic rock and indie folk. The band has shared the video for single 'Your Look (Glorious)', produced by King’s Son Productions, the company run by Paris’ brother, Michael “Prince” Jackson Jr.

NME's blogger sees the '90s revival happening, but it just won't work, he's convinced: "In these months of lockdown misery, Covid paranoia, dislocation and hardship, many are looking to the pre-Starsailor age for comfort. The 'Friends' are reuniting. Illegal raves are back. Early 'Resident Evil' games have been remade... The time is ripe then, you might think, for the long-awaited ‘90s revival... Yet new acts simply aren’t emulating their mockney joie de vivre, their suburban sauciness and surly swagger, their gleeful worship of ‘the chooon’... If the ‘90s seem like an unrepeatably idyllic moment in time, it’s because they were... How could we ever recapture such a world of possibility, and the musical exuberance that came with it?".

Debut album by the Canadian quintet is "one of those rare albums that does a convincing job of capturing the livewire energy of a band onstage. Clipped guitar rhythms meet warped vocal freakouts and gang-chant shoutalongs; the shapes of the songs tighten and tighten, worming their way into your body. It’s deeply physical music, but one from a strain of art-rock weirdos", Stereogum argues. It's "funk and punk and disco crashed together", by the band "committed to relentless grooves".

A great text in Nick Cave's Red Hand Files blog where he replied with a lengthy reasoning to a fan's question about why he doesn't write about politics in his songs, and in doing so, explained the backbone of his lyrics:

“Perhaps the thing you enjoy about my songs is that they are conflicted, and often deal in uncertainties and ambiguities. My better songs seem to be engaged in an interior struggle between opposing outlooks or states of mind. They rarely settle on anything. My songs sit in that liminal space between decided points of view.

Songs with political agendas inhabit a different space. They have little patience for nuance, neutrality or impartiality. Their aim is to get the message across in as clear and persuasive a manner as possible. There can be great value in these sorts of songs, but they are usually born from a particular combination of rigidity and zealousness, which I personally do not possess.

My songs seem to be resistant to fixed, inflexible points of view. They have, as you say, a concern for common, non-hierarchical suffering. They are not in the business of saving the world; rather they are in the business of saving the soul of the world.

I have very little control over what songs I write. They are constructed, incrementally, in the smallest of ways, the greater meaning revealing itself after the fact. They are often slippery, amorphous things, with unclear trajectories — position-free attempts at understanding the mysteries of the heart.

I guess I could write a protest song, but I think I would, in the end, feel compromised in doing so, not because there aren’t things I am fundamentally opposed to — there are — but because I would be using my particular talents to deal with something I consider to be morally obvious. Personally, I have little inclination to do that. It’s just not what I do.”

Next month the world will see the first post-corona festival, a nu-metal fest pointedly named Herd Immunity Festival, Metal Injection reports. It's taking place in Q&Z Expo Center in Ringle, Wisconsin, July 16-18, with tickets going for $105.50. No big names there, really, just the seemingly bravest - Static-X, Nonpoint, Dope, a reunited Bobaflex, Blacktop Mojo, Royal Bliss, Flaw, Kaleido, SAUL, Versus Me, a Metallica tribute band called ONE, an AC/DC tribute band called Thunderstruck. It appears the promoter Ardent Entertainment is intending to carry on as if everything will be fine - there is no mention of social distancing practices or any assurance of sanitary precautions above and beyond the norm. However, as CoS reports, soon after the festival was announced Nonpoint dropped out, because of the name, and the festival organizers dropped the "herd" part from the fest's name.

Reaper is a digital audio workstation for computers, offering a full multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing and mastering toolset. It's very good for working with faraway songwriting collaborators, and it covers nearly all of the bases of a Pro Tools workstation at a fraction of the price.

Experimentalists 100 gecs were described, particularly at the start of their career, of being deliberately ironic, but “the ironic thing is the biggest non-true thing. We’re not doing this to be ironic. The opposite resonates as really true. There are people who say: ‘They’re just expressing a love for music, all sorts of different kinds’” - the band says in a Guardian interview. They are releasing a remix album - "If '1000 gecs' was the logical conclusion of the late-2010s’ post-genre experimentalism, the remix album is that worldview taken to its absurdist extreme".

Queens are already there, but for the Queen it is a first one - the rock band are to feature on a series of UK postage stamps over the summer, Ultimate Classic Rock reports. The 13 stamp designs, going on sale from 9 July, feature a posed studio shot of the group, plus four live images of each of Brian May, Roger Taylor, frontman Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon, and album covers of 'Queen II', 'Sheer Heart Attack', 'A Night at the Opera', 'News of the World', 'The Game', 'Greatest Hits', 'The Works', and 'Innuendo'. They become only the third band to be honoured by Royal Mail, following the Beatles in 2007 and Pink Floyd in 2016. Drummer Roger Taylor said: “We must be really part of the furniture now”.

Spain authorities announced new rules pertaining to nightclubs and outdoor venues of Ibiza in the context of COVID-19, with the intention, it seems, to change the tourist profile of Ibiza to be less of a party island. For indoor spaces, the rules state that only venues with a stated capacity of 300 or less are allowed to open for the season and will only be allowed to open at one-third capacity, and the people inside will have to be seated. The decree approved by the Balearic government - which will last for five years - outlaws pub crawling, party boats and "perilous practices" such as jumping from balconies. Establishments in the zones that sell alcohol will need to close between 9:30 p.m. and 8 a.m.

Seal told a story about his classic 'Kiss From a Rose' which was a chart-flop, before director Joel Schumacher, who died on Monday, helped turn it into a hit, according to The Hollywood Reporter. When Seal released the song in 1994 "it went into the charts at No. 60 and dropped to No. 80-something the next week and that was the end of it. It was over". However, Schumacher liked it, used it in 'Batman Forever' in 1995. The song went on win the 1996 Grammy for record of the year, song of the year and best male pop vocal performance. Seal also sold 8 million albums. "Subsequently, kids thought I was Batman because the song was so big."