Indigenous people of Brazil are taking a stand against the government and violations of their overlooked rights with music, combining urban music with their ancestral music. Singer and composer Kaê Guajajara merges hip-hop, traditional instruments and elements from her mother tongue Ze’egete to talk about her indigenous identity. The most prominent Indigenous rapper is 19-year-old Kunumi MC, a native of the Guarani people, who talks "against everything happening to the Indigenous peoples in Brazil now". São Paulo band Androyde Sem Par blends pop and rock in Guarani-inflected songs. A political message is also the first ingredient in indigenous heavy-metal band Arandu Arakuaa's music. The Guardian tells the important story.

The body of aspiring rapper Kent Won't Stop, who went missing on October 17, has been found dead in the boot of a car after a crash on a highway in Miami, Hot New Hip Hop reports. Florida Highway Patrol officers discovered the body of 25-year-old hip-hop artist Brian Trotter after being called to the site of the collision. The driver, 25-year-old Robert Deupree Avery Coltrain, a friend of the deceased, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. An autopsy showed Trotter was fatally shot multiple times. This follows the news that broke this week of a 12-year-old rapper, named Lil Rodney, who was sentenced to seven years for murdering a one-year-old toddler.

Over 6,000 musicians, producers, road crew, and other industry workers had signed an online petition demanding a penny per stream royalty from Spotify, which is about triple what Spotify is currently paying. It might, however, be too much for the Swedish streaming company - "If Spotify's model can’t pay artists fairly, it shouldn’t exist", Union of Musician and Allied Workers says, according to CoS.

"The words to the song are your script. You have to bring the correct emotion to every word. You know, if you sing it pretty – a lot of people that cover my songs will sing it pretty – it’s going to fall flat. You have to bring more to it than that" - Joni Mitchell told Cameron Crowe in an interview about a release of a box set of her earliest recordings. She also talked about her musical identity - "For so long I rebelled against the term: 'I was never a folk singer'. I would get pissed off if they put that label on me. I didn’t think it was a good description of what I was. And then I listened, and – it was beautiful. It made me forgive my beginnings. And I had this realisation… I was a folk singer!".

"The design of Eilish’s live stage not only exceeded expectations; it provided effects that would be nearly impossible to pull off at an in-person concert" - CoS writes in a review of Billie Eilish's online show 'Where Do We Go? The Livestream'. Guardian's Alexis Petridis said it was "both striking and entertaining".

Van magazine explores the psychedelia in classical music, through a chronological playlist featuring a select history of the relationship between classical music and psychedelic experimentation. It includes Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, Chopin and others. Check out the classic-delia list here.

Vice started a series called Unpaid Royalties about the myriad ways that the music industry exploits Black artists, and what's being done to change them. They started with the three most common types of contracts an artist might sign today, offering a window into how the “bad deal” isn’t an anomaly - it’s by design.

Pioneering and influential desert rock band Yawning Man decided to do something special for their fans in the pandemic so they performed at the iconic Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert and filmed it for an album/film release coming October 30. Filmed live in the early morning hours of May, in the environment that inspires Yawning Man’s spacious, expansive and cinematic music, it turns out to be the perfect venue for the band.

The last song written by just one songwriter to reach the No. 1 at the Billboard Hot 100 was Ed Sheeran’s 'Perfect' in December 2017. The last song written by a solitary female songwriter to reach No. 1 was Alicia Keys’ 'Fallin’' in August 2001. In the 1970s almost half the songs reaching No. 1 were written by just one person. Billboard wonders why and how has it come to this.A helping hand

Songs that Donald Trump plays on his campaign are mostly classic rock that project power and combative self-confidence, like Queen's 'We Are The Champions', Tina Turner's 'The Best', and Survivor's 'Eye Of The Tiger' (containing the lyric "just a man and his will to survive"). BBC sees Trump's choice as one "based on how they feel, rather than a scholarly analysis of the lyrics". Joe Biden mostly goes for the lyrics, like with The Staple Singers' 'We The People', or for feel-good songs like Bill Withers' 'Lovely Day' or Jackie Wilson's 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.

Republic Records claims the top three titles on the Billboard 200 albums chart this week, a first in two years, Billboard says. Taylor Swift’s 'Folklore' (released via Republic) climbs back to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for an eighth non-consecutive week on top, with 77,000 equivalent album units. Total album sales for 'Folklore' jump past 1 million (to 1.038 million), making it the first album to sell a million copies in 2020, according to Billboard. Pop Smoke’s 'Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon' (via Victor Victor Worldwide/Republic) falls one spot with 66,000 equivalent album units earned. 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’s 'Savage Mode II' (Boominati/Slaughter Boomin/Republic/Epic) dips 2-3 with 47,000 units (down 29%).

Viola Smith, widely considered the first professional female drummer, has died aged 107 in California, LA Times reports. The trailblazing drummer once heralded as the “fastest girl drummer in the world”, gained recognition as the percussionist for Frances Carroll & the Coquettes, an all-female big band group that became popular in the late 1930s. She was known not only for her speed and precision, but her 12-drum kit which featured high-mounted tom-toms.

Adele brought a few jokes, including on herself, on the Saturday Night Like. "I know I look really, really different since you last saw me. But actually, because of all the Covid restrictions...I had to travel light and I could only bring half of me," she joked - "and this is the half I chose". She broke into song in a spoof of the reality show 'The Bachelor', where she entered the competition as a female contestant looking for a date; watch that segment below.

Outlaw country singer/songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker has died aged 78, NPR reports. He started playing on the early-'60s Greenwich Village folk scene, before moving to Austin in 1971 where he began performing in the city's thriving "outlaw" country scene that included Waylon Jennings, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson and Townes Van Zandt. “People said, ‘We’re different, but we’re not hillbilly country’. We didn’t blacken our teeth and wear baggy pants, we just liked cowboys and played like that” - Walker said about his music.

Good flow and a rolling beat make for a great new Junglepussy song 'No Band Aid'; Young Knives shared a great new puppet video for 'Barbarians'; 'Silver Wings' is a 12-minute hard-rock ripper by Pallbearer; Hot Chip released a funny video for 'Straight to the Morning' about girls going not too crazy (did they get frightened by Jarvis Cocker?!?).

Four young women living in Moscow released 'We Are', a "direct, even brutally blunt, yet invested with a considerable emotional hinterland", the Quietus says in a review of debut album by Lucidvox. These Muscovites "sound like news from nowhere" and although they sing in Russian, the Q hears "a fair warning of awful things to come. But how sweetly they coat the message".

“The history of women has been a story of silence, and music is no exception” - Lisa Rovner told Dazed about her documentary 'Sisters with Transistors' which tells the story of (almost) forgotten women who helped invent and create electronic music. The film is narrated by Laurie Anderson, features guest appearances by Aura Satz, Holly Herndon, and Kim Gordon, and it tells the stories of women like Bebe Barron who composed the first completely electronic score for any mainstream film, for 1956’s 'Forbidden Planet'.

Italian rapper, performance artist and L.G.B.T.Q. icon Myss Keta, the mysterious Queen of the Milan Night, used masks to lift herself from underground clubs to the cusp of national celebrity. Now, everybody in Italy is required to wear masks in public at all times, which stripped her of her defining shtick. “Before, it was a distinguishing characteristic. Now, it’s something we all have in common” - she told the New York Times.

"Barbie is an icon in her own right, so having her pay tribute to my work and personal style is a real honour" - Elton John told Rolling Stone about a Barbie doll based on him. The new doll sees Mattel's most beloved character decked out in head-to-toe Elton gear, and it's now available to pre-order for $50. The Elton John Barbie will drop on October 29. Elbarb

"I think the world's always been shit but it's always been great as well. There's a definite balance to these things. I always like to remind people that if you were born just over 100 years ago, you probably would have been drafted into some glorified muddy chess game. Human beings just haven't learned what it actually means to be human beings. So it’s always been dark" - Napalm Death singer Mark ‘Barney’ Greenway said in the Quietus interview, talking about the band's latest album 'Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism'. Talking about the band's lyrics and sonics he said - "I do like the artistic contradiction between the very humane lyrics and the absolutely inhumane sonics. But there doesn't have to be a distinction between pushing ideas and trying to understand people, trying to connect with people".

26-year-old busker Matt Grant was playing his guitar on a street in Edinburgh when an allegedly drunk woman smashed his only guitar (the young man is kind enough to call her a "lady" in a Tweet). “That’s a £300 guitar... Obviously, if I don’t have a guitar, I can’t busk. If you could help out, I’d be — massive appreciation” - Grant said and set up a GoFundMe, which was a great success (he got over £4,000) so he went and bought a new guitar, The Daily Record reports. While he was buying a new guitar, he got a call from Jack White's manager telling him the guitarist feels bad for what happened and wants to buy him a new guitar. And so he did - a £3,600 Fender Stratocaster. Good beats drunk, after all!

Podcaster Jake Brennan told a chilling-amazing story in his Dead and Gone podcast about the unusual spate of missing and murdered fans of the Grateful Dead, better known as Deadheads, the Daily Beast reports. Brennan names several out of numerous cases of murders and disappearances, plenty unresolved to his day, and offers a possible explanation - "Grateful Dead... live and preach this super anti-authority lifestyle, even after they became an institution themselves. Being a Deadhead and traveling on the road following the band was all about living outside of the bounds of society, and there's a lawlessness that goes along with that. It's ultimately part of what contributed to this environment of vulnerability where people went missing and lost their lives".

Both the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 - 24kGoldn feat. Iann Dior's 'Mood', and the No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 albums chart - Pop Smoke's 'Shoot For the Stars, Aim For the Moon' were aided by massive popularity on TikTok. Fleetwood Mac have climbed to the Top 10 of the albums chart after going viral on the video-sharing service. Billboard staff discusses the impact of the video platform on its charts.

Short-video streaming service Quibi is shutting down six months after launching, in an attempt to return as much capital to investors as possible, The Wall Street Journal reports. Quibi cost $4.99 a month and hosted programs in 5-to-10 minute “chapters”, formatted to fit smartphone screens. Quibi included some music-related content, such as MTV’s rebooted prank show 'Punk’d' (hosted by Chance the Rapper), Eric André’s 'Rapper Warrior Ninja' show, and a new season of Reno 911. According to LA Times, Quibi raised $1.75 billion in funding from major Hollywood film studios, TV companies, telecommunications companies, technology companies, banks, and other investors including Disney, 21st Century Fox, Sony, Time Warner, Viacom, eOne, Lionsgate, MGM, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Alibaba. At the end of the summer, Quibi had $350 million in funds available.

A BBC investigation has found racist songs on major music streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Deezer. These platforms do not allow such content, however, BBC easily found at least 20 songs with disturbing content. Searching out the music required no specialist skills or effort.

She Shreds lists 7 early black female musicians - mostly guitarists and bassists, one vocalist - "who pioneered the path for music as we know it today". They are:

Mamie Smith (1891–1946) - made the Blues a national sensation in 1920

Elizabeth Cotten (1893-1987) - The Mother of Folk

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915 – 1973) - invented and pioneered the sounds of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Sylvia Robinson (1935 – 2011) - The Mother of Hip Hop

Beverly “Guitar” Watkins (1939 – 2019) - one of the first women to be recognized as a lead blues guitarist

Lady Bo aka Peggy Jones (1940 – 2015) - played a key role in the transition of Blues to Rock ‘n’ Roll

Barbara Lynn (1942 – present) - Mother of R&B Guitar

New Zealand is one of the only places in the world where musicians are touring right now, since they have successfully curtailed community spread of covid-19 with a total lockdown. Washington Post talked to the Beths, a band that's back on tour, happy to play and mingle with the crowd. However, they are limited to New Zealand, so by the end of their current tour, the Beths will have played 17 shows in their home country. Normally, they would have played 60 international dates...

Retired American musician and satirist Tim Lehrer, 92 years old now, has posted all his lyrics on his website and declared them public domain, to be "downloaded and used in any manner whatsoever, without requiring any further permission from me or any payment to me or to anyone else". His music is coming soon to the same website.

TikTok seemed like a space mainly for hip-hop and pop artists, but this year the door was opened for indie-rock as well, Water & Music reports on the change of trends. Mitski’s song 'Me and My Husband' went from roughly 100,000 streams a month to 100,000 streams a day, thanks to a TikTok trend. The most popular song on Spotify for indie-rock legends Pavement is a 1997 B-side called 'Harness Your Hopes', an unofficial, uncredited clip of which is currently included in over 20,000 videos on TikTok. The second most-streamed song on Spotify by the band The Front Bottoms is a 2014 deep cut 'Be Nice to Me', which, thanks to being featured in over 47,000 TikTok videos through an unofficial clip, is currently dwarfing every song from the band’s brand new record. There's an issue looming over TikTok's head - figuring out how to properly pay royalties on user-generated content.

Newcomers Red Fiction mix metal, jazz and Eastern European folk on 'Kerberos'; gospel meets psychedelia on 'Unity (It’s Up To You)' by Badge Époque Ensemble; Nick Cave has shared his unreleased track ‘Euthanasia’, written during the 'Skeleton Tree' period; composer Olafur Arnalds and producer Bonobo team up for atmospheric gem 'Loom'; death metal meets western American music in Wayfarer's 'The Crimson Rider'; a good indie-rock song 'Good Woman' by the Staves; Chamberlain, making their first album in 20 years, released just a straight rock song 'Not Your War'.