LA-based house music producer Channel Tres is about to drop his debut LP 'Real Cultural Shit', but the voyage to accepting himself as a house musician in LA's Compton wasn't easy. “At the time you had to be ‘hard’ and a certain type of way. I knew I wasn’t like that. I liked to dance, and that wasn’t always cool. When I saw Moodymann and how gangster he was with house music, I was like: ‘Oh, I could do this! I don’t have to give up my whole hood energy” - he says to the Guardian. He studied music theory at university where he discovered the electronic sounds - “It was kind of like a coming-to-Jesus moment. I started seeing like, ‘Oh, there’s these Black people creating this type of music? People from London came to Chicago and got this music, and now it’s popular over there?’”. His next step is to try and reach big venues such as stadiums, and to continue exploring choreography - “​​I see creativity in everything. In architecture, cooking, administration work. You have to be creative to problem-solve.”

Windchimes melt black metal, hardcore and post-rock on 'Zetsubo//Succumb To'; Big Boi, Sleepy Brown, Killer Mike & Big Rubequite released a protest song 'We The Ones' in the vein of funk-infused southern rap; Channel Tres shows how it sounds when hip-hop and house combine on 'Skate Depot'; Stevie Nicks looks to the heavens on 'Show Them The Way'; proggy rockers Transit Method released a video for four of their recently published songs.

Torres covered Portishead's 'Wandering Star', made quite a different song; string arrangements on Ladybug Transistor’s 'Giovanna Please' sound like open spaces and countryside; Brutus slowed down their metal on 'Sand', but keep the intensity and melody; Channel Tres' 'Weedman' is a funny song about a “notoriously unreliable” weed dealer; another funny one - Chai's 'No More Cake' about too much make-up; Bizou features former and current members of Light FM, Smashing Pumpkins and Glaare - their new single 'Crashing Sky' puts them between pop and dark; Htiekal is a music project by the actor Lakeith Stanfield, and 'Fast Life' is his step into leftfield pop; Jessie Reyez released a retro-soul song 'Coffin' featuring Eminem; 'Only Children' by Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit is a lovely sombre song.

Some are actually quite well known - Black Midi, Slowthai, DaBaby, Fontaines D.C., Just Mustard - although quite new as well, the rest both new and less popular. So, Stereogum chose - Norway coffeehouse indie duo Konradsen; California exhilarating aural assault 100 Gecs; some regular disco by Channel Tres; speed-metal Californians Dead Heat; psych-rock Canadians […]

Compton artist Channel Tres dropped his debut EP, sonically "somewhere between underground dance beats and a totally warped vision of hip hop", with his voice "somewhere between rapping, singing, and speaking, and it’s as bass-y and subdued as the production". His lyrics are "powerful", and "tackle race and sexuality and challenge stereotypes and the status […]