Apart from the biggest categories, there were some noticeable wins at the Grammys last night. Kaytranada won Best Dance/Electronic Album with 'Bubba', Fiona Apple won Best Rock Performance with 'Shameika' as well as Best Alternative Music Album with 'Fetch the Bolt Cutters', Brittany Howard won Best Rock Song with 'Stay High', The Strokes won Best Rock Album with 'The New Abnormal', Thundercat won Best Progressive R&B Album with 'It Is What It Is', Gillian Welch & David Rawlings won Best Folk Album with 'All The Good Times', Burna Boy won Best Global Music Album with 'Twice As Tall', Body Count won Best Metal Performance with 'Bum-Rush', even Kanye West won, in Best Contemporary Christian Music Album category with 'Jesus is King', tying Jay-Z as the most ever Grammy-awarded among hip-hop artists with 22 awards.

NME's blogger really appreciates 'The New Abnormal', the album, not the world's settings: "The Strokes’ comeback couldn’t have been better timed. I can’t be the only one for whom it’s provided a welcome distraction from all the hypocritical government briefings and fighting in supermarkets... From the record, title-down, you might even conclude that they saw all this coming".

Jesse Tabish wrote 'We Wait', his new song for his project Other Lives as a tribute to his old friend Tommy, who was shot and killed at the age of 25, Jennifer, Tommy's wife, had hired his murderer; Katie Harkin has played with Sleater-Kinney, Wild Beasts, Courtney Barnett’s band, with her new single 'Dail it In' going in a different direction - moody and atmospheric; Justin Vernon debuted brand new Bon Iver song 'Things Behind Things Behind Things' during Bernie Sanders stream, an old-school Bon Iver thing; Desire's 'Escape' comes from their first new album in 11 years; The Strokes are changing their sound - with 'Brooklyn Bridge To Chorus' they go into synth-pop territory; O'Brother released their new slow-burner 'Killing Spree' produced by Manchester Orchestra’s core duo of Andy Hull and Robert McDowell; a great video for 'Don't Slack' with Justin Timberlake and Anderson .Paak.

The Strokes' drummer Fabrizio Moretti is also an artist. He shared some interesting thoughts to Consequence of Sound about how he sees arts and consuming of it: "There’s a difference between being an artist and actually fucking putting in the work”; “When you start crafting, you see that the work influences the rest of the work because of the sheer fact that you need to do well. I’m always working on two songs at the same time because if I don’t, I obsess on the details of one, and it fucks up"; "You go and you see a piece of art; you’re looking at it outside of you. When you listen to a song, the singer’s voice is being put together in your own head. The effort that you as the listener has is part of the artwork in a sense”.

'Ohio' is a live favourite by King Princess; Moon Destroys have Mastodon's Troy Sanders on their psychedelic new song 'Blue Giant'; Myrkur go for strange, albeit easy-listening mix of Nordic folk and dream pop on 'Leaves od Yggdrasil'; Bay Area rapper The Jacka was killed in a 2015 shooting at 37 years old, and 'Can't Go Home' is his collaboration with Freddie Gibbs, coming out on his first posthumous album; Johanna Warren goes for simple and pretty on 'Bed of Nails'; Justin Bieber released a nice song 'Intentions' with a great message; The Strokes are back, drumless, with 'At the Door'; Poet laureate Simon Armitage launched a band LYR, mixing poetry, jazz and post-rock; Napalm Death released their first new songs in four years - an original 'Logic Ravaged by Brute Force' and a Sonic Youth cover 'White Cross'; I Break Horses go spacey psychedelia on 'I'll Be the Death of You'; Figazi people have a new band Coriky, much more laid down on 'Clean Kill'; Nigerian guitarist Mdou Moctar follows his last year's great 'Ilana' with a song 'Ibitlan', equally groovy and rich; Caroline Rose wrote 'Freak Like Me' because "I’ve always wanted to write a pretty song with the word ‘vomit’ in it"; Drain play just some straight punk-metal from California on 'Sick One'. Listening to all of these takes an hour or so, take that time, it's worth it!

The Strokes played a New Year's Eve show in New York, and during the show, they played a new song called 'Ode to the Mets', Stereogum reports. Julian Casablancas confirmed that a new full-length album, the band’s first since 2013, would arrive in the new year. Watch the new song below.

The Strokes headlined this year's City of Angels, for their first live performance together in over two years, debuting also a brand new song 'The Adults Are Talking', their first new material since 2016’s 'Future Present Past EP'. CoA is a benefit concert raising proceeds for two homeless organizations in Los Angeles, Consequence of Sound […]