Qwest is "an extraordinary new trove of sixty-six concert films", with performances ranging from the nineteen-fifties through the nineteen-eighties, New Yorker reports. It is a streaming site and TV channel, founded in 2017 by Quincy Jones, featuring many of the twentieth-century heroes of Black music like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin and James Brown, as well as some rarely seen jazz artists like Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Ahmad Jamal...

This year marked a growing shift in the music industry, as many artists turned to animation to create the vivid, fantastical scenes so many of us were missing - Variety reports, naming several music stars that went digital this year: Anime Billie Eilish, Looney Tunes Dua Lipa, bobble-headed BTS, vectorized Lizzo, 3-D rendered EARTHGANG, comic book Katy Perry, anime The Weeknd, manga Noah Cyrus, trippy Tame Impala, video game J. Balvin and Doja Cat with a Bratz pout.

The first full trailer for Billie Eilish’s new documentary 'The World’s A Little Blurry', directed by R.J. Cutler, has been shared. It shows archival footage from throughout Billie Eilish’s life, her looks at life in recent years, some footage of her early performances and more.

Veteran producer The Twilite Tone - associate to Common, Kanye West, John Legend, and Pusha T. - last month released his debut album 'The Clearing', a “trans-genre” exploration of house, electronic funk and instrumental hip-hop. On the latest episode of Fact's Patch Notes, The Twilite Tone presents an impromptu practice performance, "bobbing and weaving through three of his creations with his equipment of choice".

Dave Grohl and producer/multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin unveiled the fourth installment in their Hanukkah cover song series with a cover of Peaches' 'Fuck the Pain Away'. Grohl and Kurstin are celebrating Hanukkah with covers of songs by eight prominent Jewish artists - so far the pair has covered Beastie Boys’ epic 'Sabotage', Drake's 'Hotline Bling', and Mountain’s 'Mississippi Queen'.

Timothée Chalamet and Pete Davidson played in a funny sketch on Saturday Night Live this weekend, ridiculing SoundCloud rappers, Huff Post reports. In the sketch, Chalamet and Davidson play Guaplord and $mokecheddathaassgetta, two rappers who broke the record of most streams on SoundCloud with 3 billion. They are joined by Queen Latifah (played by Punkie Johnson) and Questlove (played by the actual Questlove) in an XXL Rap Roundtable hosted by Nunya Bizness (Ego Nwodim). Guaplord and $mokecheddathaassgetta infuriate the esteemed panelists - who give sensible comments - with never-ending screeches of “Yeet” and “Skrt,” citing Fall Out Boys, Kia commercials with the rapping hamsters, and TikTok as their biggest musical influences.

Texan blues-soul band Black Pumas played a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR - it was an intimate setting as usual, and powerful nevertheless. Singer Eric Burton "digs deep and... he's burning with old-school soul heartbreak", Adrian Quesada's guitar "is the perfect call-and-response foil, while the entire band - complete with two powerful back-up singers - calls to mind soul classics, but with a groovy new sheen".

A nice article in Spin about children who played big parts in some of the most popular videos, like the girl with braces in 'Black Hole Sun' by Soundgarden, the boy who kisses Madonna in 'Open Your Heart', or the boy playing Michael Anthony Jr. in Van Halen’s 'Hot for Teacher' (while drunk!). One of the lucky ones was Kelsey Lewis, known for her role in the video for Pink’s 'Family Portrait', who continued acting in following years, has also started DJing, and escaped mass-shootings on two occasions.

Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, and Mark Lanegan teamed up to make a very nice cover of the Jimmy Webb country classic 'The Highwayman'. The backing band featured Foo Fighters’ Nate Mendel, members of Death Cab, The Afghan Wigs, The Walking Papers, and guitarist Ian Moore. The collaboration was part of SMooCH 2020, an annual benefit show for the Seattle Children’s Hospital. The hour-long event also featured sets from Angel Olsen, Jason Isbell, Clipping., Kim Gordon, J. Mascis, and Fred Armisen.

Saturday Night Live aired a Christmas-themed parody of Eminem’s classic 'Stan' video, starring Pete Davidson as "Stu" who repeatedly writes to Santa Claus asking for a PlayStation 5. After he doesn't get it he writes hate mails, when a famous rapper appears to solve the problem.

Mongolian metal-folk band The HU have covered Metallica's classic 'Sad But True' in their native tongue, employing both traditional Mongolian instruments and throat singing. “Like millions of people around the world, Metallica has been a huge influence and inspiration for us as music fans and musicians. It is a great honor to show them our respect and gratitude by recording a version of ‘Sad But True’ in our language and in the style of The HU” - The HU’s Galbadrakh “Gala” Tsendbaatar said, according to Loudwire.

Phoebe Bridgers released a beautiful new video for the song 'Saviour Complex' from her latest album 'Punisher'. It was directed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, creator of 'Fleabag' comic series. Two Phoebes connected over email while quarantined, after the singer discussed her admiration of the director. 

The music video for System of a Down’s classic 'Chop Suey!' has surpassed 1 billion views on YouTube, making it the first metal song to hit that illustrious mark, Loudwire reports. 'Chop Suey!' joins the company of songs in the YouTube billion club that fall into the hard- or alter-rock category - Guns N’ Roses’ 'November Rain' and 'Sweet Child O’ Mine', Linkin Park’s 'In the End' and 'Numb', and Nirvana’s 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'...

YouTuber and album-cover lover Nathan Zed explains the power of album covers, through examples of great and lousy covers, with wit and sensitivity. A great short video.

YouTube reaction twins TwinsTheNewTrend interviewed Barack Obama about the importance of Bob Dylan, playlists, mixtapes, and how young and open people can change America and the world for the better. Three nice guys chatting...

Speed Stick is a new supergroup featuring members of Polvo, Bat Fangs, and The Love Language, playing blues on 'Knot'; Eels released a funny new video for 'Are We Alright Again' starring Jon Hamm; God Is An Astronaut do their post-rock thing on 'Burial' after so many years, but they're just so good at it; Slowthai shared a new song 'NHS' announcing his new album.

California singer-songwriter Emily Jane White has shared a new video for her song 'Surrender' from her last-year's album 'Immanent Fire'. White explains 'Surrender' is about "the global connections between humanity's addiction to fossil fuels, resource extractivism, and climate change, specifically highlighting the fires induced by climate change occurring in Northern California between 2018 and 2020". The video was directed, filmed & edited by Bobby Cochran, who filmed it near White's childhood home on the Mendocino Coast as this year's fires commenced.

The first trailer for the first feature-length film about Bee Gees, 'How Can You Mend A Broken Heart' has been released. Directed by Frank Marshall, who produced 'The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button', the documentary promises an intimate look and the stratospheric rise of Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb, Deadline reports. The docu features rare performance and archival footage of the group, as well as new interviews with Barry Gibb (Maurice died in 2003 and Robin died in 2012), as well as friends, collaborators and other pop musicians like Justin Timberlake and Coldplay's Chris Martin, as well as Noel Gallagher and Joe Jonas who talk about being in bands with siblings.

Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker has just released new Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, recorded in a camper trailer parked in Joshua Tree National Park. It just Lender and her acoustic guitar, playing five songs from her latest album 'Songs'.

The White Stripes are dropping their first-ever greatest hits album December 4, and they have announced it with a brand new music video for the fan favourite track 'Apple Blossom'. The stop-motion animated video was made by Wartella of Cartoon Network's 'Mad'.

Spanish charity Asociacion Musica para Despertar (Music Association for Awakening), which tries to improve the lives of dementia patients with music, has released a video of Alzheimer’s patient Marta Gonzalez, a former prima ballerina, who is transformed as she listens to Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake'. Madam Gonzalez passed away shortly after this video was filmed.

Josh Dun from Twenty One Pilots & Matt McGuire from The Chainsmokers played a drum-off in which they played together songs by Jay-Z/Linkin Park, Foo Fighters, N.E.R.D. and others. Their kits are set up across from each other creating an atmosphere of competition as well as togetherness.

Brian Eno has debuted his first-ever music video - for 'Decline and Fall' from his upcoming compilation, 'Film Music 1976-2020'. 'Decline and Fall' originally appeared in a chilling Brazilian serial killer biopic 'O Nome da Morte' ('A Man Called Death'), by Henrique Goldman, who directed the video. The clip cautions against the evils of greed using two overlapping narratives - one focuses on mankind’s destruction of the Earth for capitalist gain (deforestation, wildfires), while the other follows an assassin who kills for money.

Video for DJ Shadow ft De La Soul’s 'Rocket Fuel' won the Video of the Year award at the UK Music Video Awards 2020, and three more awards, Music News reports. The Sam Pilling-directed video for 'Rocket Fuel' is a comic recreation of the Apollo 11 mission as a staged event that goes catastrophically awry. Anton Tammi, director of four interconnected music videos to accompany The Weeknd’s latest album 'After Hours', won the highly prized Best Director award, and also Best Pop Video International for the video for 'Blinding Lights'.

Reddit user Minh1905 shared a video of a baby crying, with Slipknot coming to rescue. A dad holds his baby in his lap, until he plays 'Psychosocial' when the baby stops crying, actually it seems it really enjoys the song.

Detroit house music institution Inner City were the latest guests at The Fact's Against The Clock segment, producing a song in 10 minutes or less. It was quick and simple, with Kevin Saunderson and his youngest son Dantiez showing just how much they can do with a simple chord progression and beat.

Last year 2019 Massive Attack commissioned the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research to report on the live music industry and make recommendations for decarbonisation of live music events. An exemplar show was planned in Liverpool for October 2020 in the form of a collaboration between the band, the City, Tyndall, Ecotricity, The Good Business Festival & other partners, which couldn't have happened. New short documentary reports on their efforts so far.

A great short documentary 'A Sweet Pain: The Rebel Synths of Cabo Verde', based on an amusing myth about a ship headed to Rio De Janeiro carrying keyboards and synthesizers by Moog, Farfisa, Hammond and Korg. The ship gets lost near the Cabo Verde islands, where the descendants of African slaves find the instruments and develop, in resistance to the Portuguese authorities, music that celebrates life and joy, as opposed to Saudade, a nostalgic feel inherent to the Portuguese. ISCHIFI tells the story.

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.

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.