Loyle Carner + a puppy = heaven on earth?

It’s been a long year and a half since ultimate BAE Loyle Carner graced us with his Mercury-nominated, breakthrough debut album “Yesterday’s Gone”, and tbh we’ve been impatiently waiting for this moment ever since.

Last night Loyle dropped Ottolenghi – a dreamy track featuring soul singer and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Rakei. An avid cook, the title is an ode to Israeli-British chef and food writer Yotam Assaf Ottolenghi.

As ever, it feels intimate and unhurried, moody but uplifting; he ruminates delicately on themes of family, growth and love – all in the space of a train journey.

Album 2 ASAP, please.

“I think illusions run my life”, muse indie pop/rock outfit Sundara Karma, “I need illusions all the time….”

The Reading-born band are back fitting existential questions into five-minute immersive bangers to sing, dance, drive or cry to.

The shimmery, funk-influenced “Illusions” landed this week as the first taste of their second album, set for release sometime next year. Until then, experience the magic IRL catch the guys at an intimate London performance this October 24th at Omeara.

So far, 2018 has been far from smooth, and at times pretty tough to stomach. So it’s no wonder the 90s / 00s have acquired a heady, nostalgic glow.

In their new track “1999”, your very own King and Queen of pop, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan (obviously), pay homage to the good old days of Nokias and Nickelodeon, Sketchers and the Sims, MSN and AOL Instant Messager.

The video for the snare-heavy, glossy pop tune whirls through a highlight reel of the era with the pair posing as iconic characters from Titanic, The Matrix, American Beauty, The Spice Girls, and even OG tech boi Steve Jobs in his turtleneck days.

Dance on, and dig out that flip phone.

At the end of August, neo-soul goddess Nao dropped “Make It Out Alive” with singer-songwriter SiR, a hazy, spellbinding jam for the last days of summer.

This week she unveiled a video for an acoustic version of the song with a stripped back video, filmed from an abandoned Ford Mustang in California.

Natural, emotive and utterly angelic, the drop kickstarts momentum for her highly-anticipated album Saturn, due for release on October 26th.

We learnt two things from “A Star is Born”. 1: Lady Gaga is still glorious, and 2: Bradley Cooper can actually… sing?

Having graduated from his stint playing various khaki wearing, washed up bad boys, Cooper’s directorial, and vocal debut has prompted memes and Oscar whispers in equal measure.

If you’ve not yet seen the film (what are you waiting for?), you’ll have heard Bradley’s gritty vocals on the film’s standout, all-American country tune “Shallow” on repeat everywhere this week. And yes, it’s exactly the reason we’ve been crying at our desks.