Table of contents for April/May 2025 in Rolling Stone UK

Richard Burn Art Editor, Rolling Stone UK Fun fact: I got an F in GCSE Art. Look at me now! When I was younger, I would create magazines from cut-outs from other magazines, so to be able to do this professionally is satisfying, to say the least. For me, design is a feeling. You can work on a layout for hours, and it could be technically correct, but if it doesn’t feel right, then it’s wrong. On the flip side, you could also be working on a design for five minutes and it feels right straight away. Like a good relationship: when you know, you know. This has been the first Future of Music issue I’ve worked on. To see three talented, up-and-coming artists taking the first steps in their…

THERE is a striking moment, just minutes into the first episode of Adolescence, when an armed police unit boot down the door of an unassuming family home in the north of England and undertake a dramatic dawn raid with such force you’d assume they were about to snare a drugs kingpin. As the rifle-toting cops race upstairs to detain Jamie, a 13-year-old boy who has just wet his pyjamas, it becomes clear that this new Netflix project, written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham — who also stars as Jamie’s father — is dealing with the timeliest of issues. In it, we see the fall-out of a teenager being charged with stabbing one of his female classmates to death. Liverpool-born Graham, one of Britain’s most celebrated actors and a favourite…

THE ROCK & ROLL Public Library (RRPL), the brainchild of Clash guitarist and founder Mick Jones, serves as a journey through late 20th-century punk and, by extension, society as a whole. First shown to the public in 2009 and then again multiple times across the next decade, Jones’ personal archives contain a beautiful mix of culturally significant artefacts and ephemeral and unusual trinkets from his childhood. In early March, RRPL moved into Soho’s Farsight Gallery for a new exhibition showcasing Jones’ extensive and stunning collection more thoroughly than ever before. RRPL also released the first issue of a new periodic magazine. Jones said: “The magazine to me is like a record, with each article a separate track, and it tells a story — my story. And by extension through our…

LAINEY WILSON slid into her first pair of bell bottoms when she was nine years old. They were blue leopard print, a gift from her mother, and a source of élan vital. “I remember as a little girl putting them on and feeling myself, like, ‘OK, I can do this,’” she says, “even if I was just performing in front of a mirror with a hairbrush.” Cosied up by a fireplace on a scenic ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley of California’s Central Coast, about an hour north of Santa Barbara, the 32-year-old country singer-songwriter traced much of her present self to that watershed year. In 2001, she also wrote her first song, adopted her brown quarter horse, Tex, and went to Nashville for the first time, attending the famous…

DEAR ROLLING STONE READER, At ZYN, we’re all about those moments. We understand that music isn’t just about sound — it’s about experience. That’s why we’re supporting Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music 2025 Awards and celebrating the artists shaping the music industry. ZYN’s nicotine pouches offer something genuinely useful for festival and gig-goers — the ability to enjoy nicotine without smoke, vapour, or extra equipment. No need to step away and risk missing a surprise guest, a rare track, or that legendary encore. With no interruptions, you can stay fully present in the music. As one of the pioneers of smoke-free alternatives, ZYN is redefining how nicotine can be consumed, creating a seamless fit for music lovers who don’t want to miss a beat. Beyond this partnership with Rolling…

LOUDER, PLEASE IS the title of Rose Gray’s debut album, and also a demand. The album bursts out of the gate with a brash and ear-splitting thud of bass, percussion and Gray’s uncompromising voice. Everything on the singer’s impressive debut is as loud, big and in-your-face as possible, determined to soundtrack the messiest night out of your year. “I’ve always been obsessed with LOUD music,” Gray confirms, revealing that the title of the album was “born on the mic, a running joke where I was always asking for things to be louder (please)”. With the overwhelming success of Brat re-opening the door for balls-out pop music about our most hedonistic tendencies, Gray is continuing the party into 2025 and asking us to go even harder this time around.…

WHEN WUNDERHORSE RELEASED their second album Midas last summer, Rolling Stone UK described it as “the arrival of a band that could become generational”. Their fans clearly agreed, with sold-out rooms — including a sold-out date at London’s Alexandra Palace — on the horizon for 2025. Part of that appeal, no doubt, is a commitment to accepting rough edges, imperfections and giving the sound of a band doing things the old way. “I think there’s something really special about that rawness,” Wunderhorse singer Jacob Slater told Rolling Stone UK last year. The result is something that sounds classic but utterly vital at the same time.…

“I fell into music backwards” “If this music career had happened in my early twenties, I would have fucked it for myself” chloe qisha lived many lives before she decided to become a pop star. Born and raised in Malaysia, she wasn’t the kid that developed her passion from writing songs in her bedroom as a teenager, like so many other romanticised stories go. She knew she could sing and compose songs, but never felt the undeniable urge to write them down. By the time she started posting cover versions online in her early twenties and was messaged by an A&R, she had followed her older brother in leaving the country a decade ago to study in the UK at 16, and was undertaking a psychology degree in London, training…

MONTHS AFTER WINNING Rolling Stone UK’s Play Next Award, Brooke Combe delivered a debut album that reflects her brilliant mantra: make the UK soulful again. The soaring, strings-backed ‘This Town’ fulfils that mantra perfectly, while ‘L.M.T.F.A’ pits Combe’s powerhouse vocals against a brilliantly scathing message. It’s more than enough to show she’s next in line to wear the UK’s soul crown. “I’m from Scotland, and you don’t really hear a lot of soul from here. Since Paolo Nutini, I’m missing that thing from Scotland,” she told Rolling Stone UK last year. “I’ve grown up in a relatively white constituency, and I’m doing it for my people and my heritage too. I’m a soul singer, and I want to bring back the tunes I grew up listening to, and I know there’s…

FISH AROUND ONLINE and you’ll find hundreds of theories about who Two Shell are, all presumably with varying levels of truth. The electronic duo have thrived on this playful anonymity throughout their rise. They’ve played three shows in one night in London, with fans guessing which one had the ‘real’ members behind the desks, and send decoys to conduct interviews and almost certainly perform their Boiler Room debut. Enormous 2024 single ‘Talk to Me’ featured vocals from AI versions of Taylor Swift, Frank Ocean and more, before a seemingly ‘official’ version featuring the actual FKA twigs was released, becoming one of the biggest underground hits of the year. Alongside all this doubt, the one thing not up for debate is the thrilling music the pair create. Their self-titled debut album from…

When you’re Bad Bunny, elevators are a careful manoeuvre. At any point, as the bell dings, you might be recognised, and when you happen to be the most-listened- to Latin artist on planet Earth, the statistical probability of running into any kind of fan — hardcore followers, casual listeners, excited tourists — is pretty high. It’s not that he minds, it just makes things slightly more complicated when the Puerto Rican superstar is trying to get from Point A to Point B. ● So that explains why one bone-cold morning in New York, just two days after Christmas, Bad Bunny is facing the wall in an elevator heading to Rolling Stone’s offices. He’s head to toe in a simple pewter-grey tracksuit, and as an extra precaution, the drawstrings of his…

Let it rain Brave the elements in style with the Norway waterproof jacket. It’s lightweight, breathable and packed with practical details, making it the essential layer to take you from day to night. Khaki Norway Waterproof Jacket, £95, by Gandys, gandysinternational.com Keep it zipped A bumbag in a bold colour is a quintessential festival accessory. It’s all in the details — we love Louis Vuitton’s monogram heritage canvas with Pharrell’s fresh Damier twist and the playful paw charm. Rush Bumbag, £1,800, by Louis Vuitton, louisvuitton.com Head gear This eco-friendly bucket hat in bright cobalt blue will definitely turn heads. It’s made with ECONYL® regenerated yarns and features the signature raised Compass logo. 9100009 Bucket Hat, £180, by Stone Island, stoneisland.com Style statement Inspired by 1950s handkerchiefs, this striking printed shirt…

A brood of casually iconic twentysomethings — with scruffy mullets, single-cross drop earrings, ill-fitting trousers, the whole nine yards — are pulling focus, and not solely because their collective, indie band-ready look contrasts so thrillingly with the tuxedos and ballgowns on display elsewhere. Then I spot another brood, then another — about 25 per cent of the crowd, I realise, is hip. Their oversized trench coats, for example, are so wrong for the unusual environment we find ourselves in that they’re somehow right. Here, in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountain range of eastern Georgia, in which I’ve located this migrating species — one assumes they reside a two-hour drive away in Georgia’s achingly cool capital, Tbilisi — I’m experiencing the nearest-to-perfect September climate of my life. That said, it’s…

It was a hectic few weeks over at Rolling Stone UK Towers as we approached the deadline — this issue packs in A LOT. It’s Future of Music time, with Rolling Stone titles around the world each presenting a selection of 25 up-and-coming acts from their respective territories who most definitely deserve a listen during the year ahead. Spotlighting the artists and bands who are making bold moves in music and pushing the concept of genre outward and upward, Rolling Stone UK is celebrating this year’s roll call of talent from the UK and Ireland by including them in the Future of Music, supported by ZYN. Curated by the team at Rolling Stone UK, the list represents the musicians who are lighting up our radar. You may see a few…

THE FIRST THING I thought of was the bugs. If you’ve seen Blue Velvet, David Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece of curdled Americana, then you remember the opening. The camera pans down on a white picket fence as Bobby Vinton croons his 1963 version of the title track. The roses dotting the bottom of the frame are so technicolour red it hurts to look at them. A fire truck, complete with a Dalmatian on the running board, drives by. A crossing guard helps children get to school. A woman in a suburban living room sips coffee and watches a movie on TV. Her husband is watering the yard outside. It’s a picture-perfect day in Smalltown, USA. Then the man tries to untangle his hose and falls to the ground. A dog snaps…

LAST YEAR, HERE at Rolling Stone UK we shared our first-ever Future 25 list as part of the Future of Music series from Rolling Stone titles across the world. In it, we picked out the artists and bands we believe will shape what British music will look like in the years and decades to come. In the year since the list’s publication, our cover stars Rachel Chinouriri and Barry Can’t Swim have sold out tours, slayed Glastonbury and beyond, and led the charge from a list of gamechangers, showing that UK music is in rude health. For our second year, we have selected 25 artists for 2025 that, in our opinion, will define the next era of British music. Curated by the Rolling Stone UK team, this year’s list is…

THE BASE DROPS. The crowd surges forward. The headliner kicks into that song you’ve been waiting for all night — the one everyone hopes they’ll play but never knows for sure. And you’re right there in the middle of it all, caught in that perfect moment when everything clicks. ZYN’s nicotine pouches offer something genuinely useful for adult festival and gig-goers who smoke or vape — the ability to consume nicotine in a discreet way without impacting others. Just place a small pouch under your lip, and you’re sorted. No smoke, no vapour and no equipment. As one of the pioneers of smoke-free products, ZYN is helping existing nicotine users reshape their nicotine experience, with a convenient alternative that fits seamlessly into your lifestyle. This month, ZYN brought Rolling Stone…

‘I TOLD YOU men I was gonna quit / And you tried to get rid of me?” Ceechynaa asserts at the start of her superb 2024 single, ‘Peggy’, before an extended cackle of laughter. The music of the young London rapper is equal parts confrontational, catchy and hilarious. “I’m pegging that man at the back of the bus,” she states playfully later on ‘Peggy’, and it’s far from the filthiest line on the brilliantly outrageous track. “There are so many male rappers that just degrade women, and so I think we need an artist to come in and talk about them in the same way they do about women,” she told British Vogue by way of a mission statement, and her modest discography so far is certainly committed to the manifesto.…

IN NIA SMITH, UK soul music could have a voice capable of defining the next decade. The combination of her classic vocal with her musical upbringing gives Smith’s work a kaleidoscopic edge. The dancefloor-primed ‘Personal’ takes on a subtle dancehall feel, while ‘Give Up the Fear’ is a powerful paean to the beauty of not giving a fuck. Asked about her plans for the future, she recently told Rolling Stone UK: “I just want to play more live shows, man, and make more music. Maybe another EP, but music where I can elevate the sound. Keep it in the same world but deliver the next story and [the] next part of Nia Smith.” We can’t wait to hear it.…

AFTER RELEASING HER first EP before coming out as trans, jasmine.4.t’s musical story has gone hand in hand with her personal development. She transitioned while suffering with long COVID, leaving an abusive marriage and being homeless for a period. jasmine.4.t as a project then came to life as she was accepted by the trans community in Manchester, of which she told Rolling Stone UK: “Everyone is so in love with each other’s art.” From there, she signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label to release debut album You Are the Morning, a gorgeous indie-rock record produced by boygenius that vibrates with new beginnings and resilience. Its lead single, ‘Elephant’, has already become an anthem of strength and joy, with an irrestible hook. “Since transitioning and experiencing life as a trans woman,…

STEVEN UMOH, THE Nigerian-born, London-based artist, has been making and releasing music as Obongjayar for a decade, but enters 2025 with significant new wind in his sails. His debut studio album, 2022’s Some Nights I Dream of Doors, was a delightful mix of pop, Afrobeat and beyond, while follow-up single ‘Just Cool’, from 2023, saw him excel at radio-ready funk-pop. 2024 saw him appear on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage with Little Simz and in front of 70,000 at the LA Coliseum with Fred again.. (to perform his respective features ‘Point and Kill’ and ‘adore u’), looking exceedingly comfortable at both. Back on solo duty, his totally irresistible new single ‘Just My Luck’ followed as his best material yet. With a striking look and a voice that ranges from stomach-shaking lower tones…

LEEDS QUINTET PEST Control have been the subject of many an argument within the UK’s heavy music scene. Metal fans want to take them in as their own, as do those in the hardcore scene. “We’re metal for hardcore people,” was the band’s response in the headline of a 2024 interview, delighting at bringing together two often insular and change-resistant factions of the guitar world. The band’s music is unashamed and exuberant in its blurring of these boundaries, and a hell of a lot of fun to boot. Their debut album, the brilliantly titled Don’t Test The Pest, packed more ideas and energy into 21 minutes than most manage in an hour, while their live shows have ruled festivals in a whirr of energy and intensity. Their music and outlook…

‘IF I’M SO empowered, why am I such a coward / If I’m so strong, why am I broken?” asks Self Esteem, aka Rebecca Lucy Taylor, on ‘I Do and I Don’t Care’, the opening track on her third album A Complicated Woman. Hopeless though the outspoken pop diva may sound, these contradictions are an invitation into the spectacularly more interesting grey area where two things can be true at once. Paradoxical thinking is nothing new to Taylor, who cut a choppy path to liberation on her widely acclaimed second album Prioritise Pleasure, having gone solo from indie duo Slow Club in 2017. Lamenting cycles of misogyny, feminist anxieties and societal pressures, it was a brave, bolshy portrayal of all her knotty complexities, delivered with a refreshing dose of her…

The latest album, Dreams on Toast, arrives on 28th March. What keeps you excited about being a recording artist after all these years? Well, that’s a tricky question because you’re presuming that desire is always there! I think, initially, the idea of creating something, when you’re making songs with your brother and your friends, is the fun bit. And we’re not worried about upsetting each other anymore, which is great for the music because it means that everyone’s fought for every note, and everybody walks away exhausted, but with a product we can be proud of collectively and individually proud of the battles we’ve won. When you say, “Fuck that, I’m never making another one” at the end of the process, that’s when you know you’ve made a good album!…

What’s the story…? With the Oasis reunion just around the corner, there’s never been a better time to delve into the group’s early years when two Mancunian brothers were plotting to become the most exciting band on the planet. Legendary music snapper Tom Sheehan’s new book Roll With It does that and much more besides. Sheehan’s previously unseen images show the band on the cusp of stardom before releasing their debut, the sessions for (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and the moments just before and after they defined 90s history with their seminal Knebworth shows. It’s more than enough to make you mad fer it all over again. Whole new world In the 2010s, recorded music became much more accessible thanks to YouTube, iTunes, file-sharing sites and more. Published by…

Young musicians and fans in the 2020s are pre-programmed to listen to and appreciate music from across the genre spectrum without thinking. ‘Genre-less’ has become a somewhat overused catch-all term in recent times, but few embody it better than south London songwriter Sam Akpro. His debut album Evenfall, released on US punk label ANTI-, marries punk, pop, psych, rap and more, all tied together by his distinctive voice and energy. In a nonchalant explanation of his boundary-breaking sound, Akpro simply tells us: “You hear something grunge and then you hear some rap. Then, when you’re trying to make music, you’re like, ‘Well, I really like both these things.’” It really shouldn’t be more complicated than that. You waited five years to release your debut album — do you think this…

ELTON JOHN HAD a vision for his next album, and part of that was a desire to push himself to new creative heights. He had just completed a record-breaking global farewell tour spanning over 50 years of hits and found himself energised; his goal was to channel that energy into a new record. But reaching the point where his creativity could flow would become the greatest hurdle he’d ever faced in the studio. Pressure came in many forms. First, the album was to be a collaboration with another artist, a friend who had in the course of 20 years of their relationship become family, who in turn had grown up looking to Elton as her idol. A lot was riding on its success, both professionally and personally. That friend was…

LIKE MOST OF US, my hunger for discovering new music revealed itself in my early teens. My preferred medium? Among the double rainbows, cinnamon challenges and an insufferably annoying orange in the late 2000s, YouTube was God. I’ll never forget stumbling across Florence + The Machine’s ‘Kiss With a Fist’ music video when it had just a few hundred views. Hunched over in my bobbled school uniform, the internet cutting out when someone rudely rang the house phone, I was captivated by stripey tights and florals. I was spellbound. Those bubbles in my belly brewed with a splash of joyous disbelief at my own luck, and a hint of dread at maybe getting it all wrong. A year later, she’s on the BBC Sound of… list, the Critics’ Choice at the…

“Everything has moved so fast, it’s hard to appreciate it” for a glimpse into the creative world at the core of Jordan Adetunji’s latest mixtape A Jaguar’s Dream, look no further than the music video for ‘Dirty Diana’. With dimmed lights, sultry bedroom rendezvous and a rapidly flickering sequence of bird’s-eye view camera shots, the visualiser perfectly captures the intensely moody, ‘sexy drill’ atmosphere cultivated across the Belfast vocalist’s 10-track project. “We wanted all the visualisers to have a life together,” the 26-year-old tells me. “Everything is like a dream from my brain — it’s all the same concept — and there are shots in ‘Dirty Diana’ that mirror the ‘305’ video because those tracks have a similar sound.” This joined-up visual representation of Adetunji’s rapidly growing collection of hits…

THOUGH SCOTTISH SINGER Jacob Alon earned their stripes through the lauded folk clubs of Edinburgh, the ambition and drive behind their music goes far beyond the genre. Emerging last year with stunning debut single ‘Fairy in a Bottle’, Alon’s voice and style sits somewhere between Adrianne Lenker and Nick Drake, with stories told through a queer lens and of a complicated but beautiful life. A debut album, In Limerence, is set to land at the end of May. “Music in itself and its nature is quite queer,” Alon told Rolling Stone UK, “especially a lot of the music that pushes boundaries, whether it directly originates from a queer subculture or it just has the attitude of something that wants to be entirely at odds with what’s going on elsewhere.” Though drawing…

WHEN JASPER ATTLEE started the berlioz project, it was to distance himself and his personal life from the music he was making. Ted Jasper, his former project, “was ‘me’”, he told Rolling Stone UK last year, “berlioz is an outlet for my art.” With berlioz, Attlee makes deliciously smooth and inventive jazz-house that looks outside himself for inspiration. On his extremely impressive catalogue of material so far, most recently 2024’s debut album open this wall, he samples interviews from legendary American jazz singer Nancy Wilson, a rare interview from Henri Matisse and more, as if showing his workings for the plethora of inspirations that define the reverence of his music. The EP prior to the album was titled jazz is for ordinary people, and this is music that cuts through…

WITH OVER 2.3 MILLION Insta followers and a sold-out show at London’s Roundhouse last year, it’s fair to say that Henry Moodie is well on the way to greatness. His growing legion of fans has no doubt found a chord in the way that Moodie navigates universal themes of heartache (as seen in his anthem-in-waiting ‘Drunk Text’) and growing pains. Of his debut EP good old days, which arrived last year, Moodie said: “good old days is an EP about navigating growing up. From songs about mental health, friendship, childhood, first love and first heartbreak, this EP captures what my late teens felt like.”…

“UK Jersey drill is mine” “they gonna act like i’m not the reason they all make jersey in the uk” spits Pozer on ‘Shanghigh Noon’, jumping between heavy kicks and tight, twanging, Chinese-style string sequences. It’s a bold statement, dispatched with the crisp, confident delivery of someone who can back it up. Since dropping his debut single ‘Kitchen Stove’ last spring, the Croydon rapper has been developing a unique, futuristic blend of UK drill and Jersey Club, structured around punchy kick patterns, cinematic synths and staccato bars. “I’ve never heard anyone else do my sound. Jersey drill is already its own thing, but UK Jersey drill is mine,” Pozer tells me as he dissects the jumpy, percussion-heavy musical formula he’s been pushing over the past year. “Drill is one of…

THIS LONDON TRIO are immersive above all else. The music made by guitarist and vocalist Clari Freeman-Taylor, bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia and drummer David Addison draws you in with slippery melodies and bewitching moods. See them live at their headline shows and you’ll find home-made stage dressing, outfits designed by the band, and ‘funerals’ for discarded band mascots that feel more like performance art pieces. “We like doing things ourselves,” Freeman-Taylor told Rolling Stone UK last year. “It’s not because we have to — it’s because we want to. It’s important to us to keep that spirit.” With this ethos always at the front and centre of their activities as a band, their entire operation is one of self-sufficiency, brilliantly unique ideas and boundless creativity, presented through indie…

BETH: FOR THE UNINITIATED, which will be most of you, we are Problem Patterns, a DIY feminist, queer punk four-piece from Belfast, Northern Ireland. We formed in 2018 in a bid to find a healthy way to channel our rage and frustration at day-to-day news events and navigating the world as queer people. We tackle serious topics such as femicide (Northern Ireland has the second highest rate of femicide in Western Europe), the state of the healthcare system, and the sexism we face in the music industry. It’s not all doom and gloom, though; we genuinely have the best time writing and performing together and like to think that anyone who watches us has a good time too — our tongues are usually firmly in our cheeks. It’s much easier…

Game plan Palace’s approach of weekly drops rather than seasonal collections helps it stay bang up to date. For spring, the brand is leaning into its sports-inspired DNA, with references to football, hockey, basketball and golf shaping key pieces. Denim gets a refresh with new washes, including a standout sand wash available in black and indigo. Graphics remain a core element, with the Fairy design stealing the spotlight on T-shirts, hoodies and a quilted bomber (pictured). As always, Palace blends streetwear attitude with classic sportswear influences, delivering effortless, high-energy style. palaceskateboards.com…