Table of contents for April 2025 in Rolling Stone

MARVEL! SELENA! LUCY! “That’s the most intimate I’ve ever been in a studio.”SELENA GOMEZ RANDOM NOTES Acclaimed singer-songwriter Samia searches for her true self on her new LP (p.11). Yellowjackets’ showrunners break down the series’ soundtrack (p.13). Comedy’s unsung hero Ike Barinholtz (p.14) serves us sandwiches. Model/Actriz have some pop fun on their second album (p.16). We unpack the limitations of TikTok activism (p.16) and remember former New York Doll David Johansen (p.17). Meanwhile, Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco prioritize music over wedding plans (p.18). FUTURE OF MUSIC The centerpiece of our annual Future of Music issue, our Future 25 list focuses on the artists who have us most excited about the music of tomorrow. From our four cover stars to U.K. rock-legends-in-the-making Wunderhorse (p.32) to the unclassifiable Puerto…

Step into Samia’s fantasy world and you’ll find an alter ego that looks like her, but is entirely different. She wears a backward baseball cap on top of her long, curly, jet-black hair and sports denim Daisy Dukes. She lives in a balmy, emerald-green wetland. She’s completely unburdened by people’s opinions or expectations. This is Samia’s idealized self, and her name is Kiki Swamp. As she shares her alter ego’s name, Samia, 28, can’t help but laugh. “I made a Sim of her,” the singer-songwriter says with a chuckle. “It’s like the most confident version of myself.” Samia is worlds away from her daydream as she sits at a corner table at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in Manhattan. It’s mid-February, and a blanket of snow covers New York.…

Egyptian artist TUL8TE doesn’t want you to know anything personal about him. He’s here to make you listen — not to his story, but to his music. We spoke over a camera-less Zoom call in December, around 4 p.m. Jordan time, while he was mid-tour. Any question that veered toward his personal life — his upbringing or anything outside the music — was met with a polite but firm refusal. “La [nah], let’s pass this one,” he’d say. But TUL8TE’s music speaks for itself. Over the past 12 months, his streams on Spotify increased by more than 18,200 percent, bringing him up to more than 1 million monthly listeners. He’s quickly established himself as a trailblazer, so much so that many have dubbed him a Gen Z Amr Diab…

There are five versions of Rachel Chinouriri on the cover of her 2024 debut album, What a Devastating Turn of Events — sitting on a love seat, carrying out the trash, holding a guitar, and more. When she looks back at that image now, she thinks of how far she’s come. “I was so broken in many ways,” Chinouriri, 26, says. “I just didn’t feel in my own body.” The album chronicled depressive episodes, suicidal ideation, self-hatred, and grief while seamlessly traversing alternative rock, indie pop, and Top 40 sounds. And it turned out to be her ticket to a new reality. Now, Chinouriri says, “I am more confident within myself. I’m more confident in the songs. I’m far less stressed out.” Growing up in London, Chinouriri heard her…

Though Nigerian rapper Odumodublvck’s thunderous baritone sounds predestined for amplification, he didn’t go looking for music at first. It found him. He had hoped to become a professional soccer player before a bad injury; after that, he pivoted to business and got a degree from the University of Lagos. When a good friend of his dropped out of college to be an artist, he asked Odumodublvck to be his manager. One day at a studio, the friend encouraged him to lay something down himself. “He said, ‘You have the voice. You should try and do something,’” Odumodublvck, 31, recalls over Zoom from his girlfriend’s home in Lagos. Flash forward to 2025 and that something now includes a Def Jam deal; collabs with fellow upstarts Shallipopi and Black Sherif on…

Lola Young never intended to be a TikTok phenom. And yet, if you thumb through the app right now, there’s a solid chance your entire timeline will be deploying her 2024 hit “Messy” to soundtrack daily moments of mundanity. What makes a soul-pop song by a 24-year-old from South London resonate with so many people? Perhaps it’s simply that she is taking on the self-help industrial complex that powers so many other clips on the app. “OK, so yeah, I smoke like a chimney/I’m not skinny, and I pull a Britney every other week/But cut me some slack, who do you want me to be?” she vents on the track. “The whole purpose of why I make music is to make people feel like they belong somewhere,” Young says.…

Bobby Weir has been on the road virtually without a break since 1965, but the past few weeks have been crazy even by his standards. In December, he and his band the Grateful Dead were honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Now, in late January in Los Angeles, the jam-band legends are being celebrated as MusiCares’ Persons of the Year. In a couple of days, Weir will attend the 67th Grammy Awards, posing for a photo with Taylor Swift that will make Deadheads trip out even more than usual. In the photo, Weir stands next to the superstar and her sparkling red dress, smiling through his massive white beard and black bolo tie as if he time-traveled from an Old West saloon. In March, he’ll return to…

“Funk is making something out of nothin’.” What’s the best part of success? Experimenting. When you are out there with your instrument — being your instrument — and music comes to you freely. It’s like gifts, and then you give them away. But getting two or three dollars helps, too. What about the worst? Once Frankenstein has built that monster, you can’t control it. You want to spend time with your family, but everything moves so fast when you start to succeed, and this monster comes in and eats everybody up. That, and the business. James Brown told me that it’s 75 percent business, 25 percent music. I wasn’t trying to hear that, because I’m in love with the music. James used to ask people to call him “Mr.…

Our Future of Music issue has been getting bigger and bigger each year, to the point that one print cover wasn’t enough for the 2025 installment. Instead, we feature four exciting young stars. BENSON BOONE, whose “Beautiful Things” was the most popular song in the world last year, did a backflip at his shoot, while REMA, the first Afrobeats star on our cover, wore a pendant honoring his late father and brother. Country star MEGAN MORONEY took us to Buc-ee’s and to a songwriting retreat for her story, while música mexicana’s heartbreak hero IVAN CORNEJO took us to Disneyland (!) for his. All four covers were shot by Kanya Iwana (right), with stunning results. KANYA IWANA Photographer Kanya Iwana faced a unique challenge when shooting all four covers for…

‘Cute winter boots.” “Where to find cute winter boots.” In the weeks following Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the phrase dominated For You pages on TikTok. But this wasn’t about footwear. The term was an algorithm-based code TikTokers were using to avoid alleged censorship. The president’s vow to keep TikTok active in the U.S. has come with a wave of concern online that the app is actively suppressing any videos it deems anti-Trump. (TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.) That’s how the cute-winter-boots trend was born. Early iterations referred to heightened fears of ICE raids (because winter boots keep you from slipping on ice), warning people to watch out for immigration officers in cities like New York and L.A. Then it meant take a…

The London-based musician Jim Legxacy makes effervescent songs rooted in feeling. His 2023 mixtape, Homeless N*gga Pop Music, deployed samples like globs of glitter spread across a poster board, dousing the emotional turbulence that inspired the project. “I’ve always struggled with religion,” Jim explains over Zoom. “But I feel like whenever I make a song where I’m connecting to how I feel, it genuinely feels like God is in the room.” Now, he’s preparing his follow-up mixtape, titled Black British Music, set to be released later this year. Jim’s parents moved to the U.K. from Nigeria, and he says the project is an effort to carve out a musical identity for other first-generation Black Brits. “Our identity is still at a point where it’s malleable,” he says. “We’re figuring…

When Nick Carpenter released Country, his major-label debut as Medium Build, last year, all of his dreams seemed to be coming true. He’d been self-releasing strange, dark little songs under that name on Bandcamp for nearly a decade before Country found him playing at festivals and large theaters around the world. There’s only one problem: There’s a part of Carpenter, 33, that wants to run very far from the niche he’s successfully carved out for himself. “I put out an Americana, indie-folk thing, called it Country as a joke, that somehow gets me the attention of the Noah Kahan, Zach Bryan crowd,” he says. “Now, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’d like to scare some people away, or bring in new fans.’ I’m scared to just be a white guy with…

The world first met gyrofield because of a joke. It was 2019, and Kiana Li was a teenager making beats on her computer in Hong Kong. “That was a good time,” Li, 22, says with a smile. “I was feeling like anything could happen. I just had to make the music to see.” So they made a track designed to take the piss out of the burgeoning tech-house scene. They called it “Out of My Mind,” and it has nearly a million Spotify streams. Since then, Li (who came out as trans around the same time) has built a catalog full of stunning curveballs and batshit beats, drawing co-signs from some of electronic music’s biggest names. On 2023’s “Downpour (Cold Summer Mix),” gyrofield reworks a sample of herself singing…

Late last spring, Lorén Aldarondo was halfway through her shift waiting tables when her phone buzzed. It was her music manager with an urgent message: Bad Bunny wanted to talk. Lorén is the lead singer of Puerto Rican indie quartet Chuwi, making music alongside her two brothers Wilfredo and Wester and their close friend Adrián López. Their sound is near impossible to pin down, by design. They’re tropical fusion, but also Latin jazz, but also indie rock, but also rap, but also just … vibes. Despite how messy that might look on paper, they pull it all off in a way that’s undeniably appealing. They ended up working closely with Bad Bunny to create “Weltita,” a highlight from his album Debí Tirar Más Fotos. After its release, Chuwi’s monthly…

A few years ago, Jasmine Cruickshank found herself adrift. After coming out as trans, the English singer-songwriter got divorced and decamped from Bristol to Manchester, where she slept on floors and discovered a new wellspring of inspiration. “I really struggled, in the years leading up to my transition, to write,” says Cruickshank, 33, whose band, jasmine.4.t, is one of the newest signees to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. “Now, I’m struggling to keep up with the songs that I’m writing on a daily basis. I don’t think you can really express feelings when you’re disconnected from yourself.” Cruickshank’s sound is equal parts sweet and wistful, raw and ragged. Her 2025 release, You Are the Morning, is drawing new fans with her musings on identity, mental illness, and the highs…

Nsqk owes a lot to a broken-down computer his uncle gifted him when he was in middle school. “He had given me his old laptop with, like, Windows Vista on it,” the 26-year-old artist remembers. “It barely worked.” Yet somehow, he managed to download the production software FL Studio and began learning how to make his own beats. Around the same time, Skrillex had released his 2010 EP Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites. Nsqk, whose real name is Rodrigo Torres, remembers how that project gripped all of his friends at school in Monterrey, Mexico, where he was born and spent a lot of his childhood. “Apart from the fact that it was cool and everyone else was listening to it, it was really interesting to me — like, how…

When Fcukers booked their debut concert at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn in March 2023, they had understandably low expectations for the evening. The electronic duo had uploaded their first two songs literally hours before they took the stage, and they’d already logged many frustrating years in separate indie-rock bands that imploded. But producer Jackson Walker Lewis, who also worked as a party promoter, got the word out — and the show turned into a sold-out, buzzy event. “It became this loud and rowdy dance party,” says lead singer Shanny Wise. “My friend got onstage and got naked. It was so different to any show I’d ever played before.” Within months, Fcukers found themselves playing gigs in London and Paris, inking a deal with Charli XCX’s booking agent, and…

A Mark of Resilience She was treated so unfairly by everyone [Monica Lewinsky, The Rolling Stone Interview, March 2025]. Happy to see her come out of it thriving! @kiwibreeder, via the internet Facing the Aftermath “It was all folly.” There are so many incredible details in this story [“Surviving the Firestorm,” March 2025]. Beautifully written account of the L.A. fires and the people caught up in them. Recommend. @iamjensee, via the internet “She is truly inspiring and has a backbone of steel!”—@stephaniejean_ac Climate Links More required reading for all Americans [“Why L.A. Burned,” March 2025]. Excellent article. @gneissperson, via the internet Hold the Line In the wake of the inauguration, I was horrified to see so many publications either staying silent or kissing the new regime’s ass. So it…

As Ike Barinholtz approaches the register at Farm Boy Produce, the cashier regards the 48-year-old comic-actor-writer-director with a gimlet-eyed skepticism, as if he’s a shoplifter or worse. “Are you famous?” For a moment, Barinholtz can only smile. Finally, he musters, “Do you think I am?” The question hangs over a grocery run with Barinholtz. The Chicago native is on a mission to make me, a Brooklyn boy, a chopped cheese — the classic bodega sandwich — with ingredients from L.A.’s Fairfax Farmers Market. But Barinholtz is a gourmet interrupted. A woman raises her phone and snaps a photo of him paying for kielbasa. “I’m going to send it to my husband,” she says. “If you’re famous, he would know.” He’s asked whether he’s famous by customers at Kaylin and…

Goodbye to David Johansen, the last jet boy standing from the New York Dolls. It wasn’t just his madman energy that helped invent punk rock — it was his warmth and soul. He got a loving send-off in the final weeks of his life, after his daughter Leah Hennessey announced that he was dying of cancer (which would claim him at age 75 on Feb. 28). The news of his illness inspired a worldwide outpouring of grief and gratitude. This man was a lifelong personality crisis, preaching his rock & roll gospel that posing and strutting and peacocking through life is not merely fun, it’s a moral duty. Johansen started out in the early 1970s as the pioneering glam-punk diva of the New York Dolls, turning heads with his…

Before the Tiny Desk session that put them on the map as one of the most exhilarating acts in Latin music, CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso toiled in obscurity for seven years in a Buenos Aires rock band. “We would make enough to buy three pizzas, then we’d beg the venue for free beer, and they’d give it to us because we were cool,” CA7RIEL says. Growing up, he and Amoroso were into jazz and prog rock. Looking to change their fortunes, they started to rap. For the Tiny Desk show, they brought in a brass section, a percussionist, and backup singers — and made a lot of new fans with their effortless exuberance (27 million views and counting). “Not everything is different, though,” Amoroso says. “We still lose money…

‘There it is,” Megan Moroney says, looking out of the tour bus window while slipping on white cowboy boots and a camo hoodie. “The promised land!” The sun is setting over endless rows of gas pumps on a windy January night in Crossville, Tennessee. Six massive fluorescent letters and a cartoon beaver in a red cap illuminate our way. We’ve arrived at that roadway mecca common to the Southern U.S.: Buc-ee’s. “The overstimulation hasn’t started yet,” she warns me as we walk into the massive chain store, which is sort of like a gas station crossed with a HomeGoods, plus a pinch of Disneyland. It’s my first time at a Buc-ee’s, and I’m getting the Megan Moroney tour. “Where should I take you first?” she asks, scanning about. “The…

In an era when more music than ever is released each day, it takes a singular talent to cut through the noise. Enter Hanumankind, the curly-haired, tatted-up, India-born rapper who broke through last summer with his single “Big Dawgs” and its daring music video. With more than 380 million streams on Spotify and over 200 million views on YouTube, it’s made Hanumankind an instant celebrity. “It is easy to get overwhelmed by everything that happens on the outside,” says the artist born Sooraj Cherukat, 32. “But what brought us here, that’s what will continue to take us forward.” Hailing originally from Kerala by way of Houston, Hanumankind bleeds raw energy into his music. His stage name, combining the loyal, strong, and courageous Hindu god Hanuman with the rest of…

Stephen Wilson Jr. was racing home to Indiana to see his dying father when his sister called to tell him he was running out of time. Partway there from Nashville, he pulled over to have one more conversation with the man he was named after. “I said goodbye to my dad on an iPhone 8 in my car in the middle of Kentucky,” Wilson, 45, says. “His last words were ‘Write a good song for me.’” Since that September day in 2018, Wilson has made good on that promise and become one of country music’s most electrifying new artists. His 2023 debut album, Søn of Dad, is full of hard-hitting, personal songs. Wilson describes his music as “Death Cab for Country.” “I’m very much an indie-rock kid at heart,”…

For Rema, the best part of his first trip to the Grammy Awards was getting dressed for it. The Nigerian superstar wore a mound of custom diamonds over snakeskin and leather in his customary black, an outfit that landed him on Vogue’s list of best-dressed stars at the February ceremony. He didn’t win the award he was up for — Best Global Music Album, which went to the lesser-known Matt B, alongside the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra — but he didn’t really mind. “I was just taking every moment in,” he tells me when I meet him at Interscope Studios in L.A. a few days later. “I was celebrating people walking up that stage. I had my fingers crossed that I’d walk up the stage too, and when it didn’t…

Laila! has flourished more in the year leading up to her 19th birthday than some artists do in decades. The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and producer first broke through on TikTok, then quickly followed with her debut, Gap Year!, which helped nab Tyler, the Creator and Solange as fans. This R&B wunderkind is also the daughter of lauded East Coast rhymer Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def. But Laila! has another vocalist from a famous family on her mind. “Janet Jackson is someone I admire so, so much,” she says. She tells me that she’d like to record a Spanish-language album (“I don’t want people to forget that I am Dominican”) and continue building on her vision. “I’m not just a kid,” she says. “I’m becoming a young woman, and…

Lucy Dacus Is Going to Break Your Heart One of indie rock’s best young songwriters trades coming-of-age dramas for adult-specific love songs on a stellar LP. By Rob Sheffield ‘I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon,” Lucy Dacus confesses in “Limerence,” one of the highlights on her fourth album, Forever Is a Feeling. It’s a twisted supper-club piano ballad where she’s munching popcorn with friends who smoke weed and play Grand Theft Auto. But the Virginia indie-rock troubadour croons as if she’s living out a lush-life fantasy of Hollywood romance. When she delivers that line about breaking someone’s heart, she gives it a twist: “And if I do, I’ll be breaking mine too.” It’s startling to hear Dacus switch gears like that, in her warmly familiar voice —…