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For Quiet Light, duality is a fact of life | The Cover | NME.com

Quiet Light (2026), photo by Sophia Liv MaguireFor Quiet Light, duality is a fact of life: “Everything is way more connected than we think”When she’s not on shift at the hospital, Riya Mahesh is crafting beautiful electronic-ambient-folk that has caught the ear of tastemaking label True Panther and popstar Olivia Rodrigo24th August 2026Weekly Poster GiveawayTell us why you love the artist and have a chance to win a free poster! Shout-Outs are only available on mobile devices.05d:18h:42m:21sOf al...
NME •

Ravyn Lenae: “I now know what’s possible – but that just makes me hungrier”

“Oh, she’s up next”, reads a comment under a recent performance video of Ravyn Lenae online – a prophecy for a star-in-waiting.
‘Love Me Not’, a track from her 2024 album ‘Bird’s Eye’, might have seemed like a miraculous delivery on that promise when it scored viral success months after its initial release. But to those in the know, the Chicago-born artist has already been “it” for years. As a fixture of the Zero Fatigue collective and across two albums and three EPs, Lenae was a beloved figure...
NME •

Kacey Musgraves – ‘Middle Of Nowhere’ review: a country heroine’s journey back to her roots

For Kacey Musgraves’ latest act, she’s putting the cowboy hat back on. ‘Middle Of Nowhere’, the Texan artist’s seventh album, unfolds like an old Western film. With Musgraves as its balladeering protagonist, it takes us on a wry, roaming journey through the highs and lows of love and womanhood – from loneliness and “dry spells” to infatuation and disappointment – before arriving at its ultimate destination: back to Musgraves herself.
Stepping back into the saddle – she literally arrived to her C...
NME •

Waterbaby – ‘Memory Be A Blade’ review: a collection of soft sounds and hard truths

From early glimpses of Waterbaby in viral collaborations with Hannes (‘Stockholmsy’) and Seinabo Sey (‘Sweet Life’), to her buzzy self-introduction on her 2023 EP ‘Foam’, the Swedish artist’s debut album ‘Memory Be A Blade’ arrives as a refreshingly personal body of work. It’s an elevation of the recent NME Cover star’s bedroom pop style into a richer sound and more confident vessel of self-expression.
As its title evokes, ‘Memory Be A Blade’ delves into Waterbaby’s tendency to dwell on the past...
NME •

Waterbaby pours herself into intimate songs about memory and moving on | The Cover | NME.com

Waterbaby (2026), photo by Nina Andersson VoigtWaterbaby pours herself into intimate songs about memory and moving onA recovering people-pleaser rejecting the easy comforts of nostalgia, the Swedish alt-R&B artist is committing to honesty in life and art9th February 2026Weekly Poster GiveawayTell us why you love the artist and have a chance to win a free poster! Shout-Outs are only available on mobile devices.05d:18h:24m:54sFor her NME Cover shoot, Waterbaby couldn’t have chosen a more magnifice...
NME •

The Last Dinner Party’s lessons from the inferno: “We know our limits better now”

The Last Dinner Party’s rise to fame could be described as something of a baptism of fire. Their arrival as a fully formed band, confident in their sound and approach, stoked both massive hype and hate – either end of the spectrum overwhelming and seemingly unescapable. On their second album, ‘From The Pyre’, which was released last month, they share stories from the heart of the flames.
‘From The Pyre’ is an “end of the world” album of sorts. In one sense, “the pyre” is their metaphor for the a...
NME •

Nabeel’s dreamy alt-rock is finding a way back home

Noise. Distortion. The blow of guitar amps. The grainy fuzz of home videos. Memories you can feel but not quite see. For Yasir Razak, musician and leader of the Iraqi-American band Nabeel, there’s comfort to be found in these hazy spaces, somehow more than high-definition memories. It’s in this place – where recollection blurs with imagination, and “home” is less a fixed place than an imagined idea – that Nabeel makes dreamy, dissonant rock music reaching for wholeness across homelands and famil...
NME •

Japanese Breakfast – ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)’ review: a work of art

If Japanese Breakfast were a ship at sail, it might seem like the band came into berth only in the last few years. In 2021 the explosive success of their third album ‘Jubilee’ netted them Grammy nods, headline tours and universal acclaim (the same year frontwoman Michelle Zauner published her phenomenally successful memoir Crying In H-Mart). But the band has lived many sonic lives at sea, charting an ever-changing course from discordant melancholia on ‘Psychopomp’ and ‘Soft Sounds From Another P...
NME •

Mereba is making music to heal us all: “There’s a natural tenderness in me”

A peace emanates from Mereba, even amidst unsettled circumstances. On the day NME is scheduled to speak with the LA-based artist, the newly inaugurated US President happens to be visiting town, creating gridlocked traffic and throwing our interview into doubt. Nonetheless, Mereba hops on from her car while on the move, calm and collected even as the signal dips in and out.
The poise is no accident. It’s a mark of the deep inner work and healing that the Ethiopian-American artist has pursued in r...
NME •

Beckah Amani - ‘This Is How I Remember It.’ review: a bold, expressive debut

For singer-songwriter Beckah Amani, music is a means for finding a home anywhere. Born in Tanzania to Burundian parents, then moving to Australia as a child, she made sense of the worlds moving in and around her through songwriting, influenced by everything from her family’s heritage to the Western pop and indie artists she had grown to love.
Now, on her first full-length album, ‘This Is How I Remember It’, Amani marshals her illustrative storytelling prowess, roots in African folk music, and ve...
NME •

The world, according to Mustafa | The Cover | NME.com

The Sudanese-Canadian artist shares his experiences of faith, loss and community on his debut album ‘Dunya’. Each song, approached with grace and striking vulnerability, is part of his process of figuring out the world around him, and his place in it

Stepping into London’s packed-out EartH Theatre, Mustafa ascends the stage dressed in something of a uniform for him: a bulletproof vest emblazoned with the word ‘POET’. It’s a stark image, a reminder of the warring forces that converge within his...
NME •

Mustafa praises Dua Lipa's activism at ‘Dunya’ listening event: “It’s our responsibility as artists to hold up a mirror to our world"

Mustafa praised Dua Lipa‘s activism during a listening session for his second album last night (September 25), telling her “it’s our responsibility as artists to hold up a mirror to our world”.
The Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter and poet will release ‘Dunya’ – roughly translating to “the world in all its flaws” from Arabic – tomorrow (September 27) via Jagjaguwar. Pre-order/pre-save here.
It’ll follow on from his 2021 debut ‘When Smoke Rises’, which chronicles life in the violent Toronto ne...
The Forty-Five •

NIKI: “For the first time, I feel like I’m finally awake” 

Ahead of the release of third album, 'Buzz', Cordelia Lam meets NIKI to talk growing up, strength in vulnerability and her more freeing new sound.If you were ever to go looking for NIKI, you’d probably find her in the garden. A beautiful oasis in her backyard in Los Angeles, it’s one of the places she loves most. She grows an impressive range of fruits, vegetables and herbs here, from strawberries to bok choy to just about every salad ingredient you can think of. “Lately I’ve been harvesting pas...
NME •

Sarah Kinsley is letting the light in | The Cover | NME

It was Sarah Kinsley’s birthday in July. Freshly 24, she joins NME from her New York City apartment the morning after her celebrations. “I’m glad we’re talking today!” she laughs. “Every birthday of mine is always so pensive. I’ll just be full of reflections.”
The corner of her apartment she’s dialling in from is lovely. Decorated with ornaments and art, a Monet-hued painting of purples and blues hanging in a golden frame, the space suggests a love of beautiful things, a passion ignited perhaps...
NME •

Karin Ann – 'Through The Telescope' review: intricate, emotional folk-pop with a dark edge

Listening to Karin Ann’s debut album ‘Through the Telescope’, you’d be forgiven for not realising that the Slovakian singer-songwriter is just 21-years-old. There is a knowing darkness to this music, which brims with observations earned through experience and the mystique of an author with many stories to tell.

“All his skin eaten by worms / Nothing left there / A pile of bones”, Ann sings on ‘Pile of Bones’. For all its macabre imagery – a through line across the album’s 14 tracks – the song i
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