On March 14th, 2025, Sub Pop will release Clipping’s sixth album, Dead Channel Sky, the group’s long-awaited Cyberpunk and Hip Hop project. The album features the previously released tracks “Run It” and “Keep Pushing,” along with the highlights “Welcome Home Warrior (Feat. Aesop Rock),” “Code,” and today’s offering, “Change the Channel.”
 
Dead Channel Sky also features guest appearances from Nels Cline, Bitpanic, Tia Nomore, and Sub Pop labelmates Cartel Madras, and was produced and mixed by Clipping and Steve Kaplan and mastered by Levi Seitz at Black Belt Mastering. Dead Channel Sky follows the release of the group’s acclaimed horrorcore series Visions of Bodies Being Burned (2020) and There Existed an Addiction to Blood (2019), also available from Sub Pop.
 
In the coming days, Clipping will also share the intense official video for “Change the Channel” directed by Merawi Gerima. 
 
Clipping are also announcing headlining North American tour dates in support of Dead Channel Sky, which begins March 14th with a hometown show in Los Angeles at The Echoplex and May 3rd in Sacramento at Goldfield. Clipping will appear at Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival on Saturday, March 29th, 2025. Please find a complete list of dates below.
 

 
Dead Channel Sky will be available on CD/2xLP/DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com (US) and Mega Mart 2 (UK/EU) and your local record store will receive the limited Loser edition vinyl on Emerald/Forest Green Ghostly Mashup (North America) and Neon Pink (UK/Europe). There is also a Silver vinyl edition available from independent retailer Rough Trade in the US and UK (All limited edition vinyl colors are available while stock lasts!). The Dead Channel Sky album art was created by Designers Republic.
 

Because of their mix of hellified gangster shit and progressive compositions, I once jokingly called Clipping “Deathrow Tull.” Well, it’s not a joke anymore. While their last few projects have been record-long concepts like the classic prog rock of old, Dead Channel Sky is mixtape-like, a carefully curated collection of songs in which every track is a love letter to a possible present. Like a mashup of distinct elements, the overall concept is there, but the result is brief glimpses into a world rather than an overview of it. It sounds crisp and classic at the same time. When something strikes us as retrospective and futuristic at the same time, it’s a reminder of how slipshod our present moment truly is.
 
In my book Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future, I draw what Walter Benjamin would call correspondences between early hip-hop culture and cyberpunk literature, the binary stars of the solar system at the end of the millennium. I exploit their similarities to illustrate how the cultural practices of hip-hop have informed the cultural practices of the now. Hip-hop was borne of the post-apocalyptic scene in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. Its repurposing of outmoded technology, the hand-styled hieroglyphic screennames on every colorfast surface, and the gyrating dance moves—an entire culture forged from the freshest of what was available at hand—mirrors the post-apocalyptic techno-scrounge of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Rudy Rucker’s Software, and other early works by the contributors to Bruce Sterling’s Mirrorshades anthology (Pat Cadigan, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, and Sterling himself, among others). Add the leather-clad mohawks of Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force or Rammellzee’s B-boy battle armor and a blend of the two comes further into focus.
 
Juxtaposing high-tech, corporate command-and-control systems (the “cyber”) with the lo-fi, D.I.Y. underground (the “punk”), cyberpunk proper starts in 1982 and ends in 1999, from Blade Runner to The Matrix. There are works before and works since that embody the visions and values of cyberpunk, but these dates act as rough parameters for their assimilation into the larger social sphere, for the time it took cyberpunk to become cyberculture. In the meantime, hip-hop matured, went through its Golden Era, then melted into further forms. Over the same decades, it went from “Planet Rock” to “Bring da Ruckus” to “Hard Knock Life,” from Fab 5 Freddy to Public Enemy to Missy Elliott, from Run-DMC to N.W.A. to Notorious B.I.G. While other genres flirted with it, hip-hop was fickle and fey. Any tryst with the odd bedfellow was a one-night stand at best. Rap and rock birthed mutant offspring maligned by most, and hip-hop’s relations with electronica rarely fared any better.
 
Those twin suns—hip-hop and cyberpunk—both rose in the 1970s and warmed the wider world during the 1980s and 1990s. What if someone explicitly merged them into one set and sound? After all, both movements are the result of hacking the haunted leftovers of a war-torn culture that’s long since moved on.
 
On Dead Channel Sky, Clipping texture-map the twin histories of hip-hop and cyberpunk onto an alternate present where Rammellzee and Bambaataa are the superheroes of old; where Cybotron and Mantronix are the reigning legends; where Egyptian Lover and Freestyle are debated endlessly, and Ultramag and Public Enemy are the undeniable forefathers; where the lost movements of the 1980s and the 1990s are still happening: rave, trip-hop, hip-house, acid house, drum & bass, big beat—the detritus of a different timeline, the survivors of armed audio warfare. That war at thirty-three and a third, its atrocities imprinted upon yet another generation, what someone once called, “the presence of the significance of things” without a hint of ambiguity.
 
Clipping are very story-oriented. They deal in ontology and narrative as much as beats and rhymes. They’ve been approaching making music like writing science fiction since the band’s conception. Two of their records have been nominated for Hugo Awards (one of science fiction’s top literary prizes), and a novella spun-off from their music was nominated for a third. As Clipping, they’ve collaborated with as many of their fellow experimental noise artists as they have fellow rappers. Here those co-conspirators include everyone from the guitarist Nels Cline on the outro to “Dodger” (titled “Malleus”) to their labelmates Cartel Madras on “Mirrorshades, pt. 2,” rapper/actor Tia Nomore on “Scams,” as well the wordy wordsmith Aesop Rock on “Welcome Home Warrior.” Diggs is known for intricate lyrics and rapid-fire rapping, and the tracks that Snipes and Hutson build in the background are no less complex. On “Code,” they sample narrated memories from the Afrofuturist documentary The Last Angel of History; and on “Dominator,” they repurpose a line from the classic Dutch hardcore track “Dominator” by Human Resource. All of the above serves to give us a glimpse of an adjacent possible present, where hip-hop and cyberpunk are one culture.
 
Binary stars are often perceived as one object when viewed with the naked eye. Like those twin sun systems, it’ll take some special equipment and some discerning attention to pull the stars apart on this record. As Diggs barks on the fire-starting “Change the Channel”: Everything is very important!

Clipping
Dead Channel Sky
 
CD + Digital Tracklisting:
1. Intro
2. Dominator
3. Change the Channel
4. Run It
5. Go
6. Simple Degradation (Plucks 1-13) (with Bitpanic)
7. Code
8. Dodger
9. Malleus (with Nels Cline)
10. Scams (feat. Tia Nomore)
11. Keep Pushing
12. “From Bright Bodies” (Interlude)
13. Mood Organ
14. Polaroids
15. Simple Degradation (Plucks 14-18) (with Bitpanic)
16. Madcap
17. Mirrorshades pt. 2 (feat. Cartel Madras)
18. “And You Called” (Interlude)
19. Welcome Home Warrior (feat. Aesop Rock)
20. Ask What Happened
 
2xLP Tracklisting:
A1. Intro
A2. Dominator
A3. Change the Channel
A4. Run It
A5. Go
B1. Code
B2. Dodger
B3. Malleus (with Nels Cline)
B4. Scams (ft. Tia Nomore)
C1. Keep Pushing
C2. Mood Organ
C3. Polaroids
C4. Madcap
D1. Mirrorshades pt. 2 (ft. Cartel Madras)
D2. Welcome Home Warrior (ft. Aesop Rock)
D3. Ask What Happened

Acclaimed TV On The Radio frontman and multi-hyphenate talent Tunde Adebimpe has released a new song “God Knows,” from his highly anticipated debut solo album, Thee Black Boltz. The album is set to be released on April 18th via Sub Pop Records. 

“God Knows” delves into the complexities of a bittersweet breakup, showcasing Adebimpe’s distinctive vocals and introspective lyrics. The song captures the raw vulnerability of heartbreak as Adebimpe sings, “You’re the worst thing I ever loved, And you’re bad news but I still want to give you my love.”

Of the latest single, the TV on the Radio frontman says  “Breaking up is hard to down dooby doo down do”. 

LISTEN TO “GOD KNOWS HERE

Tunde Adebimpe has also announced an intimate record release show at Los Angeles’ Zebulon on Thursday, April 17. Tickets are on sale now and are available HERE. 

This announcement comes on the heels of the vivid and introspective “Drop” earlier this year and last year’s lead single “Magnetic”.  Thee Black Boltz is produced by Tunde Adebimpe & Wilder Zoby, and executive produced by Zoby, with additional production and contributions from Jaleel Bunton & Jahphet Landis (of TV on the Radio), and more. Showcasing visionary soundscapes, the album is a nod to Adebimpe’s propensity to write and sing about the human condition – in all its forms, under all its stressors, both big and small. Pre-order the record HERE.

“…Adebimpe is strutting back into the spotlight with style.” - Consequence 

“Adebimpe is plagued with the state of the world, as he muses on the human race, love, tenderness and how to fly above it all. He whistles, claps and yelps—in all the ways that made TV On The Radio songs so compelling and mesmeric—but with a progressive voice that sounds fresh and thrilling in 2024.” - Paste

“‘’Magnetic’… It’s an apt name for the track, which opens with a reflective, melancholic lyric (‘I was thinking about my time in space’) before the propulsive instrumentals drop in and never let up.” - AV Club

“Tunde Adebimpe had quite the 2024, stealing scenes in Twisters and reuniting with TV on the Radio to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes. The front man will get a little more “me” time this year with his first solo album via Sub Pop.” - Vulture’s “Albums We Can’t Wait to Hear in 2025”

Watch Video For “Drop” HERE 

Watch Video for “Magnetic” HERE

Thee Black Boltz is not a TV On The Radio album. But in a lot of ways, the excitement of doing something on his own for the first time ignited a similar spark in him as during the early TV On The Radio days. The songwriting process is the same, he says, but with his TVOTR bandmates, Adebimpe knows he doesn’t always have to complete his ideas. “I’ve been doing this thing with this group of people for so long, that I can just have a vague sketch of a concept and I know Jaleel or Kyp will have five brilliant ideas on where it can go,” he says. “But for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hang on. That was both terrifying and exhilarating.”

At the heart of the album is its title. It is his response to the macro unease of a post-pandemic world careening towards violent authoritarianism and the personal grief that has come from loss in recent years, specifically the sudden passing of his younger sister while making it. Thee Black Boltz is Adebimpe’s desperate grasping of small moments of joy amidst the dissonance and sadness, any way he can. Making this album, he says, was his way of processing everything: “It was my way of building a rock or a platform for myself in the middle of this fucking ocean.”

And thus, Thee Black Boltz. As he writes in his notebook, “The sparks of inspiration/motivation / hope that flash up in the midst of (and sometimes as a result of) deep grief, depression or despair. Sort of like electrons building up in storm clouds clashing until they fire off lightning and illuminate a way out, if only for a second.”

“Also,” he adds. “it’s a good name for a cool metal band, and I think that most people would describe me as akin to a very cool metal band.” 

 1. Thee Black Boltz

 2. Magnetic

 3. Ate The Moon

 4. Pinstack

 5. Drop

 6. ILY

 7. The Most

 8. God Knows

 9. Blue

10. Somebody New

11. Streetlight Nuevo

On April 4th, Greek Artist Σtella (pronounced Stella) will release her mesmerizing new record Adagio on CD/LP/DSPs from Sub Pop. Adagio is a pop record that feels like a warm blanket; it swaddles its listeners with nylon-string guitars, featherlight percussion, psychedelic keyboards, and staccato drums. Written and recorded over the span of five years with a consortium of international collaborators, including !!!’s Rafael Cohen and British songwriter Gabriel Stebbing, Adagio is a 27-minute meditation on love and desire, rest, and time. The album was produced by Σtella and mixed by Edmund Irwin-Singer. Though the bulk of it is sung in English, as all her records have been, Σtella also delivers her first two songs in Greek, “Omorfo Mou,” and a cover of a 1969 cult classic of the Greek New Wave, Litsa Sakellariou’s “Ta Vimata.”

Today, you can watch the captivating new video for the album’s title track, “Adagio,” which was Directed by Debora Maité. Click here to watch.
 
Adagio follows the release of her 2022 Sub Pop debut, Up and Away, which has catapulted her beyond three million monthly Spotify listeners and has secured key licensing placements in the MAX show Industry and an online H&M Clothing commercial.
 
Adagio is now available to preorder from Sub Pop. LP preorders from the Sub Pop Mega Mart (North America), Mega Mart 2 (UK/EU), and independent retailers worldwide will receive the album on Clear Pink vinyl in North America and white vinyl in the EU.
 
More about Σtella’s Adagio
 
Almost as soon as Stella Chronopoulou began writing Adagio, her fifth album as Σtella, she knew the time had finally come to sing in Greek, her native tongue. It would be a first. She started the record almost by accident in 2019, during an 11-hour boat ride to the island of Anafi. Σtella had recently gone through a patch of personal turmoil and needed a break from home. On the ferry, she pulled out her cell phone as the boat clipped through the Mediterranean and began with a simple melody, steadily piecing together a rough instrumental. As psychedelic keyboards twinkled and swayed above staccato drums, the track suggested some deep exhalation, as if Σtella were letting go of long-unnecessary baggage. For a spell, she set the instrumental aside. She understood the words would eventually need to be in Greek, given how and where she’d written it, the mood of the moment. But she wasn’t ready yet, or in a rush.
 
Σtella, after all, grew up in a slow place. Truth be told, she wasn’t very far away from the hubbub of Athens, Greece, living just above the historic city in a relatively rural suburb. When her father bought land there several decades ago, his friends joked wolves may eat him. For Σtella, though, it was an idyll: The sounds of passing goats woke her most mornings. She and her friends played unfettered in empty streets, not worried about cars or permission. At night, doors remained unlocked. The living felt easy.
 
But during the last decade, life has steadily become busier for Σtella, who now lives near downtown Athens. She has become one of modern Greece’s most popular musical exports, with five sophisticated and playful pop albums rendered with international élan. After releasing her Sub Pop debut, Up and Away, in 2022, she soon catapulted beyond three million monthly Spotify listeners. That success was a blessing, of course, but Σtella still sometimes found herself pining for the slower pace of her youth.
 
That longing is the thread that loosely binds together her fifth album, the entrancing Adagio. Borrowing its name, of course, from the term for music that’s meant to be played slowly, Adagio is a pop record that feels like a very warm blanket, its nylon-string guitars and featherlight percussion swaddling its listeners for three minutes at a time. Written and recorded over the span of five years, with a consortium of international collaborators including !!!’s Rafael Cohen and British songwriter Gabriel Stebbing, Adagio is a 27-minute meditation on love and desire, rest and time. Though the bulk of it is indeed sung in English, as all her records have been, Σtella also delivers her first two songs in Greek here—“Omorfo Mou,” the one that began on the boat, and a cover of a 1969 cult classic of the Greek New Wave, Litsa Sakelariou’s “Ta Vimata.” It is a sign of the self-assurance that radiates throughout these tender and smitten little tunes.
 
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Σtella opted to try some new approaches to writing. Upon the suggestion of a mutual friend, she began exchanging emails with !!!’s Cohen (working now under the name Las Palabras), each sharing links to records and sounds they loved. There was an instant chemistry, and they penned five songs through Zoom and email. (They’ve yet to meet.) Three of them provide the framework for Adagio. There’s “Baby Brazil,” a suave tune about falling for someone, about letting go of the need to control everything. Together, Cohen and Σtella found a spellbinding intersection of Tropicalia, disco, and yé-yé. Pushing and pulling between verses of nylon-stringed guitars and choruses where soft strings and electronics rise like bioluminescent tides, “80 Days” suggests giving into desire and into this song’s sweet sweep.
 
But the pair’s hallmark here is the opening title cut, “Adagio,” where Σtella sings to the concept of slowness like some long-lost lover. “I want you to know I hear you, Adagio” she offers over gentle samba percussion and jangling chords. “Why you’re tormenting me?” Her guitar solo then cuts through it with a Wes Montgomery verve, curling like a finger that beckons an object of desire. Maybe it seems strange to write a love song to the idea of slowing down, but who hasn’t felt that way in our era of instant everything—the desire to step back and let the world just come to you? When Σtella sings here, it’s hard not to long for that same state of grace. You can hear it again in the mesmerizing instrumental “Corfu” and the sashaying love song “Can I Say,” written in memoriam for Σtella’s stolen bike.
 
A few years after that boat ride across the Mediterranean, Σtella finally revisited the instrumental she had written on board. She’d always resisted writing and singing in Greek because its words often felt too heavy and intense, the tone not suited to her lilting songs. Still, she knew this one had to be Greek. She thought about the beautiful phrase “Omorfo Mou,” a common pledge of Greek adoration that loosely translates into “my beautiful one.” It soon became a song of want and longing, the antithesis of the way she felt back on the boat, when she was getting away from rather than going toward anything. What’s more, its swaggering rhythm only emerges after Σtella’s winning cover of “Ta Vimata.” The bass and percussion bounce beneath her curling voice, faithful and new, linking her to a lineage of sophisticated Greek pop and the country’s famed New Wave. Two circles close with these two songs, a kind of dual homecoming.
 
Start to finish, Σtella sounds more at ease and comfortable than she’s ever been on Adagio. No, these fetching songs will not slow her career or grant her that title track’s wish. Still, for half an hour, Adagio does add an extra measure of warmth to the world, with time loosening its grip even if it doesn’t slow down.

Σtella
Adagio
 
Track Listing:
1. Adagio
2. Ta Vimata
3. Omorfo Mou
4. Baby Brazil feat. Las Palabras
5. Can I Say
6. 80 Days
7. Too Poor
8. Corfu
9. Caravan

New York City-based musician/producer Yuno is sharing details for Blest, his forthcoming debut album, out Friday, May 16th, 2025 worldwide from Sub Pop.
 
You can now watch the official video for “Blest,” the album’s ebullient title track, directed by and starring Yuno. He says of the visual, “I turned my entire home recording studio into a giant blue screen to make this video. I hope people in my building don’t get concerned about my storage unit filled with 1800 square feet of blue fabric and a 5-foot tall rose.”
 
All songs on Blest were written and performed by Yuno, co-produced by Yuno and Frank Corr, who also contributed keyboards, drums, and guitar throughout the record. The album also features additional production and instrumentation by Patrick Wimberly (“True,” “Massive”) at The CRC in Brooklyn, and Nick Sanborn at Betty’s in Durham, NC (“True”). Blest was mixed by Steve Vealey and mastered by Joe La Porta.
 
Blest is available to preorder on CD/LP/All DSPs from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com (North America), MM2 (in UK/EU), your local record store and at Yuno’s future live shows will receive the limited Loser edition on White vinyl (Limited LP colors whilst stock lasts!).
 
Late last month, Yuno released another Blest highlight  “True,” a sweet track that marries trap and dream pop. It marked the first new material since the release of “Somebody,” his standalone single from 2021, and the 2018 EP, Moodie, which features his breakout single ”No Going Back.”
 
Yuno will also appear at the 2025 NonCommvention in Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 6th, 2025.

Yuno’s full-length debut, Blest, finds the enigmatic indie-pop visionary transforming the emo-tinged suburban malaise of his 2018 Moodie EP into more expansive, widescreen pop drama — suited for big moves and bigger stages. The kaleidoscopic sound he devised as a millennial hermit in his childhood bedroom in Florida has since broadened his horizons, taking him on tour with Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Superorganism, and soundtracking various series for Netflix and HBO. Imbued with elements of dream-pop, rock, trap, and psychedelia, his eclectic songs serve as bids for love and connection, which especially in the fractured era of social media, have resonated with many listeners who find solace in his vulnerability.
 
Yuno Moodie was born in New York to Jamaican parents from the U.K., and grew up in the coastal Southern city of Jacksonville, Florida. Raised on a sonic diet of reggae and hip-hop records — his father’s copy of 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was on regular rotation in the family car throughout the 2000s — Yuno’s musical tastes began to diverge after his grandfather gifted him a skateboard that he found in a garbage can. Eventually, and unexpectedly, Yuno’s new hobby would dovetail with a future career in music.
 
“The first time I ever got on a skateboard, I broke my foot,” he recalls. It was while he was on the mend that he fully immersed himself in video games like Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater,  famous gateways for many young punks of the millennial generation. As he studied skate videos to build on his athletic technique, he also cultivated a sixth sense as a composer and overall curator of vibes. “I’m always visualizing things when I’m making music and that helps me complete the full picture,” says Yuno. “To this day I’m like, ‘What does it need to make it fit in a skate video?’”
 
Having taught himself the bass and guitar at home, his early material began as impressions of harder bands like HIM, Rancid, and AFI; later, he would embrace anti-folk heroes like the Moldy Peaches and Daniel Johnston. With the advent of the social media predecessor Myspace, Yuno began discovering more eclectic local Jacksonville acts, like indie-pop darlings Black Kids — who offered a more diverse look and eclectic sound for the Bold City, which had then been defined by white radio rockers like Limp Bizkit, Yellowcard, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. “Seeing Black Kids’ success showed me more of what I could do,” says Yuno.
 
In time, Yuno taught himself to produce on his laptop, and filled his childhood bedroom with instruments to cultivate a more full-bodied sound, in which he married crunching pop-punk riffs with glimmers of synth strings  Yuno uploaded his ballads of teenage longing to Soundcloud, where they began to catch fire within the indie blogosphere — and by 2014, caught the attention of Shabazz Palaces emcee and Sub Pop A&R representative Ishmael Butler. At that time, Yuno had never performed a live show, and could count the number of concerts he’d been to on one hand.
 
“He DMed me for new music, but I didn’t have anything to bring him,” recalls Yuno. “A year or so later, he came back and asked, ”Do you mind if I share your music with Sub Pop?’ Apparently, they liked it, and I flew out to Seattle to meet everybody.”

That visit resulted in a record deal with Sub Pop and eventually, his 2018 debut EP, Moodie. The record’s evocative, yearning hooks and cinematic ambience made a suitable soundtrack for film and TV. His surfy pop track “Sunlight,” a summer sketch he revitalized from 2012, was featured in an episode of the Netflix series Atypical; and the gossamer melancholy of “Fall in Love” made for a haunting needle drop in comedian Ramy Youssef’s HBO special, Feelings.

By this time, Yuno had moved back to his birthplace of New York City and settled in Bushwick — just before the Covid-19 pandemic had threatened to stall his music career, along with the world. Sequestered at home once more, like the monastic days of his youth, Yuno began piecing together his foundation for Blest. “For the first time in my life, I was social, going to shows, and meeting new people,” says Yuno. “Then I had to kind of go back and revert to just being in my bedroom all day. It was strange, but I was used to it!”

As the pandemic eased, Yuno welcomed collaborators like Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso and Patrick Wimberly of Chairlift, the latter who lends his sparkle to the fuzz-rock saunter of Blest track, “Massive” — “The bane of staying young is gettin’ older,” sings Yuno, speaking to the all-too precious resource that is time. Co-producer Frank Corr, the NYC artist who performs as Morning Silk, introduced an array of vintage synthesizers to the musician.

Yuno’s superpower lies in the way he mines a multitude of genres for their pop potential and surfaces with a tapestry that feels novel and fresh. Take, for instance, “Blest,” the immediate, blissful, and bright title track, which is inspired by Rich Harrison-breakbeats and Neptunes-esque jangle. Or the breezy single, “True,” which he began writing at producer Sanborn’s Betty’s in Durham, NC, Yuno moderates a lover’s quarrel with slick, trap percussions. Amid the breakbeated dream-rock of “Gimme Ocean,” he introduces his guitar solo with a searing emo scream, run through an EarthQuaker Devices pedal. Don’t let his sanguine aura or his sherbet pink wardrobe fool you; he can shred as hard as he wants to when he wants to.

Yuno
Blest
 
Tracklisting:
1. Blest
2. We Belong
3. Massive
4. Unfair
5. Perfect Pear
6. Fall Apart
7. Worst of Times
8. True
9. Gimme Ocean
10. Blitz!