Sometimes, Mitski feels life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” she says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have after I die, so I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will shine love long after she’s gone. That’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.

“This is my most American album,” she says. The music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. Sonically Mitski’s most epic and wise album, the songs introduce wounds and then actively heal them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like light from a distant star.

It's full of the ache of the grown-up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything and everyone is crying out in pain, arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning and then rejecting us. To love this place, this earth, this America, this body takes work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

Glass Animals are a Grammy and BRIT-nominated British band whose genre-blending sound and cult-like fandom have made them one of the most exciting acts in global pop. Their third album Dreamland became a cultural multi-platinum selling phenomenon and spawned Heat Waves, the record-breaking single that topped charts worldwide and made history as the first UK band to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in nearly 30 years. Last year, the band released their fourth critically acclaimed album I Love You So F**ing Much, a sci-fi-infused odyssey about love, connection, and what it means to feel real in a surreal world. It arrived alongside a 44-date world tour that included headlining The O2 Arena in London and Madison Square Gardens in New York. Frontman Dave Bayley — also one of pop’s most in-demand producers — writes and produces every song, often with an experimental DIY edge that blurs the lines between music, tech and visual art. This experimental production is particularly evident in the band’s Fresh Fruit series. Bayley uses these standalone singles to bring in guests and collaborators, giving himself space to play with new sounds. Their live shows are euphoric and surreal, driven by a deep connection with fans built through open-source creativity and unexpected digital drops.

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