Índex per September 2025 a Rolling Stone

RANDOM NOTES Indie-rock band Water From Your Eyes make music for a surreal world (p.11). We break down AI “band” Velvet Sundown’s summer hoax (p.13) and catch up with the stars of Spinal Tap II (p.13). FKA Twigs brings feel-good vibes to LadyLand Festival (p.14), and Icelandic artist Laufey delivers drama-filled fairy tales (p.16). We remember three icons we lost this summer, from Ozzy Osbourne (p.17) to Brian Wilson (p.18) and Sly Stone (p.19). Reneé Rapp shares how taking a break from the spotlight helped her make one of the year’s most exciting pop albums (p.20). “I make music for myself, but I don’t put out music for myself.”RENEÉ RAPP NATIONAL AFFAIRS Visit the front lines of extreme weather with NOAA’s tornado researchers as they navigate uncertainty in their agency…

Three years ago, in 2022, Nate Amos and Rachel Brown went on their first tour together as Water From Your Eyes. No one knew their experimental avant-pop music yet, money was scarce, and Amos was in his first year of sobriety. Also, they were exes who hadn’t gotten around to fully processing their breakup a few years earlier. “We were getting paid $250 a night, maybe selling three shirts if we were lucky,” says Amos, 34. “We were trying to make it work.” “It was an absolute emotional train wreck,” adds Brown, 28. The one thing that kept Water From Your Eyes from falling apart on that first tour was a CD of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication. As Brown drove the New York band from gig to gig around…

A songwriter of towering talent and rare sensitivity When my father died, about 10 years ago, Brian Wilson called to console me. “I gotta give you some advice, and it’s not going to be easy to hear,” he said. He reflected on his own father’s passing, in 1973, and said he’d never gotten over it. “As bad as it feels to lose your dad, it’s never gonna get better. But that’s how you know you love him and he loves you. That’s how you stay connected.” Brian gave me a lot of his own special kind of advice over the years. Once, he told me that I needed to shave my beard because it made me look “lazy.” When we’d exercise at the park, he would often walk about a…

1 ISHOW SPEED “AN ARTIST ONLY TALKS TO FANS AT A CONCERT. WITH LIVESTREAMING, WE’RE ALWAYS THERE.” Handle @ishowspeed Genre Streamer Followers 135 million How do you become a global phenomenon? For IShowSpeed, it starts with never turning the camera off. IShowSpeed has transformed a childhood nickname (Speed) and his longtime love of video games into an IRL streaming empire. Born Darren Watkins Jr., the Ohioan, 20, is best known for his worldwide streaming tours, where the camera stays rolling as he meets foreign dignitaries and sports legends, plays in pickup soccer matches, films music videos for his budding rap career, or is hounded by massive crowds. Speed’s teen antics have gotten him in hot water, but he’s addressed each controversy with a genuine apology, all while drawing millions of…

The Magic and Mystery of Big Thief One of the best bands in indie rock travels wide-open inner spaces on its spellbinding sixth album. By Jon Dolan BIG THIEF Double Infinity 4AD Early in the sixth album from Big Thief, the band’s singer-songwriter, Adrianne Lenker, misses a flight. For most of us, this wouldn’t be anything but a hassle. She turns it into a dream: “Driving with my lover,” she sings against distant guitar shimmer and agile, circular drumming, “We added up the hours/To see the lupine flowers/Way up past the border/We blew through Thunder Bay.” The song spirals into a beautiful meditation on memory, time, family, aging, and freedom that’s at once casually philosophical, wisely ironic, funny, sad, resilient — and poignantly titled “Incomprehensible,” a phrase she repeats like…

JEFF IHAZA Senior Music Editor The main thing Jeff Ihaza learned from spending a few days in Paris with cover star Steve Lacy is how cool, calm, and collected the Grammy-winning musician is. “It was a nice change of pace from what you typically get talking to big celebrities,” says Ihaza, a senior editor at Rolling Stone who’s interviewed stars from DJ Khaled to Ice Spice and streamer Kai Cenat. On what was an ostensibly glamorous trip — attending a YSL fashion show and sailing the Seine together — Ihaza was struck by Lacy’s chill energy. “It almost seemed like I was coming into town to meet a friend,” Ihaza says, adding, “It was nice to catch someone who’s in a very flow-state moment. He was really dialed in.” PAOLA…

The massive legacy of an avant-funk revolutionary Thank you for the party, but Sly could never stay. Sly Stone was the ultimate mystery man of American music, a visionary genius who transformed the world with some of the most innovative sounds of the Sixties and Seventies. With Sly and the Family Stone, he fused funk, soul, and acid rock into his own utopian style. He remained an elusive figure; when he died on June 9, it seemed strange he was “only” 82, because he seemed even older — as if he’d outlived himself by decades. Yet his music sounds as futuristic and influential as ever. Nobody ever sounded like this man. Sly could write inspirational songs of unity, uplifting hits like “Stand!” or “Everybody Is a Star” that can catch…

‘We’re going to miss this show.” ● I’m in the passenger seat of a new-model Mercedes that’s basically parked in Paris traffic. Steve Lacy sits in the back on aux duty, running through a playlist featuring the French electronic duo Air, M.I.A., and Faye Webster. We’re heading to the Bourse de Commerce, where Yves Saint Laurent’s Spring Summer 2026 presentation is about to start. Except, we’re not making very much progress. The journey from Lacy’s hotel to the venue should only take a few minutes, but we’ve been moving at the speed of dial-up. Our driver cuts down an alley, a ruelle in the local parlance, only to run into more gridlock. Making matters worse, a car emerges in the rearview, boxing us in. If we want to get to…

The heavy-metal icon was also one of music’s humblest heroes It was a sweltering London day in August 2022 when I met Ozzy Osbourne in person for the last time, at a posh hotel near Hyde Park. I took a seat, but the Prince of Darkness had to lie down because he was exhausted from his triumphant comeback show in his hometown of Birmingham the night before, when he performed “Iron Man” and “Paranoid” with his Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi. He’d made the decision to get onstage as a headliner for the first time in four years at the last minute, since he was battling several health setbacks. But he was in good spirits. “Is it hot in here or am I … fucking hell,” he sputtered. “We haven’t…

David Byrne strolls into his downtown Manhattan office around noon and promptly removes all of his footwear. He’s been in this prewar building only for a few months, but it’s already unmistakably his own, looking as much like a work space as it does like a museum of the unusual items he’s collected throughout his decades as one of pop’s most curious minds. Meticulously organized metal shelving lines one long wall full of music books, art books, history books, and enough DVDs to put the Criterion Closet to shame. An Oscar, a Grammy, and an MTV Video Music Award are positioned unobtrusively among kitschy treasures like an ancient can of macadamia nuts with Spam and a cassette of a speech by Bob Dole. “It took a while before everything was…

Few foods are more recognizable — or more American — than the cheeseburger. It’s a staple of fast food and backyard barbecues, served in rations to soldiers and on silver platters to presidents. Politicians invoke it as a symbol of abundance, nostalgia, even patriotism. Its parts — beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, bun — are so familiar they barely register as something grown, cultivated, or hauled. Americans consume an estimated 50 billion burgers each year. Together, those billions of burgers represent a vast system that spans thousands of miles and millions of immigrant workers, most of whom never appear in the advertising. To understand just how dependent American agriculture is on immigrant labor, one need only trace the anatomy of a cheeseburger: onions from Idaho, lettuce from Arizona, beef from…

“I did what the Beatles did, but by myself.” You recently rerecorded some of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s biggest hits. What did you learn about those songs years later? I was really unprepared for how deep I was gonna have to go. It wasn’t just a guy that sings “Proud Mary” every night. It was a guy trying to be 23 years old, to remember the way the radio was, remember what was going on in the world, and get to that particular space of why and how he had written “Proud Mary.” I learned to make my mind or soul go back to that time. [My wife] Julie told me later she could see me literally doing it by the look on my face. Several months into it, I had…