Bar Italia thrash it out on the indie-punk scorcher Rooster

There’s loads of music out there, and sometimes it’s hard to keep up.

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Bar Italia – Rooster

I first saw Bar Italia live in 2022. In those days, they were London’s painfully cool buzz band, and you’d find all of the city’s indie A&Rs side-eyeing each other at their gigs. The band would also perform with relative stillness in total darkness, but they soon realised they’re too fun for all that. In the video for the scorching indie-punk banger Rooster – my favourite track from their forthcoming album Some Like It Hot – the band thrash around and drop to their knees, capturing the carefree energy they now exude on stage. In a recent episode of the How Long Gone podcast, singer Nina Cristante said the songs on Some Like it Hot are more ​“resolved” compared to their older material. You’ll know what she means when you hear it. DR

Jawnino – LivFlare (broadway market)

Jawnino specialises in druggy poetry and scuzzy sound palettes. On LivFlare, the shadowy MC rapidly spits over a chaotic onslaught of hi-hats courtesy of producers Laron and Tony Seltzer (who just dropped an enchanting collaborative album with fellow New Yorker Anysia Kim). Referencing locations such as London’s Broadway Market, Lewisham pub the Fox & Firkin and the Putney Exchange shopping mall, as well as Katy B and MDMA, Jawns sounds as though he’s trying to piece together his memories from a lost weekend in the city. DR

Destroy Lonely – Screwed Up

Destroy Lonely has just dropped Broken Hearts 3, his fifth mixtape (and seventh full length project overall). Judging by the response on X, most of his fans aren’t tired of the Opium aesthetic just yet, and on Screwed Up he proves he’s by no means restricted to the rage rap sound by funnelling his lyrics about sex, sadness and luxury fashion into a syrupy R&B style. It’s just as well Lone has plenty of gas in the tank, because in a couple of weeks he’s joining Carti and co on Opium’s Antagonist tour – over two years after the original scheduled dates. DR

Cardi B – Safe

I thought it was AI slop when I saw Cardi B pavement-side, flogging her own album in a rasta hat and Gucci mules this month but no, it was just part of a genius marketing campaign for her new album Am I the Drama? To answer that question, by the way, yes, she is the drama. Vicious and witty, the album picks through a long list of nemeses with the help of friends like Selena Gomez, Summer Walker and – via a sample – Janet Jackson. On R&B track, Safe, Cardi teams up with Kehlani, for one of the more vulnerable tracks on the album as the two express their desires for a man that makes them feel at home, ​“I don’t need a rich n*gga, just somebody that can make me feel safe/​If the world turn against me, who I got, baby?”, Cardi asks. Hopefully, Steffon Diggs is the one. TL

King Princess – Girls

Three years since releasing her second album Hold On Baby, King Princess has dropped Girl Violence, a lusty, complicated album about falling hard into the wrong situation. It arrives on the tail end of two breakups, one being a professional relationship with Mark Ronson, who produced both her first and second album, and the second being a four year romantic relationship with film director Quinn Whitney Wilson. On the melancholic track Girls, the LA artist tussles with the idea of returning to an ex, singing ​“And to let you back in/​That would be violence/​that would be chaos,” before smirking ​“I want to try it”. Welcome back KP. TL