The March, 2026 edition of Beatique is ready for you now. Head over to Mixcloud, or tune into the embed here, for an hour and five minutes of music that includes The Smiths, Peaches, Charli XCX, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and lots more. You’ll have to listen for the full track list, but I’ve linked to related articles here, including interviews with some of the artists featured in this episode.
(more…)
For the first of Beatique’s Best of 2025 lists, I wanted to highlight political songs for a very specific reason. Politics aren’t brand safe. You’ll risk alienating the people who disagree with you. You might scare off the companies who would otherwise want to work with you. Blah blah blah. But, at a certain point, if you’re someone with a platform, be it music, art, film or writing, you will need to ask yourself, “Am I a brand? Or am I a human being who actually gives a shit about what’s happening in the world?” Hopefully, the latter is the answer.
Particularly in this moment, we need artists who are willing to be outspoken. For every semi-anonymous person (or bot) chiding you to “stick to the music,” there will be many more motivated to say, I’m against this too. Some might go to a protest, or write their local representatives or get involved with activist group. Maybe music can’t change minds, but it can prompt the quieter people to raise their voice. And, maybe, years from now, kids listening to the 2025 throwbacks will hear that there were people against genocide and fascism and exploiting workers and everything else that’s coming to a head right now. That said, much respect to the eleven artists on this list. They are by no means the only people making political music in 2025, but they made the songs that have been in my personal rotation. In keeping with an egalitarian theme, this list is not ranked.
(more…)
David J was in Asheville, North Carolina for a gig when a protest erupted right under his hotel window. “I was woken up early in the morning with the sound of it,” the L.A.-based musician says on a recent video call. “I just went down to the street and joined in.”
The event provided a spark of inspiration for J, who was already troubled by what he had been seeing in the United States. “Just being amongst that community there, just really good decent people speaking out against this authoritarian horror that’s being visited upon us, that was the galvanizing moment,” he says. Lyrics for what would become “ICE to Cold to Thaw,” the recently released single from David J and the Resistance, began to take shape.
(more…)