‘We were exhausted – mentally unwell’: Empire of the Sun on the downside of success – and rising again

In the eight years since Nick Littlemore and Luke Steele’s last album, there have been hits, clashes, babies and illness – and a new appreciation for one another

Rally festival review – thrilling blend of cult DJs and indie darlings

Mount Kimbie’s electro-acoustic jams capture the ethos of this celebration of the boundary pushing that included sets from Two Shell, Nilüfer Yanya and bar italia

All for you! Janet Jackson, Snõõper, Bob Dylan and more: the best music of autumn 2024

From Chat Pile’s apocalyptic noise to Nala Sinephro’s celestial bliss, plus posthumous releases from MC5 and Sophie, here are the albums and tours not to miss – while in classical, Kahchun Wong takes over at the Hallé

Critic’s pick: X Club, the hard and fast DJ duo raving around the world

Since breaking out in the early pandemic, the Brisbane pair have captured dancers globally craving raucous, strobing techno. They’ll leave you breathless

‘Identifying as underrated isn’t healthy’: Tinashe on staging the pop comeback of the year

The raw sexuality of her track Nasty made it a viral sensation, moving the singer out of major label hell. But she says the industry is still toxic and racially segregated

Matt McBriar of Bicep treated for ‘large and pretty rare’ brain tumour

Acclaimed Northern Irish dance music producer says he has had operation on craniopharyngioma tumour and is in recovery

Techno godfather Juan Atkins: ‘There were 5,000 white kids going crazy to my music’

How did a kid from rural Michigan – who lived among cows, haybales and strawberry festivals – change the face of music? As Atkins blazes into the UK, he relives his wild times at early British raves

Hit em: how a dream about raves, graves and slime led Matmos’s Drew Daniel to a new music genre

While Daniel slept, a girl introduced him to ‘super crunched-out sounds’ at a wild tempo. After he shared the details on X, producers are making his fantasies into reality

Womad festival review – wildly entertaining treasure trove for adventurous music fans

Radically inclusive global lineup includes Sampa the Great’s feminist pizzazz, Young Fathers’ twisted genre-splicing and Bixiga 70’s full-tent conga

Mercury prize 2024: Charli xcx, the Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons among nominees

The British music industry’s award for outstanding albums features eight debuts, from the likes of Nia Archives and Barry Can’t Swim, as the prize fails to find a sponsor

Watch me work it, I’m perfect! The return of electro-house, pop’s trashiest, brattiest sound

Mutating out of trance and electroclash in the 00s, the subgenre soon topped the charts – and thanks to Charli xcx, Saltburn and more, it’s back for another round of alcopops

VR show takes ravers old and new back to early UK acid house scene

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is set in the West Midlands and will embark on eight-city tour starting in Birmingham

Low’s Alan Sparhawk on the death of his wife and bandmate Mimi Parker: ‘If you fall in love, you know this could happen’

Sparhawk spent four decades with Parker, three of them as the core of alt-rock legends Low, before she died from cancer aged 55. He discusses finding his new, digitally-altered voice amid grief – and why he’s channelling Cher

‘If the world explodes, the only survivors will be cockroaches and Cubans!’: the Guantánamo musicians defying the island’s crisis

For over 150 years this rural Cuban area has been home to changüí: hyperlocal music holding out against an embattled economy. We join an all-night festival to find out how

‘We knew a banjo house record would annoy the techno bores’: how the Grid made Swamp Thing

‘It was a smash in loads of countries. When we played it at London’s Ministry of Sound club, there was a girl staring at Roger’s banjo like she’d never seen one before’