Happy Friday! Last night, Warner dropped the highly-anticipated new single from The Black Keys. This week’s New Music Friday spotlight is on The Vaccines. The British-4 piece just released their 6th album. Down Under, Australia quartet Vacations also have a new album out today and a big CBS Saturday Morning performance for you to check out tomorrow morning. Saturday night is iHeartRadio’s ALTer EGO at the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA featuring Fall Out Boy, The 1975, The Black Keys, Thirty Seconds To Mars, BUSH, Sum 41, Yellowcard, lovelytheband and The Last Dinner Party.

Some good Alternative ratings to share from the Nielsen December ‘23 trends being released this week. WZRH (ALT 92.3)/New Orleans posts increase from 1.0-1.5 and WEDG (103.3 THE EDGE)/Buffalo is up 3.0-3.7.

Brad Holtz is now President of the rebranded ST Radio, which includes WGBJ (ALT 102.3)/Ft. Wayne. Find the details in The Latest Alternative News. It’s been a busy week of music festival lineups being announced and the latest are loaded up for you on Alternative Music Info. Did you see The Killers are headlining Boston Calling?

I’m calling for the weekend. First, let’s dig in on some New Music Discovery.

This Week’s New Music Discovery

Akron, OH’s The Black Keys delivered their new single “Beautiful People (Stay High)” via Warner last night. Written by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney with longtime friends Dan “The Automator” Nakamura and Beck, this is one of several collaborations on the band’s forthcoming 12th album, Ohio Players, which will arrive on April 5th. It’s the first new music from The Black Keys since their last album Dropout Boogie in 2022.

Speaking on the collaborative nature of the new album, Carney shares, “We had this epiphany: ‘We can call our friends to help us make music.’ It’s funny because we both write songs with other people – Dan all the time [as a solo artist and producer], me when I’m producing a record. That’s what we do.”

Ottawa, Canada’s The Rockyts is a solo project by Jeremy Abboud, and his latest self-released single “Falling Again” was blasted out earlier this week via CO5 Music. It’s from his upcoming second album, Parkwood. Jeremy plays every instrument on his songs himself and self-produces/records/mixes/masters in his basement studio. The Rockyts originally began as a trio, and at 16, Jeremy got to work with legendary engineer, Eddie Kramer (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Kiss).  

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