Aoife Kelleher: ‘At my 30th my friends had to rescue the party from my morose playlist’

Soundtrack of My Life: The director on her lockdown listening, Francophilia, and Peppa Pig

Swimmers Jackson: Murmuration review – authentic album strikes easy balance between laidback and spirited

Dubliner’s short debut album is certainly not lacking in charm or dynamics

Snail Mail: ‘A lot of my favourite musicians are from the 1990s’

The US teen is one of the best of a wealth of young, female, ’90s-tinged up-and-comers

Gig of the Week: Iron & Wine at the Helix

Before the songwriting took hold and a deal with Sub Pop, Sam Beam was a movie man

This album changed my life: Elliott Smith – XO (1998)

The album accompanied Homebeat’s Emmet Condon on many train journeys as a student

Soul of a Woman: Sharon Jones’s final, funky masterwork, a year after her death

With her band the Dap-Kings, Jones was a ball of pure soul power. Her band and colleagues say farewell with one last record

Julien Baker: Turn Out the Lights review: A nakedly personal document of pain

The best rock and pop gigs for the week ahead

From St Vincent to Emeli Sande, here’s the best live music for the next seven days

Angelo De Augustine: Swim Inside the Moon – lo-fi homage to Nick Drake and Elliott Smith

The Lucius women

Lucius co-frontwoman Holly Laessig talks about how the harmonising Brooklyn band grew out of a fun music-school project

James Blunt: The most hated man in pop?

He’s often called the most hated man in pop, but does nice guy James Blunt care? Does he f**k, he tells Lauren Murphy as he shares the secret of his thick skin

Majical Cloudz: Impersonator