Ezra Collective became the first British jazz band to make a splash at the Brits in 2025, winning Best Group and making headlines with their plea to save the nation’s youth clubs.

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Ebba Åsman’s smoky late-night jazz is adorned with crackles of electronica on this brief taster from the Swedish trombonist’s new album.

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Beirut return with a beautifully mournful and melancholy ballad about a mystical South Seas island paradise that vanished from the map.

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South London girl Joy Crookes channels the ghost of Amy Winehouse in her infectious summer song When You Were Mine, with its video shot in Brixton Market.

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The thing about soul – soul in the musical sense – is that you’ve either got it or you haven’t. You only have to listen for a moment to know that Jerry Butler, who died this week, had soul.

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Fontaines D.C. reach a new high with their latest single, a euphoric hymn to youth and a plea for hope in an uncertain world – It’s Amazing To Be Young.

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I’ve never been a jazz-funk fan and the vibraphone would be very low on my list of favourite instruments, ranking alongside the flute and just above the ukelele. But I’d have to make an exception for Roy Ayers.

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I was too young to see the New York Dolls in their heyday, though I saw Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers on numerous occasions. The closest I got to David Johansen in those early days was that historically fabulous OGWT in 1973.

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My latest playlist is one of my most eclectic yet. It begins with one of the all-time pop classics (Ronettes) and ends with an aptly valedictory elegy for one of those we lost in February (Bill Fay).

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