The latest single from Ruby Sparks' debut album IRIS comes in the form of a darting garage rock tune with smoothed out edges and vintage psych pop wonder. Listen to our premiere of "Love's All We Have" today!

On this week's Bandcamp Picks of the Week segment, I go for two delightful finds. One blends death metal with chilling post-punk snarl, the other is a reflective plugg folktronica. Both are great and worth listening to. My write-ups of FLOATING and Zyber's albums are up on MGR Mag!

THE LONG WALK arrives at a moment where the 18-24 male demo is at a scary crossroads, one playing out in the news daily. It's a bleaker, more realistic take on the YA apocalyptic adaptations from a decade ago, asking in a whisper "Which Way, Western Man?"

It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring FLOATING’s post-punk infused metal exploration HESITATING LIGHTS, out now via @transcendingobs.bsky.social, and Zyber's experimental hip hop journey SMILE! YOU’RE ON CAMERA, out now via Killstreak Certified! Read about both today!

You think I just go on and on and on about comics? No, dude, my blow-hard-ed-ness also applies to music, like that of the awesome BRNDA. My latest for @mgrmagazine.bsky.social:

BRNDA has spoken! Wisdom on display! Such a great piece here. Thx for chatting with BRNDA, Chris! ❤️

BRNDA explore human suffering on TOTAL PAIN the same way they always have, offering brilliantly dry art-rock that eschews boundaries and boxes. We profiled the band, and discussed the truths and perspectives that come from struggle. Check out the new album, out now via @craftedsounds.bsky.social!

The last two gasps for summer box office relevance came and went, with THE ROSES and CAUGHT STEALING falling flat as fine films ideal for cable commercial interruption. TNT? USA? TBS? This kind of amicable, average, agreeable filmmaking is for you!

In the recent Bandcamp Picks of the Week, I speak about @celestaphone.com & Dealers of God's brand of psychedelic, heady hip-hop that goes on layers of zany bars that strangles conspiracy theory bullshit at bay. You wouldn't hear anything like this one this year, check it out!

It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring the conspiratorial psychy hip hop of @celestaphone.com & Dealers of God's CULT SUBTERRANEA, out now via Dismiss Yourself, and an explosive hardcore split from Statement of Pride, Destiny, and Envision, IT COMES FROM WITHIN...! Check out both today!

Tomorrow, saturdays at your place will release THESE THINGS HAPPEN. At war with time, distance, and adulthood, we hear them falling in love, recovering from broken hearts, and trying to grow. They come out the other side with one of the years most exciting emo albums.

Happy Bandcamp Friday! Here are our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, including the thorny emo pop of The April Situation's self-titled EP and the blitzing hardcore of Scarab's BURN AFTER LISTENING! Read about both and then grab yourself a copy of both over on @bandcamp.com!

Natasha Newling, who makes music under the name RAYHAB, walks us through her new EP RESIDUE, how she took to separating production from songwriting, reconciling with the past, and more! Give the record a listen today!

"I was there when AHA SHAKE HEARTBREAK automatically downloaded spyware when you ripped it to iTunes. I was there in 2014, handing in my resignation at the record store to take a job that would have me sitting in a cubicle paying me enough to survive. That’s when I started losing my edge."

So-bad-it's-good film lovers have long since turned over every rock in movie history, but if we turn to the present what has 2025 offered into the canon, and what does it say about our current moment? An exploration of THE TOXIC AVENGER, M3GAN 2.0, and THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.

Art rock project Flooding recently released OBJECT 1, their latest EP that continues to traverse the fruitful slowcore scene developing in Kansas City. We chatted with Rose Brown about the EP, the ways our environment affects our art, and more!

PRIVATE MUSIC is a cacophony of exciting sounds and ideas, showcasing why Deftones have continually been reassessed as one of the best hard rock bands of all time. It’s confident and beautiful in ways that OHMS or GORE simply weren’t, and lives up to their now legacy status.

It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring two records pulling from late ’90s and 2000s aesthetics, including uponbrokenapologies’s metalcore EP SILENCE AND SORROW, out now via The Coming Strife, and Nihilistic Easyrider’s post-grunge alt rock album DELUXE EDITION, out now via Run For Cover!

Good morning! I wrote an essay about @chrisdeville.bsky.social's fantastic new book, loving indie rock from behind the counter at a record store, and when I lost my edge for @mgrmagazine.bsky.social!

@chrisdeville.bsky.social's new book, SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS, is a thorough and often necessary feeling exploration of blog era indie rock writ large, from Pavement to Mitski to Sufjan and beyond. For those of us who lived it, it's a refreshing read but a devastating reminder of the passage of time.

On TALES FROM CAZILOR: WYLDFLOWERS, ‪@naethanapollo.com‬ is in his D&D bag, blending fantasy storytelling, hip hop, and more. We chatted with him about the role of dungeon master, musical world building, Tyler, the Creator, and more!

"Once I think we had the hopes of maybe one day beating ‘em, but with each passing day, it’s harder to shake the feeling that the battle has already been lost in that regard. But I think MGRM's still here because we’ll at least be damned if we join ‘em."

From Kanye to IT FOLLOWS, GAME OF THRONES to the Fantasy Movie League, there were things we were right about and things we were painfully wrong about in 2015. We surveyed a handful of writers to talk about what lingers in their brains about a decade ago!

Stopped by the bathrooms at @thefridacinema.org recently? Have you caught our poster for the Saturday rowdy screening of MAGIC MIKE XXL? We have one more event for MGRM10, and there's still time to grab a ticket! 10 p.m. PST! We'll see you there (goes for you too @donaldglover.bsky.social)!

It's our Bandcamp Pick of the Week, featuring the listless dream logic of Softie's first full band recording SOMERSAULT, out now via Cherub Dream Records! Read about it and give it a listen today!

Merry-Go-Round Magazine is officially 10 years old! Owner and former Editor-in-Chief Thomas Seraydarian reflects on what a decade has meant—the ups, the downs, last weekend's MGRM10 shows, and the zen art of just continuing to do it the same as it ever was (because someone has to).

On Friday, Glitterfox release their excellent debut DECODER. Featuring a great wrestling inspired video for standout cut "Gamma Ray," we put them in the ring with our wrestling column Hard Time Blues to chat about '80s wrestling, Fleetwood Mac, the album, and more!

"On first listen, I was just thrilled that some piece of Nanami Ozone remained. Now, I hear LET IT WIN as its own towering triumph, one of the best collections of folk rock you’ll hear this year—and that’s saying something in 2025."

As Neil Young once said, tonight's the night! You'll be able to snag a ticket at the door for the main room show featuring Wild Pink, villagerrr, and Morpho, or you can grab one online below. See you soon! dice.fm/event/bbweog...

TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT! We kick off MGRM10 with some hometown heroes, including Scone, Steel Wool, and Mo Dotti! Tickets are moving pretty quickly! You can find them here or likely at the door tonight! Doors at 9, see you then! www.eventbrite.com/e/mgrm10-mo-...

In honor of our tenth anniversary next week, and MGRM10 this weekend (tickets on sale now!), check out a special Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring a pair of throwback picks from a decade ago, including 2015 albums from California X and QUARTERBACKS!

"The blurry, washed-out punk rock of “On & on & On” from Nelly Was Nervous awoke something inside me, a rush of memories surrounding the KEASBEY NIGHTS cut that I hadn’t thought about since the late 2000s while riding buses to band competitions. And that’s, in a nutshell, what all 16 songs do."

Big things happening for villagerrr! You can catch them in Los Angeles this Friday playing MGRM10 with us! Tickets available here: dice.fm/event/bbweog...

It's our Bandcamp Pick of the Week, featuring another in a recent string of excellent '90s pop and dance indebted releases, e O's full bodied and groovy self-titled debut, out now via LOFS! Read all about it and then give it a listen today on on @bandcamp.com!

Despite often failing to rise to the occasion in the past, Halestorm's EVEREST is a reinvigorated reminder that they have one of the best singers in the genre. If their past releases failed Lizzy Hale’s powerful vocal delivery, this latest delivers.

Thrilled to announce for MGRM10 we will have a limited run of shirts we’ll be selling at both nights for a clean $15! That’s right, we saw that a heat wave is about to hit Los Angeles and we thought to ourselves “you know what the people yearn for? Cozy long sleeve shirts!”

"Humans grow and humans develop. It’s foolish to limit access to something that can catalyze that development before it ever has the chance to."

Wrote about a few things I’m nostalgic for (Streetlight Manifesto, Nanami Ozone):

Happy Bandcamp Friday! Check out our Picks of the Week, including a charity compilation of Streetlight Manifesto covers put together by @lonelyghostrecords.com, and Neu Blume's year best cosmic folk album LET IT WIN! Read about both and then support them on @bandcamp.com!

"The most inspired choice is Ozzy’s eerie, echoing 'Crazy Train' vocal snippets, acting like ad-libs through the entire track. How many vocalists have a cackle so iconic and hype that it serves as the basis for a Southern hip hop and crunk classic?"

This was a real cathartic write for me as we approach 10 years of Merry-Go-Round Magazine. Arbitrary decisions based in capital will always be detrimental to art, and if Apple wants to seriously pretend to be on the side of creators they need to abandon this metric.

Senior Writer @porfenablah.bsky.social reviewed WHEELS OF AURELIA for us back in 2016, before this site was even known as Merry-Go-Round Magazine. Now, the games future is in limbo on the Apple App Store, raising questions about what art will look like with tech dictated benchmarks.

"James Gunn isn’t here to present excellence, he’s here to sell potential... SUPERMAN will not save us, but it’s the closest any of us will get to being chauffeured like a Warner Bros. Discovery board member."

It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring Above Me’s distinguished self-titled shoegaze debut, out now via Dandy Boy Records, and Subsonic Eye’s ambitious and peppy indie pop LP SINGAPORE DREAMING, out now via @topshelfrecords.com! Check out both today!

SURPRISE! To celebrate 10 years of @mgrmagazine.bsky.social, we’re collaborating with @thefridacinema.org to get down n dirty with an anniversary screening of 2015’s best cultural contribution besides us: MAGIC MIKE XXL AUGUST 30TH 10 PM THE PARTY TO END ALL SUMMERS

Okay! One final MGRM10 event and then we’re done, we swear! Late in August, we’re thrilled to head back to Orange County to the town where this mag began for a screening at @thefridacinema.org! Join us on 9/30 for a rowdy, rollicking, raunchy evening with the boys of Magic Mike XXL!

The CD Book in your dad's car. A one-and-done harmonica part. Trick Daddy's "Let's Go." A few members of the Merry-Go-Round staff took a moment to write about their various connections to Ozzy Osbourne's cherished career. RIP to the Prince of Darkness!

It's easy to see why the hypnagogic pop of Venezuelan artist weed420 has caught the ear of many a RYM listener. AMOR DE ENCAVA, their debut, is a sharp, visceral and devastating experience mined from traffic noise, TV commercials and technicolor synths.

Kevin's got a real livewire of an article on his hands. Woke may be back, kindness might be the new punk rock, but will this SUPERMAN save us? Ehhh maybe????

It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring Instupendo & Ripsquad's glitchy R&B team up RIPSTUPENDO, and Cloakroom’s kaleidoscopic rock opus LAST LEG OF THE HUMAN TABLE, out now via @closedcasketact.bsky.social! Read about both and then listen today!