Grateful Dead, ‘Steal Your Face’ (50th Anniversary) (Rhino Records)
Fifty years ago, America celebrated its 200th birthday — and a lot of great albums were released.
That’s why Rhino Records has launched a Spirit of ’76 vinyl reissue campaign, with independent record stores carrying new editions of 23 albums that first arrived in 1976. It gets underway July 17 with the release of Bad Company’s Run with the Pack, Black Sabbath’s Technical Ecstasy, the Faces’ Snakes and Ladders/The Best of Faces and the Ramones’ self-titled debut.
On July 24, releases include X, the Grammy-winning album by Chicago; the Grateful Dead’s live album Steal Your Face; Linda Ronstadt’s Hasten Down the Wind; The J. Geils Band’s live album Blow Your Face Out; Todd Rundgren’s Faithful; and Rod Stewart’s A Night on the Town.
The campaign ends July 31 with Jethro Tull’s M.U. – The Best of Jethro Tull, the Ramones’ Live at the Roxy, 1976, War’s Greatest Hits and ZZ Top’s World Wide Texas Tour.
Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen in ‘House of the Dragon’ season 3. (Ollie Upton/HBO)
The final trailer for House of the Dragon season 3 has arrived.
HBO has released a brand-new trailer showing off the upcoming third season of the Game of Thrones prequel series. It finds House Targaryen divided as ever, picking up where season 2 left off.
The show’s returning cast includes Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Steve Toussaint, Rhys Ifans, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, Bethany Antonia, Jefferson Hall, Tom Bennett, Kurt Egyiawan and Freddie Fox.
The new trailer shows off many dragons coming to Westeros amid brutal warfare.
“My enemies have been allowed to muster their strength,” Rhaenyra Targaryen (D’Arcy) says in the trailer. Later on, she says passionately, “Have you not betrayed your queen? Bring Aegon, the usurper, to me.”
House of the Dragon is based on George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood. The story is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, centering on House Targaryen.
In addition to airing on HBO linear, season 3 of the fantasy drama series will be available to stream on HBO Max.
House of the Dragon season 3 premieres on June 21.
When Lauren Alaina hears her new song, she can’t help but think about how far her life has come.
“I wrote ‘Better Off’ from the perspective of a girl who finally realizes she didn’t lose anything by being cheated on … in a lot of ways, she ended up much better off,” she says. “It’s full of sass and attitude, but underneath it all, it’s really about growth and knowing your worth.”
“I’m in such a beautiful season of life now with my husband and daughter,” she adds, “and this song feels like finally closing the door on a different stage of my life.”
“Better Off” is the latest track from Lauren’s new album, Stages, which drops Aug. 28. It also includes her top-25 hit with Chase Matthew, “All My Exes,” and the previously released “Raining Whiskey.”
After heading out on the Songs of Summer trek with Darius Rucker, Lauren’s set to launch The Stages Tour Oct. 1 in Milwaukee.
Sam Fender and Olivia Dean accept the Song of the Year Award with Mastercard for ‘Rein Me In’ during The BRIT Awards 2026 on Feb. 28, 2026 in Manchester, England. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Olivia Dean’s duet with Sam Fender, “Rein Me In” — which just made Spotify’s list of “songs of the summer” contenders — has tied a chart record set last year by Alex Warren.
The song has notched a 13th week at #1 on the U.K.’s Official Singles Chart. As per Billboard, “Reign Me In” is now tied with Alex’s “Ordinary” as the longest-running song of the 2020s. Until Alex broke it in 2025, the previous record was 11 weeks, held by Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits.”
“Rein Me In” is a song that Sam originally recorded for his album People Watching. It was then released as a remix with Olivia singing on it; the two have also performed the song live onstage together.
So far, “Rein Me In” has yet to have the same success in the U.S. But Olivia is doing just fine on her own, with two massive hits: “Man I Need” and “So Easy (To Fall in Love).” She brings her The Art of Loving tour to the U.S. July 10 in San Francisco.
(NEW YORK) — A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged in the nonfatal shooting earlier this year of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis was arrested in Texas on Friday, more than a week after prosecutors announced the charges, officials in Minnesota said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes appears at the Tenth Annual LOVE ROCKS NYC Benefit Concert for God’s Love We Deliver at The Beacon Theatre on March 05, 2026 in New York City. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for LOVE ROCKS NYC/God’s Love We Deliver)
Gov’t Mule has announced a U.S. tour with Ziggy Marley.
The joint outing runs from Sept. 23 in New York City to Oct. 17 in Irving, Texas. It’s dubbed the Dreaming the Same Dream tour after the song “Dreaming the Same Dream,” which Mule frontman Warren Haynes wrote with Marley.
“I’m really looking forward to the tour with Ziggy Marley,” Haynes says in a statement. “We’ve known each other a long time and have shared the stage a few times but never done a tour together. There’s definitely an overlap between the two audiences, but I think a lot of Mule fans will be hearing Ziggy for the first time and a lot of Ziggy fans will be hearing Mule for the first time, which is great.”
“It’s gonna be a great jam session being on tour with Warren and the crew,” Marley adds. “I’m looking forward to the vibes.”
Presales begin June 3 at noon ET, and tickets go on sale to the general public on June 5 at 10 a.m. local time. For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit Mule.net.
You can also catch Gov’t Mule on tour throughout the summer, including dates with Joe Bonamassa.
Exterior view of the Louisiana State Capitol building, the seat of government for the state of Louisiana, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 20th June 1974. Completed in 1931, the Art Deco building was designed by architects Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
(BATON ROUGE, La.) — Louisiana lawmakers on Friday approved a new congressional map that could allow Republicans to flip one of the state’s two Democratic-held House seats in the 2026 midterms.
The Louisiana Senate gave final approval to a bill with the new map after much dissent from Democrats.
“Y’all, at the beginning of this process, I would have said that we are building a house on a broken foundation. Now, it feels more like quicksand, because we’re in 2026 going into a map that we know is flawed, that we know is going to get struck down,” state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor.
State Sen. Jay Morris, a Republican, defended the map ahead of the final vote.
“I think we have a map here that meets all the traditional redistricting criteria. It’s not racially gerrymandered. … I think it broadly allows for representation for each region of the state, and it’s very fair, and we should approve it,” Morris said.
The new map comes weeks after U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The landmark Supreme Court decision dealt a blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and set off a newfound scramble of mid-decade redistricting in Louisiana and other states that Democrats say could drastically reduce the number of Black representatives in Congress.
On Thursday, during hours of floor debate, several Democratic state representatives condemned the redrawn map, which eliminates one of the two majority-Black districts in the state, as discriminatory.
“I want to ask you to remember the argument that we should now be colorblind about a congressional map, in this state of all states, requires forgetting a quantity of history that I don’t believe any of us has the right to forget. Black people in this country were not citizens; not partial citizens, not second-class citizens. We weren’t citizens at all,” state Rep. Kyle Green, a Democrat and member of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, said on Thursday.
State Rep. Beau Beaullieu, a Republican who sponsored an amended version of the map that the state House approved, argued to members that legislators had been forced to redraw the map because of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“And now we find ourselves back with a similar map to the one this body passed in 2022, that had five Republican districts and one Democrat district,” he said on Thursday. “The map complies with traditional redistricting principles and also maximizes partisan advantage. The map is contiguous; it is compact; it binds communities of interest; it protects incumbency. … Race was not a factor when drawing these districts.”
Madonna’s romantic life is the stuff of legend, but she’s willing to name one of her past lovers as being the “best” — with one important caveat.
The Queen of Pop sat for a short video NSFW conversation with several gay friends for the LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr, including her former opening act Bob the Drag Queen, designer Raul Lopez and playwright Jeremy O. Harris. During the conversation, Madonna was asked who her best lover was — except the word “lover” was not used, if you know what we mean.
“Oh my God,” Madonna says. “I’m gonna only name dead people.” She then whispers, “John Kennedy Jr.”
Raul Lopez notes that “everyone says” the late attorney and publisher, who died in 1999, was good in bed, adding that Madonna is “the third person” to say that, as she nods in agreement.
Madonna also reveals that her “post-coital room service order” is a club sandwich, her “sex playlist” is mostly classical music, and that she feels the “Mother” nickname given to her by the LGBTQ+ community has a lot to do with being “protective.”
“When I first came to New York and started seeing — especially at the beginning at the AIDS epidemic, I saw how s*** people were to gays, and that’s all I wanted to do is take care of them and fight for them and give them courage,” she says. “When I was coming up, they were my ride-or-dies. I didn’t feel judged by them.”
To which Bob the Drag Queen replies, “That’s impressive, to not be judged by the judgiest group in the world!”
The Band Perry’s “Kill It” (Nashville Harbor Records & Entertainment)
The Band Perry’s new song, “Kill It,” completes the “romantic-goth trilogy” they started with their previous tracks “PSYCHOLOGICAL” and “Buzzards.”
“I thought someone new could fix it/ Told myself some lies to trick it/ Drank too much just to forget it/ Tried to put it six feet deep in a hole,” Kimberly Perry sings on the new song. “Thought I had the guts to pull the trigger but I didn’t/ If this is a game, I’d say that you’re winning/ My love’s still alive and kicking/ Guess only one of us knows how to kill it.”
Even though she didn’t write it, it expresses a sentiment Kimberly knows well.
“‘My love’s still alive and kicking’ is my favorite line in this song and, honestly, my entire personality,” she says. “I never know when to give up on someone … or something. ‘Kill It’ is my confession that I’d rather lose with my heart still beating than win by burying mine first.”
Next up, Kimberly and husband Johnny Costello play CMA Fest in Nashville, complete with a June 5 set on the main stage at Nissan Stadium.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with ABC News, Apr. 25, 2025. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Former Attorney General Pam Bondi told members of the House Oversight Committee Friday that the Justice Department had released all the documents required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but that she did not lead every aspect of the process, according to a copy of her prepared opening statement.
After a tumultuous year at the DOJ that was largely defined by her controversial handling of the Epstein files, Bondi participated in a nearly four-hour closed-door interview with the House Oversight panel Friday.
“As the head of a large Department with broad responsibilities, I did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself,” Bondi said, according to her prepared opening statement. “I delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.”
Following her appearance, Bondi, in a social media post, disputed Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia’s claim that she “continues to push all of the investigation and the blame on Acting AG Todd Blanche.”
“NOT TRUE,” Bondi posted. “I praised Acting AG Blanche’s management of this Herculean task. I said his ethics are beyond reproach and that he is an incredible Attorney General.”
The second Trump cabinet official to testify behind closed doors as part of the Oversight Committee’s yearlong Epstein probe, Bondi was expected to face questions about reneging on her promise to publicly release the DOJ’s files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which ultimately prompted Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act forcing the release of millions of documents.
As Bondi walked into the hearing room Friday morning, a group of Epstein survivors shouted, “Tell the truth.” She did not answer questions from reporters.
“Before we start today, I want to reiterate what I have said many times regarding the Department’s handling during my tenure as Attorney General of the voluminous materials that are now commonly known as the Epstein Files,” Bondi told the panel according to her prepared remarks. “To the best of my knowledge, the Department produced everything required under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”
“There were redaction errors,” the former attorney general said. “But since day one of this process, this Department has been committed to accountability and transparency.”
Trump removed Bondi as attorney general in April after sources said he grew frustrated with her handling of the Epstein files and the unsuccessful prosecutions of his perceived political opponents.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump wrote on social media announcing her departure. “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”
Earlier this week, Axios reported that Trump had appointed Bondi to serve on an advisory panel on AI policy, tasked with coordinating cooperation between the government and tech leaders.
In an unusual arrangement, a DOJ spokesperson said that Bondi would be accompanied during Friday’s transcribed interview by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and other DOJ personnel, in order to “assist the Committee in understanding the Department’s role in implementing and complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act during her tenure.”
“Because former Attorney General Bondi oversaw the Department at the time the Act was enacted and carried out, DOJ’s presence is solely to ensure accurate representation of Department processes, facilitate any necessary clarifications, and support a complete factual record for the Committee,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement earlier this week.
The DOJ originally sought to have Bondi avoid appearing by arguing that the subpoena the committee issued “no longer obligates her to appear” since she left the role of attorney general. Bondi ultimately agreed to testify voluntarily after the top Democrat on the committee introduced a resolution to hold her in contempt for failing to appear.
Shortly after beginning her tenure as attorney general last year, Bondi faced immediate pressure from Trump’s MAGA followers and others to begin releasing the DOJ’s files from its investigations of Epstein and his associates. Speaking to Fox News in February 2025, Bondi said Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review” and said the release of the files was a “directive by President Trump.”
However, when the DOJ released the “first phase” of the Epstein files that month — inviting, with great fanfare, conservative influencers to receive the files — it was determined that nearly every document released was already public. By July, the Department of Justice and FBI said in a joint memo that no further documents would be released, citing victim privacy and the assertion that the documents warranted no further investigations — a decision that sparked backlash from much of the MAGA base.
“To that end, while we have labored to provide the public with maximum information regarding Epstein and ensured examination of any evidence in the government’s possession, it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” the memo said.
Bondi later defended her statement about Epstein’s client list by clarifying she was referring to the Epstein files generally along with other files released by the Trump administration, including documents related to JFK and MLK Jr. The DOJ/FBI memo also said that their review of the files “revealed no incriminating ‘client list'” and no evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals.
Despite the memo stating that no further investigation was warranted, Trump in November ordered Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to Bill Clinton and other prominent Democrats. At the time, Bondi said the DOJ would “pursue this with urgency and integrity” and assigned the matter to the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.
The Justice Department’s subsequent release of Epstein files following the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act prompted bipartisan criticism when the DOJ improperly redacted files — both exposing victim identities while concealing other information — and declined to release millions of additional files by claiming they were duplicative, privileged or contained sensitive victim information.
Bondi’s deputy and successor, now-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, acknowledged the release of sensitive victim information was “horrible” and “inexcusable.”
He said the DOJ is finished investigating Epstein.
“And so I think that to the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche said in April.
