Nate Amos Is an Acclaimed Songwriter. He’s Not Sure How That Happened, Either

With a new album out as This Is Lorelei, he’s making sense of his newfound position as someone who gets covered by MJ Lenderman and Cameron Winter

The first time Nate Amos refers to himself as a songwriter in conversation, he uses air quotes. “Now that I’m a songwriter, quote unquote….” Amos says offhand during a recent interview. Why does one of the most widely hailed songwriters of recent years — the guy whose originals have been covered by Waxahatchee, Cameron Winter, Hayley Williams, Jeff Tweedy, and MJ Lenderman in the last 18 months alone — feel that those quote marks are needed?

“I always thought of myself much more in terms of composition, production, and conceptual art,” says Amos, who records as This is Lorelei. “I kept bouncing off the bottom of the rabbit hole, and at a certain point it seemed like the most creatively aggressive thing I could do would just be to rubber-band all the way back to the most bare-bones type of songwriting I could muster. Leaning into the songwriter thing was almost like a conceptual exercise. So I guess the quotes are because I didn’t expect to make my in-character singer-songwriter album and have a bunch of people go, ‘singer-songwriter Nate Amos.’ That took a little while to get used to.”

Amos is referring to Box For Buddy, Box for Star, an album that, in the two years since its 2024 release, has become an unexpected success story. For years before that, Amos — who is also in the art-rock band Water From Your Eyes with vocalist Rachel Brown — treated This is Lorelei as a side hobby, his “safe, secret world,” as he puts it. It was where he dumped whatever off-kilter pop tunes he was working on, posting them online for a miniscule audience. Now, he’s trying to figure out what it means to turn that passion project into a fast-rising, for-real career.

The Singer In My Band, the straightforwardly upbeat roots record he released this month, is the first example of what that might look like. Amos describes the album, which is entirely devoid of the sampled backing tracks and digitally manipulated vocals that have heretofore defined many This is Lorelei projects, as “an exercise in self-exposure.”

“I feel like Lorelei is in a very volatile state right now, and I’m trying to find that balance between going with the flow and letting it be what it wants to be but also trying to think about it responsibly,” he says. “I don’t want to grow to resent something that was such a source of solace for me for so long.”

FOR ALL THE existential talk about This is Lorelei’s future, Amos doesn’t appear particularly worried during a recent interview with Rolling Stone. He discusses his brand-new album and the state of his two bands as he alternates between his vape and cigarettes. At his team’s suggestion, we’ve met at an ice cream place, where Amos downs a chocolate milkshake and waxes poetic about his recent discovery of fro-yo. (“Just loading up on the fucking gummy bears and shit, it’s so awesome,” he marvels.) Throughout the conversation, he sounds bemused if not slightly mystified by the seriousness with which his music is now taken by the outside world. Somehow, the chill guitarist who likes to take the stage in camo Crocs and whatever Slipknot T-shirt he happens to be wearing that day has become something like the Carole King of 2020s indie rock. When I float that exact comparison to Amos, he starts laughing.

“Something changed over the two years following Box coming out,” he says. “It’s just different now. I don’t know exactly when it happened.”

For years, Amos preferred being the guy in the band who wrote songs while someone else does the singing. That’s how it works in Water For Your Eyes, more or less, and he liked it just fine. His plan was to keep making music as a behind-the-scenes facilitator, to never end up being the frontperson. The title of his new album is, in part, an ironic commentary on the degree to which he’s failed at that goal.

The very first time Amos says he ever heard someone who wasn’t already in his band cover one of his songs was last year, when MJ Lenderman sang his Auto-Tuned Box for Buddy highlight “Dancing in the Club.” (Rolling Stone named Lenderman’s version the second-best song of 2025.)

Amos was actually there for the session when Lenderman recorded the song in North Carolina. “I think I had just hit a bong,” he recalls. “I was like on the couch trying not to laugh while he was recording it. It was trippy. I remember sitting there and being like, ‘This is weird.’”

Lenderman might have been the first high-profile artist to cover a This is Lorelei tune, but others soon followed. By the time Amos began recording The Singer in My Band, he’d become aware of this trend to the degree that it shaped how he wanted to present his new material. Whereas in the past, Amos was inclined to disguise his voice “to make it sound less like me” — pitching his vocals up on the original “Dancing in the Club,” for example — this time he challenged himself to present his songs with minimal adornment.

As for “Dancing in the Club,” Amos is amused that that song, in particular, is the one that kicked off the phenomenon of other artists translating his music for a wider audience. “The bit for that song was that I was going to try to make a song that a pop star could cover,” he says. “I remember laughing as I was writing it, because I was like, ‘This is the cheesiest piece of bullshit ever,’ which it kind of is. But I also think it’s a better piece of work than I gave it credit for at the time.”

This time, Amos challenged himself to drop the bit. “No one likes their own voice, so if I’m making something that’s for me, then I’m going to try to make me not sound like myself,” he adds. “I tried to get over that for this album.”

Amos’ process for writing albums becomes much easier once he gets the first two songs down. “If I can get the chemical reaction between those two things, then the rest of the album will write itself,” he says. For his new record, those first two songs were “Oh No Now My,” a stormy guitar-rocker full of remorse and caution, and “Billy Came Back,” a fast-paced ode to a karaoke legend.

Elsewhere on this album, as on “Eat My Heart Out in the Morning Light” and the title track, he channels roots-rock with the tempo of the traditional American music that Amos grew up surrounded by — his father is bluegrass musician Bob Amos — while songs like “Don’t You Cry in Lonesomeness” features Amos strumming electric guitar by himself over lyrics that could’ve come from Hank Williams.

The newly pronounced country-folk arrangements on the album have already resulted in one headline calling Amos an “alt-country star,” a label that he mostly shrugs off. “‘Alt-Country Star Nate Amos’ makes it sound like I have a lot more money than I have,” he quips.

For all the slacker bedhead energy that Amos can exude, hearing him discuss the tightrope walk of balancing two serious musical projects at once makes it clear that his casual affect conceals an enormous amount of hard work and commitment to his craft. He recorded The Singer in My Band on a tight deadline last year, racing to get it done before kicking off the promotional cycle for Water From Your Eyes’ acclaimed album It’s a Beautiful Place. He ended up finishing the Lorelei album in a week.

Although he remains fully committed long-term to both projects, Amos is dedicating himself to This is Lorelei for the time being. “I feel like we got [Water From Your Eyes] to a point where we can afford the luxury of taking a break for a little while and coming back to it,” he says. “I feel like I really have to lock in and focus on securing Lorelei. Things are happening so fast with it right now that I want to give that my full attention so I don’t look away and it turns into something I don’t want it to turn into.”

What might that be? He’s not even sure. But he knows that he misses the luxury, as he puts it, of “making all the bad songs, too.” When a Lorelei song simply isn’t working now, he just abandons it. He no longer feels like he has the time to see where those bad songs lead him. Mostly, he misses the days of holing up in his apartment to record for days on end, then uploading the results to Bandcamp with zero expectations.

“I’ll be chasing that level of creative freedom for the rest of my life,” he says. “It’s funny, because when I was doing that, I was busting my ass to try and escape it, and it ended up working…. I do really miss it. Now I’m trying to find whole new ways to write, which is the whole point.”

But Amos isn’t hiding from the increased expectations that now follow This is Lorelei. And regardless of how far this wave takes him, he wants to ensure he’s able to retain the spirit of what made the project so precious to him in the first place. “It’s a little bit of a freaky thing to both witness and participate in the commodification of something that’s so intensely personal,” he says. “The nightmare scenario would be no longer caring about it. If I got to the point where people were asking me my preference between two different things that I should care about and I got to the point where I was just like, ‘I don’t give a fuck. I’m too tired…’ If It hit that point, the moment I clocked it, I would become incredibly depressed.”

How did it all happen? How did the behind-the-scenes tinkerer become the singer in his band? How did the weirdo pop-art side project become the go-to vessel for the Great Indie Songwriter?

“I was never trying to write songs for other people to sing, unless it was within the context of my own project,” Amos says at one point. Then he smiles to himself. “That goes back to the whole ‘songwriter’ in air quotes thing. Like, god, who would’ve fucking thought? Certainly not me.”

Oasis

The finalists have been announced for the 2026 edition of the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards this month.

The awards, which have been running since 2022, received over 24,500 submissions from 40 different countries in 2026, 25 percent more than last year.

It has already been revealed Japanese photographer Masayoshi Sukita will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, while the judging panel for 2026 will include RAYE and Nile Rodgers.

Included in the list of finalists for this month’s awards (held at Abbey Road on Sept. 24) are photos of Oasis, Charli XCX, Florence + the Machine and more. Rolling Stone‘s own Sacha Lecca is nominated in the Judges Choice category for his shots of FKA twigs during her Ladyland Festival performance. Lecca also presides as the Chief Shortlister and Global Ambassador of the contest.

See the full list of nominees below.

Frances Carter – Billie MartenJamie-Lee Culver – AynjelWanda Martin – Billy IdolDaniel Rojas – The OGM – Ho99o9Manuel Vazquez – Warren Ellis

Viktória Erdős – Palaye RoyaleDanny North – Download Festival, Humans of DownloadGiulia Spadafora – Glastonbury Festival – AudienceIan Zandi – The Killing FloorsJake Zaoutis – Hey, Nothing

Harriet T K Bols – OasisJenn Devereaux – Kendrick LamarJoshua Halling – OasisJessie Morgan – Lambrini GirlsJack Oliver – Charli XCX

Frances Carter – Gin WigmoreBryce Glenn – SombrNatalia Peralta – Nicholas y los fumadoresDara Petrova – Techno rave LaboratoriumIsaac Wheatley – Mikael

Olly Bromidge – Matt MolotovSophie Buckley – Black HoneyLewis Evans – GeeseCaity Krone – Kevin Parker / Tame ImpalaGabrielle Ravet – My Chemical Romance fans

AF Cortes – Audience at Kartel ShowAndrea Gonar – Ruido en casaGeoffrey Nicholson – SpunkSuzanne Phoenix – Private Function at Gold StreetJames Streiker – Rosanna

Charlie Barclay Harris – Fontaines D.C.Rhys Bennett – BattlesnakeLewis Evans – OasisTom Pallant – YungbludRico Suhr – Dr.VENUS

Joe Hughes – Sonic YouthWayne Large – Members of various punk bandsKeith Marlowe – The Black HalosGerard McNamara – Bauhaus, Peter MurphyJamie Wdziekonski – Amyl and the Sniffers

Matt Auger – SubstandardsCarlos Avendano – Lisa AlvaradoScarlett Carlos Clarke – Self EsteemAutumn de Wilde – Florence + The MachineAngus Jenner – OasisSacha Lecca – FKA twigsTom Pallant – Yungblud

Roberta Bayley

Head judge Rankin commented: “2026 feels like the strongest year yet for the Abbey Road Music Photography Awards. The quality of the work entered was genuinely exceptional – not just technically brilliant, but full of energy, emotion and a real point of view. Judging was incredibly tough. Getting down to just five finalists in each category meant leaving out so many images that deserved to be recognized, which says everything about the standard this year. Music photography is in a really exciting place right now, and these awards are a brilliant snapshot of that.”

Abbey Road Managing Director Sally Davies added: “It’s been wonderful to see how warmly the music photography community has embraced the MPAs, and to watch that community grow year after year. The extraordinary response reminds us just how much brilliant talent there is behind the lens, and how important it is to create opportunities for that work to be seen and celebrated. From the awards themselves, to our first Music Photography Festival in New York, we’re incredibly proud to be bringing people together around this unique art form and to see the MPAs becoming a genuinely global celebration of music photography.”

This story was originally published by “Rolling Stone UK.”

Lisa LeBlanc is heading back to the road, but this time she’s bringing a musical map with her.

The Acadian singer-songwriter has announced Patchwork, her sixth album, arriving January 29, 2027, alongside a new single, “A Fleeting Thought Becomes Another Fleeting Thought.” The track opens the forthcoming record and offers an early glimpse at a project shaped by the memories of the places LeBlanc has called temporary homes.

The album takes its title from LeBlanc’s grandmother, who has spent more than five decades making quilts from pieces of fabric that were never originally intended to belong together, a fitting metaphor for a record that pulls from several corners of LeBlanc’s musical world.

Patchwork grew in part from a two-month van trip between Moncton, New Brunswick and Lafayette, Louisiana. Along the way, LeBlanc drew inspiration from Cajun and Acadian traditions, as well as the folk and rock sounds of the 1960s and ’70s. The album also carries traces of time she spent in Corsica and Ireland.

The new record follows 2022’s Chiac Disco, the genre-bending album that earned LeBlanc two Félix awards, an ECMA win, a Juno nomination and a spot on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist. LeBlanc will take Patchwork on the road beginning in February 2027, with dates across Québec, Ontario and New Brunswick, followed by shows in Manchester, London and Paris. Canadian dates include Toronto, Moncton, Hamilton and Québec City. LeBlanc will also perform November 19 at Montréal’s Théâtre Plaza, as part of an official M for Montréal showcase.

Matt Shultz of Cage the Elephant performs onstage at the iHeartRadio ALTer EGO 2026 held at the Kia Forum on January 17, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.

Cage the Elephant are heading to Munich, Germany, on Nov. 15 to headline the halftime show at the 2026 NFL Munich Game, where the New England Patriots take on the Detroit Lions.

“We have played a lot of shows in Germany over the years and the crowds here have always given us everything they have,” Cage the Elephant’s Matt Shultz says in a statement. “Playing a halftime show is a completely different animal — you get one shot in front of a stadium and a global audience, and you have to make every second count. We are going to bring the same energy we bring to our own shows and we cannot wait.”

Cage the Elephant’s halftime show in Berlin is part of a series of halftime performances by major acts at NFL games in overseas markets. The Jonas Brothers are playing at the NFL Melbourne Game in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 10, and Pedro Sampaio and Ricky Martin will be performing at the NFL Rio Game on Sept. 27 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“Munich has given us some of the most memorable atmospheres of any international game we have staged, and we wanted a halftime act that could meet a crowd like that head on,” Tim Tubito, senior director of global game presentation, music and entertainment at the NFL, says in a statement. “Cage the Elephant are one of the great live rock bands working today. Germany has a deep rock tradition and a football crowd that sings from start to finish, and we look forward to collaborating with the band on a performance that captures the energy that matches the moment.”

It’s been a relatively quiet year for Cage the Elephant where their live activity has been limited to a handful of U.S. festival appearances (last year, they spent the summer opening the U.S. dates of Oasis’s reunion tour). But they dropped their new single “Beaches in Tennessee” in July, and are working on the follow-up to their 2024 LP Neon Pill. They return to the road in February for a run of shows all across Europe.

Every Time I Die's Andy Williams

Andy Williams, a professional wrestler who was formerly the founding guitarist of metalcore band Every Time I Die, has died at the age of 48.

According to reports, Williams — who wrestled under the name “The Butcher” — collapsed at the end of his tag team match Saturday at an Enjoy Wrestling event in Millvale, Pennsylvania. “Our doctors on staff tended to him immediately, administering CPR until the ambulance arrived,” Enjoy Wrestling wrote.

Williams ultimately died Saturday night, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office told TMZ. No cause of death was immediately known.

Before he was “The Butcher,” Williams served as founding rhythm guitarist of the Buffalo metalcore band Every Time I Die, serving in that role from their formation in 1998 to their breakup in 2022. During his tenure in ETID, Williams played on all nine of the band’s studio albums, concluding with 2021’s Radical.

While with Every Time I Die, Williams began training and then moonlighting as a wrestler in the 2010s, first working the independent circuits before rising to the level of All Elite Wrestling, where he made his debut as “The Butcher” in 2019.

“All Elite Wrestling is saddened to learn of the passing of Andy Williams, aka The Butcher,” AEW wrote in a statement Sunday. “A trailblazing musician with ETID and Atomic Rule, Williams made a successful transition into the world of professional wrestling and was incredibly respected by his peers both in and out of the ring. Our condolences go out to Williams’ family, friends and fans.”

See on Instagram

Williams — who frequently wrestled alongside tag team partner Jesse “The Blade” Guilmette, who was also his partner Saturday at what was Williams’ final match — spent seven years with AEW and its sister circuit Ring of Honor, a run that concluded in June 2026.

Following Every Time I Die’s disbandment, Williams joined the group Atomic Rule, which he worked on outside wrestling; in a social media post just hours before his death, Williams told Atomic Rule fans that the band was hard at work on new music.

d4vd looks on during his arraignment for the murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez on April 20, 2026 in Los Angeles, California

Celeste Rivas Hernandez‘s parents have lobbied for the death penalty if D4vd is found guilty of the murder of their daughter, who would have turned 16 on Monday.

In a rare public statement since criminal proceedings against the singer began, the Rivas Hernandez family asked Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to pursue the death penalty against D4vd as opposed to a life sentence if convicted.

“If the death penalty were activated, it would be perfect for this kind of human being, devoid of feelings and emptiness inside, and without conscience, who only caused pain to our daughter, our family, and the world that supports our precious daughter,” the family said in a statement to the California Post. “But that’s not in our hands, but rather in God’s, and the California justice system.”

Any decision to pursue the death penalty has been delayed in part because the singer born David Burke decided to drop his legal team last week and instead employ a public defender; Hochman told the press at the time he was awaiting a mitigation packet from the public defender arguing why Burke shouldn’t face the death penalty.

While California hasn’t executed anyone since 2006, and Governor Gavin Newsom announced a reprieve on all executions in 2019, Hochman opened the possibility of once again handing out capital punishment in extreme murder trials.

“Effective immediately, the prior administration’s extreme and categorical policy forbidding prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in any case is rescinded,” Hochman said in a statement. “In its place, the new murder with special circumstances policy will consider pursuing the death penalty only after an extensive and comprehensive review and only in exceedingly rare cases.”

At his rearraignment last week, Burke pleaded not guilty on charges he sexually abused 14-year-old Rivas Hernandez before killing and dismembering her and concealing her remains in the front trunk of his Tesla.