The Friday Dispatch
Westside Cowboy, Emily White, Lauren Juzang, and more
Westside Cowboy are making good noise
Manchester four-piece Westside Cowboy weren’t supposed to go anywhere – and that’s exactly why they have. The band didn’t set out to be a “real band,” they simply enjoyed playing skiffle covers together in a bedroom, unburdened by ambition or polish. After a video of the band playing caught the eye of a listener eager to hear more, they sent out a demo tape that would be circulated wider than anticipated. Suddenly, Westside Cowboy’s affinity for rehearsing old folk tunes hurtled into something greater than an inside joke hidden within those four walls. Now, they’ve co-signed with taste-making independent label Nice Swan Records and Heist or Hit, caught the attention of BBC Introducing, and have been booked to play Glastonbury this summer after winning the 2025 Emerging Talent Competition — all before the release of their debut EP, This Better Be Something Great, which arrives this August.
The quartet — made up of Reuben Haycocks, Paddy Murphy, Aoife Anson O’Connell, and James Bradbury — are currently finishing up their final stretch of university before stepping out on to the scene full time. “It’s funny – over the past couple of months, as people have started paying a bit more attention, we’ve had a bit of friction in thinking, ‘This wasn’t the plan at all,’” Murphy says. “Though, we are super happy that it’s happening!” Haycocks goes on to clarify that the friction is not within the band as a unit, but rather, what their unexpected reception means for them. “It’s friction with our perceptions of what the band is and how it will continue, because we were never expecting it to be real,” he elaborates.
For the most part, tradition exists as the foundation for Westside Cowboy and its aesthetic. However, this is not to suggest that their sound is dated. The word that they use to describe it is “Britainicana.” It’s their own coinage to describe American roots music reinterpreted through a very English lens. Key reference points of the blended genre include The La’s, Johnny Roadhouse, Violent Femmes, Chappell Roan, and Back to the Future. It feels limitless. “We grew up smothered by American media – films, TV, all of it,” Murphy explains. “Like with everything, when you’re a kid, you seek to emulate it. But you live in rural north-west England. You’re not on the Sunset Strip, or Manhattan,” he continues.
In the end, Westside Cowboy are doing something deceptively rare: making music that’s timeless by refusing to chase time. Much like their namesake — the 19th century figure who rode out ahead of freight trains on horseback, waving a red flag to warn pedestrians — they’re charging forward.
Out today, the Haim sisters have dropped another effortless hit with I quit; Loyle Carner finds love and purpose on his sentimental new record, hopefully !; Yaya Bey affirms her place at the forefront of contemporary R&B with do it afraid; Hotline TNT float into the shoegaze ether on Raspberry Moon; and S. G. Goodman releases her aching third record, Planting By the Signs.
Emily White’s Desk Notes
After going viral in 2012 for predicting the rise of streaming while still an intern at NPR Music, Emily White has become one of music tech’s prominent product leaders, innovators, and commentators. She’s held roles at places like Billboard and Spotify, but these days, she works as a senior product lead and advisor helping startups shape the future of creator tools and fan engagement. She also writes a monthly essay on the music business, fandom, community and discovery on Substack. Fun fact: It’s her birthday today!
“I've been working from home in Greenpoint since 2020, so I've invested in a proper home desk setup to attempt to quell the chronic back pain that comes with having a computer job. I grew up in West Virginia and have lived in NYC since 2013. I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with my partner, Rie and our dog, Cali. I am an avid reality TV connoisseur (ask me for recommendations on what seasons of Survivor or Love Island to start with), karaoke enthusiast, amateur painter and shell artist. Playlists are my love language. Today (20 June) is my birthday, the 9 year anniversary of the day I joined Spotify (I started a job on my birthday like a nerd), and the 13 year anniversary of the week I went viral as an NPR intern!
1. A picture of my mom + an aura reading: My wonderful, adventurous and kind mother, Cathy Shank, died last year. I keep this photo of her in her 20's sitting outside of her apartment in Chicago on my desk because she told me this was one of the happiest times in her life. I keep an aura reading I had done a few weeks after her celebration of life next to it. It reminds me to be gentle with myself, that working while grieving is really hard, and that the only way out is through. My mom loved music and had a great singing voice. I made a playlist of songs she loved here.
2. Fidget toys + visual timer: These are essential tools for managing my ADHD at work. I physically can't listen on video calls unless I'm doing something with my hands, so I keep a lot of fidget toys at my desk like this fidget cube or favorite shells I have collected.
3. My iPods + Cassettes: These are by far my most commented on items during zoom calls. They are purely decorative devices at this point: a purple iPod Mini with a lyric from ‘Golden Years’ by David Bowie engraved on the back + an iPod Classic with a lyric from ‘The World at Large’ by Modest Mouse engraved. Both pivotal teenage Emily songs. The cassettes are from my friend's projects: June Gloom's subletter and Boon's There's No Saving This House.
4. 15 Minutes of Fame: I bought this at the Time Travel Mart in LA as a little reminder to myself that I already had my 15 minutes. (I went viral when I was a summer intern for NPR Music in 2012. It was excruciating, exciting and deeply weird) The package says: ‘Use caution, side effects can include but are not limited to: temporary blindness, errant depth perception, poor judgement, and mania.’
5. CMJ College Radio Awards poster: I was the general manager of American University's college radio station, WVAU, in 2013. The year after I graduated, the station won best student-run, internet-only station at CMJ. The station graciously mailed me a copy of the poster they won. College radio changed my life. I was an international relations major my first semester freshman year, then I joined the college radio station, changed my major to communications + audio technology the next semester and never looked back.
6. White Noise popup book: This was a gift from my friend Kate. My college radio show was called White Noise (get it?), and my username for everything has always been emwhitenoise (including my Substack!).”
The introduction…
A year after leaving university, 22-year-old songwriter Lauren Juzang is making waves in LA. In between tour stops with Jensen McRae and releasing a new EP, she stopped by and took a moment to introduce herself.
Hometown… Tarzana, California.
Describe your sound… Folk-alternative but a little silly.
How you started making music… I met my friends Otis and Jasper in high school who were in the jazz band and I thought they were SO cool!! I wanted to hang out so I offered to try writing some lyrics to some chords they were writing (I had never written before). We started a band and wrote all the time and played shows around LA, and it was the best foundation to build my writing and career on.
What makes you cringe… The nae nae (I luv it).
Your comfort meal… Din Tai Fung <3
What you’re reading right now… The Guest by Emma Cline.
Lauren Juzang’s EP EITHER WAY ??!? is out now
Something Old, Something New
Every week, we share recommendations from the Best Fit community — one from the past, another from the present. This week, features editor Alan Pedder shares his thoughts on Jill Sobule’s self-titled album (1995) and The Ordinary Life of a Magic Woman by ESKA (2025).
The Facebook algorithm has a lot to answer for – from being incredibly boring at one end of the scale to actively sinister at the other – but since the terrible loss of Jill Sobule in a house fire a month ago I’ve been served an almost constant stream of wonderful tributes to her outsized goodness and, though I hate to admit it to Zuck, I’m grateful. I haven’t been counting exactly but it feels like there were hundreds, from artists of all stripes, all saying, in essence, the exact same thing: Jill was a true original, funny, talented, wise, and compassionately tough – all things that one would already guess from listening to her music, but lovely to see restated over and over.
I’ve been really moved recently by watching footage from some of the first in a series of ‘Jillith Fair’ tribute shows, bringing together many of the musicians who adored her as well as comedian Margaret Cho and iconic Mills & Boon book cover model Fabio, who became a great friend of Jill’s after starring in the video for her ground-breaking 1995 hit, “I Kissed a Girl” (a full 13 years before that Katy Perry song, and much more genuine). Revisiting Jill’s self-titled second album from the same year feels a) quite alarming, in that it was a full three decades ago, and b) so damn pure.
Jill would go on to make richer and more fully realised records like 2000’s Pink Pearl and 2004’s Underdog Victorious, but there’s something undeniably heartwarming and unrepeatably ‘90s about songs like the winningly sarcastic “Supermodel” (originally from the soundtrack to Clueless) and “Margaret”, about a Catholic girl who grows up to be a porn star. Crucially, even when she was poking fun at people she was careful not to punch down – just one of the reasons that she was so well loved.
I wouldn’t necessarily think of Eska Mtungwazi, aka ESKA, as an underdog in the same way as Jill Sobule, but she certainly deserves much more attention. It’s seldom easy coming back to the spotlight after a lengthy absence – her self-titled debut was a Mercury Prize finalist back in 2015 – but the creativity and sheer dynamism of The Ordinary Life of a Magic Woman makes the long wait feel more than worthwhile.
Like Jill, ESKA is massively respected by her peers, and her list of collaborators over the past 10 years – in theatre, fashion, TV, and film, as well as music – includes Grace Jones, Shabaka Hutchings, Esperanza Spalding, Dave Okumu, and Kae Tempest, who once described ESKA to me as “a guiding light” and “one of the greatest artists I’ve ever been anywhere near in real life.”
Listening to The Ordinary Life…, with its surprising twists and turns and harmonic ingenuity, it’s easy to see why ESKA has the reputation she does. Drawing as deeply from indie rock and hard-edged pop as it does from hip hop, jazz, RnB, and soul, it’s a transcendent musical statement from a self-professed “voice painter,” minutely detailed but with just enough rawness to not feel overcooked. So much world-building is packed so much into just 40 minutes, with ESKA exploring the cosmic–domestic frontier of motherhood and the mystic, alongside defiant statements of self-possession. “This comet won’t come round again!” she exclaims at one point, and she may be right. I highly recommend grabbing onto its tail.
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new tracks we have on repeat. Leading the selection this week are cuts from Sex Mask, Naya Yeira, Westside Cowboy, casual smart, and coverstars deBasement.
“I had this very acute sense that I needed to be alone to really meet myself.”