Daily Edit | Jan 20

Westside Cowboy are the kind of band whose “buzz” still feels like an accident they keep tripping over: four Manchester music-school friends, barely out of uni, playing as if the point is to stay in motion long enough that nobody can sand them into a product. They call what they do “Britainicana”—not quite a genre so much as a self-defense mechanism, a way of admitting they’re raised on American mythologies while still stuck (fondly, mordantly) in Northern England. 

Sonically, that mindset comes through as American roots shapes shoved through a British DIY garage-rock body: folk harmony and country phrasing jostling up against slacker guitars and punk velocity, like someone trying to sing a lullaby while sprinting. And the sprint has been rewarded, if not exactly explained: they’ve been together since 2023, put out their debut EP This Better Be Something Great in August, won Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent competition, and are now barreling into the next phase—So Much Country ’Til We Get There arriving January 16, with a UK/Ireland run and a European opening slot for Geese already queued up behind it. -PASTE

1 / 20 / 2026

Headlines

• The next Sphere is coming to Washington DC [THR]
  

• Is this man the future of music – or its executioner? AI evangelist Mikey Shulman says he’s making pop, not slop [The Guardian]
  

• Threads edges out X in daily mobile users, new data shows [TechCrunch]
  

• BRIT Awards 2026 to host first ever BRITs Fringe programme in Manchester [DIY]
  

• Bruno Mars performs in Roblox’s ‘Steal A Brainrot’; more than 12.7 million gamers watched the in-game performance [NME]
  

• “Young people will always create”: why physical space matters to the Museum of Youth Culture [CRACK]
  

• How The Strokes saved rock’n’roll from its post-millennial doldrums… with a demo [Louder]

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