Uber-prolific Australian band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has released nearly 30 albums since its 2012 debut — in other words, the band isn’t known for the drawn-out studio perfectionism that often stymies musicians.

But with Alien Metal, its 28th studio album — and first in 14 months, an eternity in the Gizzverse – King Gizzard did something out of character: It took its time.

And with good reason. Out today (Aug. 14), Alien Metal is arguably the biggest swing in a catalog full of them, as the sextet best known for wild, garage-meets-psych-rock ditched its guitars in favor of a hulking Eurorack, a type of modular synthesizer developed in the ’90s that all of its members could play simultaneously. The band began trotting the rig out for “rave shows” in late 2024, and affectionately named it Nathan; after a quiet touring year, it returns to the road, presumably with Nathan in tow, for its second annual Field of Vision camping festival outside of Denver this weekend, and four New York City shows later this month.

Alien Metal isn’t completely without precedent in King Gizzard’s catalog — the band has been incorporating electronic sounds into its music for the last several years, including on the 2023 electropop album The Silver Cord — but with the album’s pummeling, high-BPM tracks, King Gizzard ventures further onto the dance floor than it ever has.

According to the band’s Stu Mackenzie, as King Gizzard’s members began to conceive the album, they thought, “We’ve already done a few [electronic] things which were interesting to us. Let’s lean into the tropes a little bit more with this one — but also, let’s see if we can create something that feels like we made it, and that feels like it has its own DNA.”

That forced King Gizzard to operate well beyond its comfort zone, and helps to explain the patience making the album required. “We definitely scrapped more material for this record than we ever have, which was not something we expected to do,” Mackenzie, 35, says over Zoom from his native Melbourne. “It needed to congeal — it needed to set.”

Still, the band held onto its aggressively DIY ethos for Alien Metal, with its members modding out the Eurorack themselves and recording their experiments in their own Melbourne warehouse studio space, with “rats running along the floor and s–t.” As Mackenzie puts it, “We’ve just been doing this s–t ourselves, man. This is some f–king truly mad scientist, making explosions in the bathtub-type stuff.”

But while King Gizzard recorded the album over “a good couple years,” true to form, the restlessly creative band worked on several other projects concurrently. “Whole records were formulated and thought of and expanded on and recorded — and, you know, completely abandoned,” he reveals. “Maybe they’ll turn into something eventually.”

Plus, Alien Metal might not be as dissimilar from King Gizzard’s other output, anyway. “There are certain parallels with a lot of the heavy metal stuff we’ve done to techno, and to some of the more krautrock-ish, hypnotic, longer stuff that we’ve done,” Mackenzie says. “Maybe there is a thread with King Gizz and dance music that isn’t so far away.”

You and King Gizzard have been dabbling with dance music in recent years, from The Silver Cord to your “rave tours” with Nathan the Eurorack, to Mango Sticky Rice, the batch of modular ambient recordings you made on your own and released late last year. How did all these strands coalesce and inform Alien Metal?

King Gizz has been experimenting with electronic music in certain capacities for quite a long time, whether that was what we were doing with Silver Cord or whether it was what we were doing in a different way with 2021’s Butterfly 3000 [and its companion set of remixes Butterfly 3001], or with the rave tours, or [2022’s] Made in Timeland. Certain things that we’ve done have felt, to varying degrees, [like] “rock band making electronic music,” which is not like something that I think is even bad — it’s actually something that I think is quite interesting. But it is not what we were trying to do with this record. And it meant that this record needed more development than we thought it would.

It’s quite challenging to write songs, in the traditional sense, with this equipment, and I don’t think it’s what it’s good at or built for, but that therefore became interesting [to us]. Trying to figure out how to do six-person improvisational electronic music with [this] hardware — all the Eurorack stuff with f–king patch cables on the outside, just nightmare tech stuff — is all wrapped into the story as much as any of the [band’s prior] recording projects are.

That context is what we arrived at Alien Metal with. It’s like, “What are we doing here with this record?” That’s something that we are always trying to find when making a record: What’s its sort of personality, you know? That’s why naming a record can be so powerful early on, because you stop calling it “it” and you start calling it Alien Metal. It takes on its personality, and you start to follow its footsteps. You start to follow its rhythm.

So you named it before you were finished with it?

We don’t always [do that], but we usually do. It actually helps, at least me, with finishing things, because you have a North Star. You have a purpose, and it makes the decision-making a little easier.

When it comes to writing, what limitations did this equipment present, compared to your typical instrumentation — and how did those limitations open up new creative possibilities?

With the hardware stuff and the Eurorack stuff, it’s not so much about limitations as it’s endless. It’s actually insane how many sounds you can get out of these boxes. It’s f–king amazing, and if you’re creative about the patch you’re making, you can do truly wild s–t. That is a big challenge in the sense of what kind of sounds you want to work with. We had to spend time figuring out what we were wanting to do that was exciting to us, and that involved a lot of learning. Like, this s–t is some mad scientist s–t. But it’s cool. I feel like I understand music in a different way — and I certainly understand voltage in a different way. And math, there’s a lot of math in this stuff too, and some science.

The other thing that’s quite interesting about it is this format, the Eurorack, it’s like the patch cables on the outside, you build modules and you piece together a synth or voices or whatever — but everyone makes something different, and I can understand my patch, but I can’t necessarily rationalize why any of the other guys made the patch that they did. It’s this window into someone’s creative process. It’s actually a super visual window, with all the cables hanging out on the outside. I’ve fallen in love with that as just an expression in itself.

King Gizzard is still doing rock shows. What has the cross-pollination been like? How, if at all, has this impacted how you view your guitar-based music?

It’s made me have a different kind of appreciation for the guitar, and also acoustic or unsynthesized, organic instruments. With this patch-from-scratch mentality of Eurorack stuff, you have to build everything from the ground up. To make something resemble even a bassline is a lot of patching, and then it might actually sound quite boring, and then you hear somebody play a bass guitar through an amp, and you’re like, “Man, that sounds awesome!” You just pluck an acoustic guitar string and listen to the decay and the way it fills the room…

I think about sound now in a way that I didn’t think about sound [before]. I thought about music, and notes and melody and harmony and stuff. But it forces you to think about things at a much more rudimentary level, because ultimately all this thing is doing is sending voltages to things. You just have to think about it on a more atomic level, a more cellular level, a more granular level.

What are the biggest dance touchstones for you and the rest of the band?

If you asked [bandmate] Joey [Walker] this question, he would like be so excited, and he would want to tell you about everything that had a big impact on his life. I would love to give you such a deep answer, but the honest truth is, for me, my entry point is as much the equipment as anything. I’ve just become obsessed with this format of synthesizer and thinking about sound in this new way — and that’s what I listen to. I get home, and when my kids go to bed, I turn on my synth, and I’m just trying to understand why when I plug the jack into this socket, it does this, and why when I plug the jack into the socket next to it, it does that.

One aspect that hasn’t changed here compared to some of your previous albums is the world-building: There’s references to an “astral blacksmith” and a “mortician,” and one song’s lyrics declare, “We don’t wish death — but we will kill for the steel.” What can you tell me about the lore of Alien Metal?

I would love to get into this s–t. But do you know what? I’ve found that recently, over the last couple of years, I say things I don’t even agree with. I would hope that people can experience this album at face value — or dig in. That’s my hope here. The lyrics don’t have to be the centerpoint, either.

This is the third straight year with only one new King Gizzard album, compared to some years in the past where you’ve released anywhere from two to five projects. Last year’s Phantom Island was an ambitious orchestral project, with a corresponding orchestral tour. Are you settling into a less frequent release schedule — and what’s the next frontier you want to conquer?

We’ve got two sort of ideas. Not even ideas, but we have two records that are like three-quarters finished at the moment, which is a bit silly and does happen sometimes. We definitely have slowed down in finishing records. If you had have asked me this when I was younger, like in my mid-twenties, I probably would have had a bit more fire; I was more desperately ambitious, maybe. I’m happy to let things take their needed amount of time, at the moment. That might be one record a year right now; maybe there’ll be a couple in quick succession coming up. I don’t know. There was a stretch, toward the start of King Gizz records, where we were doing two a year. We weren’t thinking about it super hard, but if one wasn’t done, we’d just f–king make one. As you get older, doing stuff like that is harder.

Your touring schedule is more limited this year compared to previous years, but you’re celebrating the release of Alien Metal with your second annual Field of Vision festival outside of Denver, and you’re heading to New York City later this month for a run of four shows. What can you share about those gigs, and what’s next for the band’s touring?

There was something about the last Field of Vision that was just so special on so many levels. It felt magical, it felt unreal, in a lot of ways. So yeah, excited to get back there. Next year, we are also returning to more of a normal, busy touring schedule. But this year we have been quiet on the touring level — besides a bit of COVID period there, it’s got to be the quietest that we’ve ever been. We’ve been busy with life, and also just making music. We’ve been on home soil a lot lately, which is cool. Family, life — the ship of life doesn’t stop sailing.

Life’s a party when you’re living in paradise. That’s the bassline according to Peking Duk, the duo of Adam Hyde and Reuben Styles, which has been dropping electronic bangers for more than decade and which, on Friday (Aug. 14), blew open the gates to Paradise, their debut album.

Good things and long waits, well, they’re fused at the hip. Paradise arrives with an array of guest talent, from Killer Mike, Rico Nasty, Phantogram, to Aussie singer and songwriter Matt Corby, and is three years in the making.

At the top of the 14-song collection, the familiar voice of Jack Thompson, the legendary actor and activist who led a slew of classic films in the ‘70s and ‘80s and presented to the world one of the enduring images of the hard-partying, and equally progressive, Australian bloke.

The lads got the surprise of their young lives when, in their teens, met Thompson in Hyde’s mother’s kitchen. “My mom’s got some friends in strange places. And Jack Thompson seems to be one of them,” he quips.

Another familiar sound, the Roland TB-303, the match that lit the ‘90s rave scene, drops in on the track, appropriately titled “Jack Thompson,” and the adventure in Paradise begins.

The production pair can’t be blamed for being idle. Or slack on output. Hyde recently completed the latest cycle as his alter-ego, the party-animal pop star Keli Holiday, a project that yielded an ARIA Award (best video for “Dancing2”), a domestic top 3 album for Capital Fiction (his second solo effort), and tour dates across North America, the United Kingdom and Europe. Styles has been on the road, too, with Y.O.G.A. (You’re Only Great Always), his own solo project that drips in outlaw country spirit and after-hours rave energy.

“Coming back to Peking Duk,” says Hyde in a late-evening chat with Billboard at a pub in Paddington, central Sydney, “it makes us feel like, especially once we started working on the album, that we’re just f—ing kids again. We don’t know what we’re doing. There’s no expectation or pressure.”

The two mates got to work on Paradise as life began returning to a new-normal post-pandemic. The duo had parted ways after a lengthy relationship with Sony Music and struck a new deal with Virgin Music, a label-partnership type arrangement that leaves creative control in Peking Duk’s hands. “We just did a bit of a reset,” says Styles. “We’ve been doing singles for 16 years now, we’ve never done an album. And we started to cook from absolutely nowhere. It felt like fun.”

“Fun” could be Hyde and Styles’ middle names. In August 2024, the lads were front and center of a buzzy cultural moment when they headlined a carpark rave at a Bunnings outlet in Melbourne, the Australian home improvements chain. Two years earlier, they teamed with KFC for a one-off menu item. It was called the Peking Cluck Burger.

The lads met at a skate park in their hometown, Canberra, a town that has produced some of the Australia’s hottest acts of late, including Genesis Owusu and Teen Jesus And The Jean Teasers.

“All of our core memories were formed in our town,” Hyde reflects. “Growing up in Canberra, it really was paradise. It’s awesome living for every single f—ing moment.”

Peking Duk completed their first aerial move with the 2014 single “High” featuring Nicole Millar, which crashed the top 10 on the ARIA Chart (peaking at No. 5), bagged an ARIA for best dance release and came in at No. 2 on triple j’s Hottest 100 countdown. They partnered with SAFIA on followup “Take Me Over,” and with Styalz and Swedish electro-pop act Elliphant for 2016’s “Stranger,” which collected song of the year at the ARIAs.

With this new project, Hyde and Styles went with a new approach in the studio. These two seasoned professionals competed. “It was like a video game. Like Mario Kart. Who’s gonna f—ng win?,” recounts Hyde. “Leaning into each other’s strengths on this record has been the growth of us as humans.”

Styles describes the creative process as like working a ball of putty, and “making this weird little f—ing gremlin. It was like, you f—ing make his nose. I’ll make the eyes, and then let’s jam on the hat.”

That teamwork results in a joyful collection. A party, even, with touches of Avalanches, soul and small-hour vibes.

Hyde has the last word. “We knew all that we really cared about was just making a f—ing sick album,” he says. “There were a couple of exciting distractions along the way. But nothing was more exciting than just being idiots in the studio, just fumbling around with 303s and just getting lost in the music.”

Stream Paradise below.

Tame Impala and Steve Lacy both enjoy chart splashes in Australia this week, thanks to everyone’s favorite webslinger, Spider-Man.

Kevin Parker’s Tame Impala bags a new peak on the ARIA Singles Chart with “Loser” (via Columbia/Sony), re-entering at No. 11, well up on its No. 95 best from 2025.

“Loser,” the first song lifted from Tame Impala’s fifth album, Deadbeat, gets a superheroic lift from its appearance in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Meanwhile, Deadbeat track “Dracula” dips 16-18 on the latest chart, published Friday, Aug. 14.

Thanks to the latest adventures of Peter Parker, Steve Lacy’s third album, Oh Yeah? (Sony Music) rises 34-17, and its title track opens at No. 25 on the ARIA Singles Chart, for the top new release. “Oh Yeah” is also synced to the new Spidey film, which this week becomes the fastest to hit $700 million at the U.S. box office. Internationally, Spider-Man: Brand New Day adds $1.108 billion to leapfrog Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.106 billion) as Sony Pictures’ biggest film ever overseas, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

At the summit of the latest ARIA Singles Chart is Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” (Sony), which enters a 10^th week at No 1. Another U.S. country artist is making her presence felt on the singles frame, Stella Lefty, whose “Boston” (Atlantic/Warner) enters the top 10 for the very first time, rallying 11-8.

Over on the ARIA Albums Chart, Olivia Rodrigo’s You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love (Geffen/Universal) reclaims top spot for a fifth non-consecutive week.

The top debutant is Stray Kids with their EP This & That (Republic/Inertia), new at No. 3. The K-pop act, which features Australian duo Felix and Bangchan, now boast nine appearances in the top 20, including three No. 2s with 5-Star (in 2023), Rock-Star (2023) and Ate (2024).

California artist Role Model (real name: Tucker Pillsbury) bags a career best appearance on the ARIA Chart with Chuck Timely & The Hourglass (Interscope/Universal), his third release. It’s new at No. 4.

Close behind, homegrown country artist Casey Barnes achieves his own career-best and first top 10 spot with MADE FOR THIS (CMI). It’s new at No. 6 on the all-genres chart.

Also impacting the tally for the first time are releases from German electronic-rock band Electric Callboy (Tanzneid at No. 11 via Century Media/Sony), Melbourne duo Bachelor Girl (No. 34 with a reimagined version Waiting For The Day via Xelon), Cold Chisel songwriter Don Walker (Love Songs at No. 41 via MGM), and Western Australia-born indie singer Rowena Wise (Bad Things Feel Good at No. 44 via Remote Control).

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to New Music Friday’s most essential releases each week — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond. 

Last week, we featured Karol G, Role Model, FLO, Stray Kids and more.

This week, three is the magic number: indie-rocker Phoebe Bridgers releases her highly-anticipated third album, Lost Weekend; KATSEYE drops its third EP; and Ayra Starr shares her third album as well… plus much more. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Phoebe Bridgers, Lost Weekend

After Phoebe Bridgers performed a semi-impromptu, highly in-demand, phone-free show at New York’s Madison Square Garden in early June, it was clear something was coming. And just a few weeks later, that hunch was confirmed when the indie-rockstar announced her first solo album in six years, Lost Weekend. Across its 16 tracks, “the album fluctuates between grief and elation, agitation and contentment, as Bridgers sings like someone who has loved and lost — and still has something to lose,” writes Billboard‘s Christine Werthman for the album’s tracks ranked. Surely, it’s the perfect album to get lost in this weekend. — LYNDSEY HAVENS

KATSEYE, WILD

Despite this girl group’s ongoing lineup changes (with Manon and Sophia both on mental health breaks), one thing is certain: KATSEYE brings the energy. Its third EP, WILD (out on HYBE x Geffen Records) is packed with high-impact, hard-hitting tracks like single “Pinky Up” and focus track “Hootie Frutti.” Meanwhile, sassier songs like single “Animal” and “That Way” slow it down — but just a bit. As a release for the EP states, “the project captures the feeling of a wild ride fueled by growth and transformation” and marks the start of a new “electrifying new era” for the now foursome. — L.H.

Troye Sivan, “She’s the Best”

Troye Sivan is back — and not only with a new single. The pop singer’s low-toned “She’s the Best” — about all the qualities, expected and less so, of a particular person that wows him — serves as the lead single and title track of his fourth album, out Oct. 9 on Interscope. “She’s the Best is a painting that captures my life in all of its moods and colours,” Sivan said in a statement. “It explores the high-octane highs of the last few years, and the solitude and longing that sat underneath. It’s chaotic, layered, organic, troubled and alive. It feels like the truest and most creative version of myself I’ve ever shared. At some point along the way I realised: the only constant in my life keeping me somewhat sane has not been the work, or the men, but the feminine. Thank god for them.” — L.H.

Ayra Starr, STARRGIRL 

Nigerian Afropop sensation Ayra Starr is back with STARRGIRL, her third studio album and first full-length effort since 2024’s The Year I Turned 21. The new 16-track set — which includes the Grammy-nominated, Wizkid-assisted “Gimme Dat” — expands the 24-year-old’s sonic foundation with more pronounced notes of dance and R&B. Effortlessly fostering synergy with Leon Thomas, kwn and ZAYN (as well as Danny Ocean on a Latin remix of fan-favorite “Hot Body”), Ayra Starr spends her latest LP proving she can dominate in any lane her heart desires. — KYLE DENIS

Jorja Smith, “I Lied, You Lied”

Ahead of her third album releasing next week, English singer-songwriter Jorja Smith is sharing one more single to preview the set. “I Lied, You Lied,” is a heart-racing track in both its uneven production and the story she tells that essentially details a race to see whose lie will come to the surface first. Yet, only a voice as smooth and serene as Jorja’s can manage to sound totally unbothered through it all. — L.H.

Johnny Young, the ARIA Hall of Fame-inducted singer, songwriter and bandleader who ushered in generations of Australian artists through his long-running TV series, Young Talent Time, has died following a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 79.

Born Johnny de Jong in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Young migrated with his family when he was a youngster, setting up home in Perth, Western Australia. He began his career in music as a disc jockey, then struck gold as a teen idol, and as a bandleader with The Strangers. Young had a national smash with the double A-sided single featuring “Step Back” and “Cara Lyn.”

He was a natural in front of the cameras, and it was through the medium of TV that Young would become a household name, initially as host of the Go Show, and later with his own primetime show Young Talent Time.

A year-long stint in London during the swinging ‘60s didn’t pan out for Young. On his return to Australia, he pivoted into songwriting, penning “The Real Thing” for Russell Morris, and contributing works for The Seekers, Herman’s Hermits and others.

At the turn of a new decade, Young launched a weekly TV format that would reach into the lives of millions of Australians – and change the lives of many youngsters.

Young Talent Time first aired April 24, 1971, and would become one of the country’s longest running TV programs, airing for 18 seasons until 1988, with a reboot in 2012. A total of 819 episodes beamed out. A reunion show was taped in 2023 to celebrate its 52^nd anniversary.

“The whole feel of Young Talent Time was based on the love that I had for the Mickey Mouse Club,” he said of the beloved show that he created, hosted and produced.

With its joyful mix of music, dance, fun and friendship, the show gave a platform to a young Tina Arena, Dannii Minogue, Debra Byrne, Jamie Redfern, Jane Scali, Sally Boyden, Karen Knowles, Philip Gould and many others.

Arena was on hand to induct Young into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2011, a class that included John Williamson, Models, The Loved Ones and The Church.

“I cast my mind back to when I was a little girl, and you were there for me,” she said of Young, who was visibly holding back tears from his table, “teaching, nurturing, supporting, protecting, mentoring and always smiling.” She added, “You supported me like a father would his daughter, and you took me through some of the greatest moments of my childhood. Even when the road wasn’t easy for you.”

In his now-legendary speech, the Church frontman Steve Kilbey gave a shout out to Young from the stage, and reenacted to the room the music man’s enthusiastic straight-armed clap whilst singing “Cara Lyn.”

Even veteran rockers liked Johnny Young.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese said Young gave “the gift of joy” to Australia. “A wonderful singer in his own right, he established himself in our homes and our hearts as the genial and generous host of Young Talent Time, the launchpad for an incredible new generation of entertainers,” he writes. “How lucky we were to have him. May he rest in peace.”

Minogue considers Young a man who “holds a place in so many hearts,” she writes, “and today my heart is broken.”

The pop artist’s social post continues, “He has so many achievements from his music and TV career, pop writing and releases, and family entertainment on our televisions. For me, this is where my career started, and generations of Aussies hold Young Talent Time and the song ‘All My Loving’ so fondly in their memories. His show brought 17 years of colour, choreography, sequins, music and smiles to our Saturday nights.

“My heart goes out to his family and to his YTT family. From cast, crew and every Johnny Young Talent School member, this is a very sad ‘Goodnight Australia.’”

The Young Talent Time collection is preserved as an artifact of Australian history and pop culture as part of the National Film and Sound Archive.