Soundcheck: The 10 Best Music Releases Of The Week

Every weekend, we bring you #SOUNDCHECK—your destination for the best of the best new music that hit the web over the course of the week. Because you should always be prepared when someone passes you that AUX cord. This week's round features 10 of our favorite emerging and established artists including Bleached, Blood Orange and so many more. Turn up, tune in, and tune out.

This Mercury Retrograde Is Making Us Question Our Faith In Everything

Mercury retrograde can be about technology if you want it. It's true that the moment this retrograde transit came on strong, Instagram went down. Twitter, too, has had its glitches. There have been text delays and miscommunications galore. All those things are true, but Mercury is also the god of information, and information is more than a screen, more than a sentence passed between two people who just can't seem to find a time to meet. Information is an exchange of knowings. A collection of moments written, spoken, and felt, when one knowing is traded for another kind.

Why Are All Of Our Eyes So Empty?

Billie Eilish's eyes bleed black in the music video for her song "when the party's over." It's hard to watch as the bleak substance sputters and gushes from her eyes. It's too vulnerable, gory, sad. Images of Eilish have littered magazines in the months since the release of her newest album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, and in almost all of them there's a restrained version of the eye-bleeding: Eilish gazes at the camera, completely disaffected, hooded lids drooping over her gray eyes. I call it "dull eyes."

I think about all the issues of Vogue I've flipped through in nail salons and airports, filled with women who have the same Xanned-out gaze, and all the Instagram models and influencers on my Discover page, hand to their lips, disengaged. I think of all the selfies I've sent to friends, conveying a candid, rough-around-the-edges type of seduction through my stare. I think of Gigi Hadid, posing for Marc Jacobs' grunge collection for Perry Ellis that was released this fall; she looks at the viewer, eyes rimmed with a sleepless rosy pink, hair tousled. And I think of Rihanna, in a Fenty beauty campaign, staring out over her shoulder directly into the camera as if in a fog, blue lipstick blaring. The familiar look conveys both power and nonchalance, sensuality and resistance—but what is its cultural cachet? And what does its importance say about our culture?

The Cost Of Being Fat Could Be Your Life

It began as an alarming rash on her ankles and calves. Visits to urgent care would leave her with wrapped legs and no solution, sent home without a second thought. A bad fall on her knee caps soon after would also be brushed off with advice to lose weight in order to alleviate pressure on her joints. But visit after visit, nothing was ever resolved, not until Cindy Epley could barely walk. After a long period of excruciating pain, Cindy finally visited a new doctor, following the recommendation of her daughter, Robin. Upon examination, she was informed that she was within hours of going into septic shock.

"Not only did she have a septic wound in her foot, but she had broken her ankle in multiple places before that," Robin told NYLON over the phone. Cindy was hospitalized and placed on an IV for the next two months. She'd continue to suffer despite the issue finally being detected.

Cynthia "Cindy" Epley died on April 13, 2019, at the age of 56. A heart attack took her life, though the exact cause of death remains unknown in accordance with the family's request. On her death certificate, Cindy's death is attributed to uncontrolled diabetes, which Robin heavily refutes. While Cindy had been diagnosed with diabetes some 15 years prior, she was in control of the chronic illness, and had even become a teacher for others on how to manage life as a diabetic.

"I can't help but think that if she had been young and healthy and what doctors think 'normal' looks like... they absolutely would have paid more attention to her," Robin said. "I refuse to die because some doctor didn't take good enough care of me. I have to be my own warrior. And it's not that my mom wasn't hers. It's just that she fell on the wrong side of the fence."