Interview: Nouvelle Vague’s Olivier Libaux

One of the world's most famous cover bands releases a new album with original music

With yesterday’s release of I Could Be Happy, French band Nouvelle Vague—known for over a decade because of their magical covers of classic songs—does the unexpected: they’ve released original music. That isn’t to say their other offerings aren’t original, but here they’ve written four songs from start to finish to accompany an array of new covers. Unsurprisingly, the original work is just as vibrant as …

America’s First Punk Store: Manic Panic

Best known these days as a hair dye brand, Manic Panic actually began as a punk store in NYC. Believed to be the first-ever punk shop in the United States, Manic Panic was opened in 1977 at St Marks Place in the East Village, by sisters Tish and Snooky Bellomo. In an interview with Atlas Obscura (which occurred at the Manic Panic Long Island location) …

The Gossip’s Beth Ditto’s Plus-Size Fashion Line

Singer/songwriter/sometime model and all-the-time badass, Beth Ditto has just released her second collection of clothing for plus-sized people and it’s breaking all the rules regarding how larger women “should” dress. The idea of wearing “flattering” or minimizing shapes and colors was far from her mission. Ditto tells R29, “I think it’s really cool to… really draw attention to yourself; I want to create big shapes, …