Chicago artist Vic Mensa is coming off a strong year, with both "Down On My Luck" and "Wimme Nah" receiving nods from critics and fans the world over for their refreshing, anthemic sounds. Armed with a whole heap of material both new and old, Vic performs on our side of the world for the first time as part of St Jermone's Laneway Festival. Following his recent performance at the Auckland leg of the festival, we caught up with Mensa soon after he touched down in Brisbane to chat about his shows, the direction of his debut full-length album Traffic, the Chicago music scene, his collective SAVEMONEY, and more.

Big Sean gets all the best beats these days, and producer Vinyl has laced him with a dark bouncy beat over which he steamrolls, jumping from rhyme to rhyme alongside the Future Music Festival headliner Drake. We have a feeling that Drake is going to sneak this gem into his live sets so it's probably best you get across it now. There's also some added Kanye West at the end, where Yeezy pops with an outrageous couple of bars before the beat fades.

Promotional material for SOHN’s current visit to Australia have mostly led with the whole London born / Vienna based thing, and it’s clear why. The talented multi-instrumentalist’s debut album Tremors was unique and brilliant, even ground-breaking in a way, in that it took that foundation of a very British sounding electronic indie and swirled it together with an inherently European influence to create something fans hadn’t quite heard before.

In our 17th instalment of "Stumbled Upon", we meet Adelaide's latest synth pop minstrel World Wild , and chat about being in a band full of his friends and his latest release, ‘Coast to Coast’.

In This Issue: we look at the ARIA 2014 Wholesale Figures, the blazing return of vinyl, and the 2015 Indent Grants for all-ages live music events, plus the latest signings and the ARIA charts.

As we in Sydney gear up to take on St Jermone's Laneway Festival this Sunday one we'll also be needing to ready of palette for a wonderful onslaught of food. We all know just how important festival food is, as we continue to revolt against the revolting dagwood dogs and greasy gozleme. Laneway share that awareness, and have such curated a Sydney food line up that includes pop-ups from some of the city's most adored eateries, including Vini, Marys, Porteño, and Gelato Messina.

We've taken a look at some of the shows we're going to be heading to through the weekend ahead and deliver you this guide - our gig picks of the week!

Is the horribly biased and disgusting media narrative of Kanye West as some kind of music industry villain about to change? It sure looks like it, with a collective 'awww' as Kanye serenades his daughter in the adorable music video for heartfelt ballad "Only One". Earlier in the day Kanye debuted a preview of the clip on Ellen, but now the full version is here, directed by the one and only Spike Jonze.

This past weekend the AU review had the opportunity to sit in a media conference with Australia's folk brother and sister duo Angus and Julia Stone at Laneway Festival in Singapore.

Frequent visitors to the iconic Sydney Opera House are undoubtedly familiar with the constantly sold-out La Soiree, that witty, innovative theatre that Sydney-siders can't seem to get enough of. The team behind that production have thought up a new ferociously entertaining show in Club Swizzle. The idea is fairly simple, turn Sydney Opera House's most nightclub-esque and underground space The Studio into a full-swinging, prohibition style underground bar complete with slick uniformed bartenders. And then it all turns into a vaudevillian circus; equal parts chaos and grace.

Counting Crows are set to make their Australian return this April, following their announcement on this year's Bluesfest line up. No strangers to this part of the world, the Californians have fit in a run of headline dates on either side of the Byron Bay festival, which will see them bring their latest album Somewhere Under Wonderland to audiences here for the first time, as well as their catalogues of hits, natuarally! Frontman Adam Duritz doesn't downplay the appeal of their upcoming trip, regardless of how well-seasoned a travelling band Counting Crows now are.

The amazing FKA twigs landed in Australia for her first shows this week; in town for the St. Jerome's Laneway Festival, the British performer played a stellar show at Melbourne's 170 Russell venue on Wednesday night. Photos by Perri Cassie.

Photo: Helena Leal

Exciting news out of the Courtney Barnett camp today! The Melbourne dynamo has announced details of her long-awaited debut album and has given us a new song and film clip in "Pedestrian At Best"! It's no new piece of news that Barnett enjoyed a hugely successful 2014 and over the next few weeks, crowds around Australia are set to flock to her stage when she plays the Laneway Festival nationally. Her album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit is to be released on March 20th, with "Pedestrian At Best" being the first single to be lifted from one of the highly anticipated albums of the year for many.

Russell Whyte AKA Rustie has been around making music for a lot longer than most would suspect. He first came to attention on Hyperdub Records' 5: Five Years of Hyperdub in 2009. His remix of “Spliff Dub” by Zomby was unlike anything else around at the time.

Taiga - a forest that covers vast areas of northern North America and Eurasia, consisting of mainly cone-bearing evergreens. Taiga - the name of Zola Jesus’ latest album. It’s big, it’s confronting, it’s empowering and it’s completely and utterly magnificent.