The Mermaid Docuseries, Mystery Novels & Carly Rae Jepsen Song That Got Us Through the Week

Just nine months after Carly Rae Jepsen empathized with love’s cynics on The Loneliest Time, it now appears the criminally underrated pop diva is dead set on making believers out of them with a new album, The Loveliest Time. Not only is it the B-side of The Loneliest Time, but the B-side of a breakup, or—more generally—life’s many bummers. Heartbreak? We don’t knew her. Rejection? I’ve simply never experienced it. Thanks to Jepsen’s latest, we’re now in our experimental era and it feels—and sounds—pretty fucking fun.

A clear standout is Psychedelic Switch, in which Jepsen sings of a psychological (and physiological?) trip she’s taken on by a new lover. It’s one of those songs that leaves you no choice but to dance until you’re really, really sweaty—though that wouldn’t take too long in this heat wave. —Audra Heinrichs

I stumbled upon Iranian-born and Berlin-based milliner Maryam Keyhani’s fantastical hat designs one night when I should have fallen asleep hours earlier—but taking them in felt like I was dreaming. Pillowy, sculptural, and often comically large, Keyhani’s hats look like they’re straight out of the pages of a storybook. I kept wanting more and more.

Scroll through her Instagram feed if you want inspiration on how to dress for a fanciful tea party on the French Riviera that you’ll never be invited to. I might just become a hat girl after all. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

Today, Jessy Lanza releases her fourth album, Love Hallucination, and it’s yet another stellar collection of candy-coated leftfield pop. The absolute highlight for me is “Limbo.” With its electro beat, sauntering pace, and spelled-out chorus, it sounds like a lost ‘80s summer hit that’s been defrosted. —Rich Juzwiack

Extravagant, multi-thousand dollar, hand-crafted mermaid fins. A cottage industry of people who want to be full-time mermaids. A fierce battle to join the best of the best (and the hottest mer-clique in America), the Circus Siren Pod. This three-episode docuseries is surreal, enchanting, and heartwarming, with stunning archival footage of the historic Weeki Wachee Springs mermaid shows. One episode in, I was searching for nearby mermaid performances. —Emily Leibert

On Sony Music’s Cover Up podcast, this season, journalist TJ Raphael uncovers the hidden history of how activists first brought the abortion pill to the U.S. in the 1980s. The story seemingly begins with an audacious airport heist set off by a pregnant woman and her companion deliberately getting arrested for bringing the pill into the country. But at the heart of it all is escalating, terrifying anti-abortion violence—which will culminate in the assassination of an abortion provider in 2009—and the hopes of doctors and advocates that medication abortion could protect patients from clinic harassment, and give people safety and agency in their decision to end a pregnancy.

The podcast released the fourth episode of its seven-episode season this week, and it begins with the pregnant activist fighting for the abortion pill to be legalized in the U.S. as she stares down the Supreme Court. —Kylie Cheung

I recently watched this 2001 thriller from David Lynch and starring Noami Watts for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I’m still reading analysis, thought pieces, and Reddit threads on wtf this movie was. I know Lynch loves to break brains and leave his viewers screaming “Please Just Tell Me What It Means!!!!!” with his films, but this scary? trippy? hallucinogenic? neo-noir about an aspiring, starry-eyed actress (Watts) and a movie star who lost her memory after a car crash (Laura Harring)—or is that who they really are?—left me both charmed and dizzy. If you love cOnTeNt which makes you question the reality, perception, and meaning of everything, with a couple of cute jumpscares for fun, this is well worth the trip back in time. —Lauren Tousignant

I was in a reading rut for much of July—I don’t know if it was the oppressive heat, ambient anxiety, or what, but I started and stopped three different novels. (As an aside, that’s a high rate of DNF-ing—aka “did not finish” in the Goodreads world—for me, but I highly recommend the practice. If a book isn’t speaking to you, move on! There are so many books out there for you to try instead.)

I needed something compelling and plot-driven, and boy oh boy did I find that in The Wonder State. Our main character, Jay, has been pulled back to her small town in Arkansas by a mysterious letter from her erstwhile best friend, Brandi, who stayed after high school and at least appears to have fallen prey to an unfortunately typical cocktail of opiate abuse, job instability, and bad boyfriends. Jay finds out, upon arriving, that Brandi has disappeared—and the locals think that she and their four other high school friends (who also were mysteriously summoned by Brandi) are responsible. The hodgepodge of friends feels very evocative of The Secret History, as does the sense of impending doom that permeates the book. Plus, there’s the suggestion of magic—or power derived from another, parallel world—but this certainly isn’t fantasy. I think one of my favorite things about this book is that it gets at just how much we might be ignoring (or blissfully unaware of), while unraveling a mystery that feels all too realistic. —Nora Biette-Timmons

I’m convinced that this is the best Instagram account ever to exist and if you disagree, well, your sense of humor sucks. The person and/or people behind the page serve up daily carousels of the most beautiful, deranged internet crap, including a mix of original content and screenshots of others’ posts. I swipe through all 10 slides every time and the experience can be even more delightful if a person has consumed a substance or two. The account recently dragged Jonah Hill to hell and has made noble contributions to the Barbie discourse. Follow them and you, too, can see the creepy baby doll avatar in your stack of IG stories. —Susan Rinkunas

Mitski’s past few years have been an audio experiment—there’s been more dancing beats, more pulsating rhythms, and more synthesizers. After touring for most of 2022 (and asking her fans to put down their goddamn phones), Mitski disappeared. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for her collaboration with David Byrne and Ryan Lott in Everything Everywhere All At Once. But it was unknown if she would ever tour again, let alone release more original music under the mononym Mitski.

After a mysterious email to her fans and a short video from her Nashville studio last week, Mitski is BACK. (Her new album, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We, comes out in September.) “Bug Like An Angel” is a return to Mistki’s first form. The guitar strums let Mitski’s voice shine for the first verse. But I gasped as the chorus brought in a beautiful choir. That’s what I love most about Mitski. Her art is a constant surprise. —Caitlin Cruz

The Real Housewives of New York City is the only Housewives franchise I ever got into—so as excited as I was for this year’s completely revamped cast, I was sad to know I might never see Luann or Sonja (especially Sonja) in all their horrible and chaotic glory ever again. But that was silly of me to think they wouldn’t figure out how to squirm their way back onto TV! (Erm, well, streaming.)

Welcome to Crappie Lake is Schitt’s Creek without the bankruptcy (Sonja filed for bankruptcy in 2010 NOT 2023) and The Simple Life but with two rich 50-something housewives instead of two rich 20-something heiresses. The RHONY alums travel to Benton, Illinois, to help revamp a town and make a mess, get into trouble, piss people off, sleep in a budget motel, and catch a catfish—which sincerely shocked me. It’s a mindless, maddening blast and if you’ve missed Luann or Sonja (but especially Sonja), this will give you much, much more than you asked for. —LT