THE SMOKING POPES: "Need You Around," for a little Chicago flavor.

NEW RELEASES: Paste will point you to PUP, Pillow Queens, Walt Disco and more.

BILL'S INDIE BASEMENT has Sondre Lerche, Papercuts, Jon Spencer, and more.

TED LEO: Stream The Old 200', which features a Traffic homage and a Traffic cover.

C.W. McCALL  the deep-voiced country singer who turned an ad campaign for an Iowa bread company into the outlaw trucker anthem, “Convoy,” which reached No. 1 on the charts in 1976 and inspired a Sam Peckinpah movie, died on Friday at his home in Ouray, Colo. He was 93.

KELLEY STOLTZ on his new album, the ol' pandemic, San Francisco, and more.

SONDRE LERCHE on the influences behind Avatars of Love.

THE NUMBER ONES looks at Coolio's rap lament "Gangsta's Paradise," the biggest hit single of 1995.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Morbius tops the chart with 39.1MM, but that's more like a horror movie than a Marvel movie.  The C+ CinemaScore and 2 1/2 star word of mouth of it all seeped in over the weekend.  The Lost City places with 14.6MM on a 52 percent drop; its 54.3MM total is the best we’ve seen for a female targeted title during the pandemic.  The Batman shows with another 11.2MM on a 45 percent drop.

THE SLAPPENING: Will Smith said that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying that he had “betrayed” its trust with conduct that was “shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”  Smith's next Netflix project has moved to the back burner.

THE GRAMMYS went to these folks. Congrats.

BRUCE WILLS: The Great Comic Action Hero.

ALEC BALDWIN's Match Game revival has been cancelled (along with other game shows).

OPPENHEIMER: Gary Oldman says he is set to feature in one scene of Christopher Nolan's next picture.

THE CROW appears ready to fly again, after years of false starts and many rings of development hell.

THE SIMPSONS: A Perfectly Cromulent Oral History, Part 1.

ESTELLE HARRIS, who hyperventilated her way into the hearts of millions of “Seinfeld” fans as George’s mother, Estelle Costanza, died on Saturday in Palm Desert, Calif. She was 93.

IT'S MAGIC: A kitteh and a vase.

HOW HIGH Will the cat vault?

EASY with the tongue, ladies.

WHAT TV DOES YOUR DOG LIKE TO WATCH? U-W Madison researchers want to know.