KATSEYE gave their EYEKONS fan group plenty to look forward to on Thursday (April) when the HYBE K-pop girl group dropped their beat crazy new single, “Pink Up.” In addition to being a fresh track for the now five-piece crew to perform at their upcoming Coachella Festival debut this weekend, the song is the first one without OG member Manon Bannerman, who recently went on temporary hiatus to “focus on her health and well-being.”

“One day, soon, the world’s gonna end/ I’m gonna make out with my new bestest friends/ I wanna live large, right before it all burns down/ Up, up, pinky up/ Go hard like we’re robbin’ the Louvre/ We Mona Lisa with a cute attitude/ I wanna get high right before we’re in the ground,” members Daniela Avanzini and Megan Skiendiel sing on the hyper pop song’s first chorus in the video in which the group show off their fierce nail art while, naturally, putting those pinkies up to take a sip of tea.

“Ooh, we’re screaming from cloud nine/ No one can touch us if they tried/ Ooh, but it’s a state of mind/ I-I-I-I bet it goes like this/ It’s a state of mind/ We’re screaming from cloud nine,” they all sing defiantly before dipping into the “Pin-pinky up” chorus on the tune that at points sounds like a video game soundtrack cranked up to double speed.

“Pinky Up” was written by Justin Tranter (Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande) and the group began teasing it on March 30 via a cryptic video in which the Mona Lisa brings a steaming cup of tea up to her mouth, with her little finger extended just so. The followed it up the next day with another head-scratcher with no taste of the music in which a KATSEYE-themed claw machine pulls a sword out of a pile of jewelry-wearing stuffed animals, revealing the release date for the single.

All those images show up in the video, with the visual keeping that vibe going, as the women are surrounded by a forest of plushies and lounge around in their usual colorful, outré outfits, which include glittery knee-high boots for a minibike burn-out in an office and patterned mini skirts for a sweaty dance party. Near the end, they slip into matching shaggy blonde wigs and sip some more in a bland hotel ballroom while wearing clear white smocks with furry accents over glittery blue bodysuits.

“Pinky Up” dropped on the eve of KATSEYE’s Coachella debut on Friday (April 10), which will be their latest show without Bannerman, following gigs at Lollapalooza Argentina and Lollapalooza Chile last month.

The group, kind of, discussed their interpersonal dynamics in a new NYLON cover story that took place before Manon announced her leave-taking. “Being in a group, it’s just about good communication and setting good boundaries and building a friendship, but also work relationship, and always remembering that it’s a shared goal that we have,” Manon told the magazine, which noted that current members Yoonchae Jeung, Sophia Laforteza, Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj and Megan Skiendiel declined to answer additional questions about Manon’s hiatus when the news broke of after the initial interview was completed.

Watch the “Pinky Up” video below.

Melanie Martinez’s Hades is No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart dated April 11, bowing atop the latest survey with 84,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending April 2, according to Luminate.

Of that sum, 63,000 units are via album sales, including 28,000 from the vinyl configuration, which begets a No. 2 start on the Vinyl Albums tally, behind Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) Bully (32,000).

Martinez previously reigned on Top Rock & Alternative Albums with Portals, which led for two weeks in 2023.

Additionally, Hades debuts at No. 1 on Top Alternative Albums, Martinez’s fourth No. 1, following reigns for Cry Baby (2015) and K-12 (2019) in addition to the aforementioned Portals and Hades.

Martinez moves into a four-way tie alongside Billie Eilish, Lorde and Paramore for the most No. 1s on Top Alternative Albums by women or women-led acts since the chart’s 2007 inception. Only two such acts have more: Lana Del Rey (seven, also the top mark among any act) and Florence + The Machine (five).

Hades concurrently starts at No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200, her third time in the chart’s top three; Portals remains her best via its No. 2 bow.

Eight songs from Hades appear on the April 11-dated Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, led by “Possession,” which re-enters at No. 33 (after premiering at No. 11 in February). It earned 1.8 million official U.S. streams. The album’s top debut of the week, meanwhile, belongs to “Uncanny Valley” (No. 37; 1.6 million streams).

Ziggy Marley is staying true to himself and looking toward the bright side.

In this episode of Billboard‘s Take Us Out, Ziggy Marley brings host Tetris Kelly to Crossroads, a cozy vegan restaurant in Los Angeles for healthy bites and discourse. Over their meal, the duo talk about Marley’s upcoming album, collecting vinyl and being vulnerable in music. Of course, being that the musician picked a vegan restaurant, Kelly starts the conversation by asking how long Marley has followed the vegan diet.

“I’m only vegan part-time,” Marley jokes. “I’m healthy all the time, but I’m vegan part-time.”

Once his vegan status is established, the two dive into the music chat. Marley is releasing his new album, Brightside, in an unconventional way. The LP will be released exclusively as physical copies on on Record Store Day, April 18, and will not be available digitally until May 1. He attributes his decision to release his album this way to seeing how music was made when he was growing up, especially with his father, the late legend Bob Marley.

“I grew up around seeing records being manufactured, vinyl from the conception to the final product,” Marley explains. “That process and the quality and the discipline that is behind it. So I wanted to kind of push this record in that way.”

He says that this approach is different from how people do music today. Today, Marley says, music is cheaper, easier and faster to make. He wanted to make Brightside “the slow way.”

Kelly then asks Marley, an avid vinyl collector, what the most important record in his collection is.

“The most important vinyl is the first vinyl I bought,” Marley says before naming an album that was surely many collectors’ first: Thriller. “The first time I had my own money, then I was like, ‘Yeah, man, I’m going to the record store and buy a record.’”

The conversation then turns toward the themes that Marley explores in Brightside, with a focus on the album being his most personal to date. Marley shares why he wanted to be honest in this project and what inspired him to write the new songs on it. One inspiration came from being on set for his father’s 2024 biopic, Bob Marley: One Love, which he produced.

“[I was] also getting some sparks of creativity, you know, being on a movie set,” Marley says. He then shares that he crafted the deeply personal songs on the album over time, but there was one day in particular during which he really took a look inside and tried to understand why some of the music he was writing was sad.

“One day I was really feeling like s–t and I was like, ‘Why do I let the world trouble me?’” he shares. “The state of the world is oppressive. And that is the battle really. The battle is how we free our mind from that oppression.”

To hear Marley talk about the making of Brightside, his favorite vegan dishes at a Los Angeles institution and his thoughts on F1, watch the full Take Us Out above.

When Tim Kappel and Loren Wells first filed a lawsuit in 2023 aimed at helping Cyril Vetter win back control of the global rights to his 1963 rock classic “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love),” it was clearly a long shot. Copyright termination, the rule they were invoking, had historically only applied to U.S. rights.

But the two lawyers, founders of the boutique music industry law firm Wells Kappel, felt strongly that they had a winning argument and a perfect test case. Long shot or not, they were going to try it.

“We’ve been trying to engage with people on this issue for a long time, and we have been laughed at,” Kappel tells Billboard. “We’ve been told we’re crazy. We have been told that this is going nowhere.”

Three years later, it certain didn’t go nowhere. Vetter won his case at a district court, which issued a first-of-its-kind ruling last year that said termination applies to overseas rights just the same as domestic rights. Then in January, against the opposition of major music groups and the predictions of many copyright experts, they won again at a federal appeals court.

Though it deals with an arcane legal issue, that ruling has been the talk of the music industry. Artist advocacy groups have hailed it as a “game-changer” for musicians, allowing them to fully recapture their rights as Congress first intended. Others wonder if it will have a disruptive effect at a time when the market for music catalogs is booming.

Now, the major music companies are striking back, taking over the case with the goal of taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court. That means Kappel and Wells are once again being told they face long odds — a posture that’s just fine with them: “We’ve always viewed ourselves as the underdogs.”

As the big lawsuit moves ahead toward a potential SCOTUS showdown, the two lawyers sat down with Billboard for an extended interview — about warnings that the case will spark “chaos,” about the high court battle ahead, and about how artists are “more aware of the value of their creative properties” than ever before.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve now won two major rulings in the Vetter case. But when you first filed it, I’m sure it felt like like an uphill climb. Was that daunting?

Tim Kappel: The short answer is yes. It was daunting. And there were times leading up to the filing of the case where we certainly had second thoughts about where we stood on the law and what our chances were and what the consequences of failure would be. But ultimately, I’ve felt strongly about this issue for over a decade, and when Loren and I looked at it, the series of events were just in perfect shape for a test case. I felt like I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t follow whatever cosmic energy that was.

Loren Wells: We’re certainly not the first people to notice this issue. I think what has been daunting to a lot of people is the idea of affiliating themselves with a case like this, which is going to be scary to the industry overall. That is exactly what’s happened. I think a lot of law firms would be scared to be the attorneys who are bringing this lawsuit, knowing that it’s going to have that effect. But that’s not daunting to us. We are an artist-first firm.

Sometimes in these big test cases, we focus so much on the impact and the disruption that we forget there’s a real person at the heart of all of it. Tell me a little about Cyril Vetter.

TK: He’s a wonderful man. I’ve known him for almost a decade. He is one of the most principled people that I’ve ever met. As you might imagine, the international revenue from “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” isn’t putting anybody’s kids through college; for him, this was always about the larger issue. He’s over 80 years old now, and he’s been away from his song for more than 60 years. That’s a long time to be away from the songwriting highlight of your life. He’s never blinked, never flinched once, even when I started to flinch.

LW: He is monumentally aware that this case was not just about him. It’s not just about musicians. It’s not just about songwriters. This case is about every creative individual in the United States. Throughout all of this, he has been very mindful of that, and that clearly was part of his motivation for wanting to see this through.

When the ruling came out, the Music Artists Coalition called it a “massive win for the principle of fairness.” Setting aside complex legal issues, do you think that’s right? A basic fairness issue?

TK: Absolutely. Why would you get back anything less than you gave away? I don’t think Congress ever intended termination rights to be a vehicle through which a rights holder can slice up a copyright into hundreds of pieces and give you back a little sliver. I gave you an asset; when you return it to me, because you’re required to do so by law, give me back all of what I gave you.

LW: 35 years is plenty of time. And we know that because most music deals now are not for perpetuity. Publishing deals almost always have very healthy reversions. Most recording agreements these days are on license bases. The argument that in order to make it fair for the companies, they need to have the rights forever, that just doesn’t check out under basic logic but also under the structures of what deals look like now and the direction the industry is going. And so when we speak of fairness, of course it’s fair to the artist. But it’s also just as fair to the corporate funders, and they know that.

The industry is obviously concerned that this ruling will be very disruptive for publishers and investors and others who currently own these rights. Are those concerns valid?

LW: Disruption feels like chaos to the people being disrupted. What this ruling will do is take away some of the passive income that has been a part of their business for decades. Okay, so they’re going to have to adjust, right? It’s going to be a slow process, with plenty of time for everyone to figure out how to adjust their business models. That’s what we do in this industry.

TK: All you hear is chaos, right? But then, if you ask, well, how exactly would it create chaos? What is so wrong about treating legacy assets in the same way that you’re already treating your modern copyrights? I can appreciate and understand why that feels scary, but I do think if you’re going to cry chaos, the onus is on you to tell me what is chaotic about it.

Speaking of industry fears: Literally hours before this call, the major music companies used an unusual maneuver to take over the case, with the explicit goal of taking it to the Supreme Court. How do you feel about that, and about the potential fight ahead?

TK: I understand why they’re why they’re doing it. And credit to them for being transparent as to why they’re doing it. I appreciate their concerns, and I appreciate why they view it as an important thing that they should be involved in. I have no idea what the Supreme Court is going to do. Ultimately, we don’t control what cases they take up.

When we won at the district court, we were told we had no chance at the appeals court. Now of course people are saying if it goes to the Supreme Court, we have no chance there. I’m not in the business of predictions. What I’m going to say is that I like our argument better than I like theirs, and we are willing to take this wherever it goes, wherever it needs to go, and will argue our case before whoever wants to hear it.

If the Supreme Court takes the case, which of you two is getting up there at the lectern?

LW: [Points at Tim]

TK: [Laughing] I think we’ll keep our strategy to ourselves at this point. The real question is, who are they going to get? Whoever they get is going to be a formidable opponent, someone whose oral arguments I’ve probably listened to more times than they have.

You wrote an op-ed on a recent ruling dismissing Salt-N-Pepa’s lawsuit against Universal Music Group, lamenting that recording artists are often denied termination due to “work for hire” clauses. Why was that an issue you wanted to raise alarm bells about?

TK: It’s such a such an important decision that we get reversed, because it’s the first time that a court has looked and deferred to the [work for hire] language of the contract rather than looking to what the actual law says. We believe recording artists deserve termination rights for the same reasons that songwriters deserve termination rights. And we’re far from done when it comes to our work in the termination space.

LW: Artists are now more aware of ownership and more aware of the benefits of ownership. It’s becoming front and center to a lot of artists and their teams. And so this issue just could not be punted down the field infinitely. At a certain point, we had to face it.

Is that the Taylor Swift effect? She fought her fight over her masters, and now everybody knows how this stuff works…

TK: We actually get asked that a lot! We’ll be talking about termination rights and people will ask “Is this like the Taylor Swift thing?” And it’s obviously a different legal issue. But you’re right: She has brought the issue of ownership of your intellectual property assets to the public to an extent that it really had never been before.

LW: There’s been a confluence of factors. All the M&A activity, the rise in catalog acquisitions. It’s all connected. Artists are just much more aware of the value of their creative properties, and they want to get the benefit of that.

Let’s end on a very broad question: What’s the most important legal issue facing artists and songwriters in 2026?

LW: I’ll give a boring answer that’s the same one I would have given you ten years ago. I’m a deal guy. What I do for a living is protect artists and make sure that they get the benefit of the value of their work, that they understand what deal they’re entering into and that they are set up for the longest term career. So to me, the most pressing issue is, and has always been, those first deals that they enter into. These recent termination lawsuits are just an example why it’s so important.

Do we have to worry about AI? Of course. We have to understand how AI is being incorporated into recording agreements. Major labels are sending around AI addendums right now, which artists have to be thoroughly vetting. But the fundamentals that underlie the music business, that fundamental transaction that’s at the heart of everything? That has always been there, that will always be there. And that’s still the most important decision that any creative person has to make.