I avoided restaurants after a disastrous job as a waitress. Then I watched The Bear …

Their un-Googlable, very online name is the antithesis of this earthy duo’s sublime art-folk. Like their emotionally ambiguous music, the pair don’t give up their mysteries easily • The best music of autumn 2026: Johnny Marr, Phoebe Bridgers, Rachel Chinouriri and more • See all of our unmissable autumn arts recommendations here Victoria Rose arrives at Philadelphia’s 30th St Station and apologises for the sticky streaks covering her car’s interior. She’s a beekeeper, and it’s just propolis, a resinous sealant for gaps in the hive. Her bandmate, Stone Filipczak, is riding shotgun, and her protective gear occupies the rear passenger seat. We’re heading to one of their favourite spots, an Ethiopian restaurant that doubles as a venue. The dining room quickly gets boisterous – a challenge for our interview given that Filipczak and Rose are relatively soft speakers, and not wildly keen to divulge specifics about the music they make as @. Like Rose’s bees, they’re a secretive and self-sustaining pair. As you might guess, @ is pronounced “at”. It’s a tough Google. The name, Filipczak explains, came from “a vision of an @ sign on a kick drum head”. Not that they have any need for one: @’s art-folk is rooted in acoustic guitar, woodwinds and vocal harmonies that furrow and frolic. Their fantastic second album, Autosmile, is their first with the venerated indie label 4AD. (The name is a reference to a meme showing a dopey sunflower: “When you and gang faded and auto smile gets turn on …”)..

Hugo Weaving leads a delightful drama about the trials and tribulations of a bunch of friends of a certain age, and the bluegrass wunderkind returns with a remarkable new album..

Summerhall, Edinburgh Angele and Malcolm Galea’s two-hander cycles through grief and sorrow as a broken-hearted hero is trapped in purgatory A fairytale plunges the reader into a dilemma then resolves it. But what if the happy ending never arrives? Will the tale just circle around into a netherworld, never finding a conclusion? That is the prospect in this two-hander by Malta’s Angele and Malcolm Galea, a couple whose experience of pregnancy loss finds expression in a thwarted fairytale – the kind of tale, perhaps, they might have read to their daughter...