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U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently touted his agenda to get all Americans using a wearable within the next four years. This vision is sorely misguided, at best. Still, although wearables are no replacement for actual healthcare, understanding how to leverage your FSA/HSA funds for fitness trackers has never been more relevant. The reality is that yes, you can use these pre-tax health dollars for fitness trackers and smartwatches—but it’s not as straightforward as the marketing suggests.

How to use your FSA/HSA funds to buy wearables

According to the FSA store, if a device is necessary for treating or monitoring a specific medical condition (and not just general wellness), it could be eligible to purchase with your health dollars.

There is a catch, though. You need a Letter of Medical Necessity (LMN). The IRS has ruled that fitness trackers and other devices of their type are used to promote one’s “general health” and are only medically necessary under special circumstances. Your LMN is basically a doctor’s note required to classify certain purchases as qualified medical expenses under IRS guidelines, proving that the device will be used to treat a legitimate medical condition, such as obesity or a heart condition. As long as you submit an LMN to your benefits administrator, it will most likely be covered.

Some health-tracking devices are eligible without an LMN because they’re clearly essential: Think glucose monitors, fertility trackers, or blood pressure cuffs. On the flip side, you might have a tough time getting your FSA administrator to approve a new Fitbit. Smartwatches that are meant to track or simply contribute to general health and overall well-being don’t quite meet the threshold to qualify for purchase with pre-tax dollars. That being said, you might be surprised at what kinds of devices are indeed HSA/FSA eligible—assuming you get your hands on an LMN.

When it comes to securing your LMN, you might not even need to make a doctor’s appointment, thanks to third-party players like Truemed. When you browse sites like Coros or Amazfit, you’ll see the option to “Pay With Truemed” at checkout. From there, as Truemed explains it, you’ll be asked you a few questions about your health circumstances, and you’ll be matched with a provider to determine your eligibility. If you qualify, you’ll get an LMN that will allow you to use your HSA or FSA funds to complete your purchase—all without ever having to meet with your primary doctor.

The fitness trackers you can buy with HSA/FSA funds

Here are some of the major brands offering HSA/FSA eligible fitness trackers.

Garmin

Sadly, no Garmin watches are HSA/FSA-eligible. Still, the following products are eligible for an HSA/FSA purchase:

• Index BPM smart blood pressure monitor

• Index S2 smart scale

• HRM-Fit heart rate monitor for women

• HRM-Pro Plus heart rate monitor

• HRM-Dual real-time heart rate monitor

• HRM-Swim

You can filter by HSA/FSA eligibility and browse all eligible Garmin items here.

Coros

Coros offers FSA/HSA eligibility for all their watches and heart rate monitors through their partnership with Truemed.

Amazfit

Amazfit recently launched its Helio Strap, the third of the three once-rumored Whoop-like trackers to be officially announced.

Amazfit is another brand partnered with Truemed, meaning that like with Coros above, it might be easier for you to get that LMN proving your need for a smartwatch, sleep tracker, stress monitor, or other screen-less fitness band. For instance, here are some of Amazfit’s FSA/HSA eligible items:

• Helio Strap screen-free fitness tracker

• Helio Ring screen-free fitness tracker

• Band 7 smartwatch

• Active 2 (Square) smartwatch

You can filter by HSA/FSA eligibility and browse more Amazfit options here.

Whoop

While Whoop does not accept direct FSA/HSA payments at checkout, you can submit reimbursement claims for their 12-month subscription, Whoop 4.0 battery pack, and Whoop 5.0 wireless power pack and basic charger. Whoop’s focus on strain and recovery data may help support medical necessity claims. There are several ways to file a claim/submit a reimbursement—see them all here.

Ultrahuman

Ultrahuman’s Ring AIR—designed to track deep health biomarker like heart rate variability (HRV), sleep stages, and recovery patterns—is marketed as HSA/FSA eligible, along with their Voyager Ring Charger and Cardio Adaptability PowerPlug.

Ultrahuman is partnered with payment processors Sika and Flex. However, according to Ultrahuman’s site, their smart rings offer continuous health data that is always FSA/HSA eligible, meaning there’s no need for an LMN to purchase.

Withings

Withings positions their smartwatches as FSA/HSA eligible, emphasizing medical features like ECG monitoring and sleep tracking. Their approach leans heavily on the medical device angle, which may strengthen LMN justifications. Eligible watches include:

• ScanWatch 2

• ScanWatch Nova

• Body Scan smart scale

• BPM connect blood pressure monitor

Filter by HSA/FSA eligibility and browse more Withings options here.

The bottom line

FSA/HSA eligibility for wearables is real but restrictive. Some employers’ FSA administrators may scrutinize wearable purchases more closely. Companies like Coros are most transparent about facilitating the required medical consultation, while others market eligibility without clearly explaining the LMN barrier. For consumers, this means budgeting not just for the device, but for the healthcare consultation and documentation process required to justify the purchase. Still, the promise of using pre-tax health dollars for wearables is real.

And remember, the most important aspect of shopping with HSA funds is record-keeping. Make sure to keep every receipt—and LMN—for every HSA purchase you make.

A judge has finally approved the bankruptcy sale of 23andme, and its data, to a nonprofit owned by 23andme’s founder. That means that if you have data stored with the site, it’s basically staying in the same place, rather than being sold to, say, a biotech company. Previous reports (including ours) said that a company named Regeneron was supposed to be the buyer, but that deal ended up falling through.

Before the buyer had been selected in 23andMe’s bankruptcy sale, we suggested you might want to delete your genetic data from the site, since we didn’t know who would end up owning it. Then, a company named Regeneron announced they would buy the company, and that they would “prioritize [consumer data’s] privacy, security and ethical use.” But the bidding was reopened after several states sued over data privacy concerns, and Regeneron was outbid by a nonprofit led by the former CEO of 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki.

TTAM will officially be 23andMe’s owner

According to a 23andMe press release from when the nonprofit TTAM (which stands for Twenty Three And Me) first placed their winning bid, the bankrupt company’s holding company reached an agreement with a nonprofit called TTAM for TTAM to buy the company. The sale is for “all of the Company’s assets, including the Personal Genome Service (PGS) and Research Services business lines and the Lemonaid Health business, for a purchase price of $305 million.” Anne Wojcicki, former CEO of 23andMe, is also at the helm of TTAM. So, in a sense, a company much like the old one is buying its (your) data back.

The last-minute bid was supervised by a bankruptcy court, and was deemed to be in keeping with the company’s duty to provide the most value to its shareholders. Regeneron told CNN that they did not submit a higher bid “based on our assessment of 23andMe’s remaining value.”

The sale received final court approval on June 17, and a 23andme press release states that “The transaction is expected to close in the coming weeks, subject to customary closing conditions.”

Regeneron will no longer be 23andMe’s new owner

Previously it had been reported that 23andMe’s new buyer, paying $256 million for the company’s assets, was Regeneron. Regeneron is a biotech company perhaps best known for developing an antibody treatment for COVID early in the pandemic. (Donald Trump was given a dose when he first came down with the virus.) That treatment never made it all the way to market, but the company does market other antibody- and protein-based treatments for conditions, including Ebola virus, genetic disorders, and cancers. 

Regeneron’s website stated that they “are shaping the next frontier of medicine with data-powered insights from the Regeneron Genetics Center® and pioneering genetic medicine platforms, enabling us to identify innovative targets and complementary approaches to potentially treat or cure diseases.” 

That explains why they were interested in 23andMe, since it provides a trove of genetic data. Many 23andMe users had also signed up to provide more of their personal medical information for research purposes (this was a separate thing that you would have had to opt in to provide). 

Regeneron said they planned to “continue all consumer genome services uninterrupted,” rather than shut down the company. Lemonaid health, also owned by 23andMe, was not included in the planned sale. (It is included in the new sale to TTAM.)

What this means for your data and privacy

TTAM said in their press release that they plan to honor all of 23andMe’s privacy policies, and that they will not sell consumer data in the future unless the buyer also agrees to honor those policies. They will also establish a Consumer Privacy Advocacy Board, and will give all customers two years of Experian credit monitoring for free. They stated: “All customers will be emailed at least two business days before closing with details on TTAM’s role, TTAM’s commitment to privacy choices, and instructions on how to delete data or opt out of research.”

Regeneron had also said they will respect the company’s privacy policy (“and applicable laws”). The sale would have also included a court-appointed “consumer privacy ombudsman” whose job is to make sure that everyone’s data is treated appropriately. Regeneron had said that they’re ready to work with this ombudsman and will detail all their privacy-related plans. 

When we thought the buyer was Regeneron, I was tentatively optimistic. Yes, a corporation would have your data and intended to profit from it, but that was also true of 23andMe in its heyday. The policies about privacy and consent that you agreed to when contributing your data would still be in effect. 

Now that the data is going to a 23andMe-adjacent nonprofit, which is also making similar promises, I guess nothing much has changed. That said, Wojcicki was CEO when 23andMe had a massive data breach, which hardly inspires confidence.

Nothing’s phones have always looked a little different than the rest, going all the way back to the 2022 original, with its futuristic stylings and light-up glyphs on the back casing. With its new Phone 3 and Headphone 1 products, Nothing is pushing even further into alternative aesthetics—at a time when most smartphones look roughly similar, you certainly won’t mistake them for any other company’s devices.

The Nothing Phone 3 has a “puzzling” design

First up the Nothing Phone 3, following on from the mid-range Phone 3a and Phone 3a Pro launched earlier this year. The rear casing looks like a sliding block puzzle, with hints of the now defunct Project Ara modular phone project from Google. The three rear 50MP cameras and a flash are on four of these blocks, with what Nothing is calling a Glyph Matrix up in the top right corner.

That little monochrome display can show a number of different bits of information, including notifications, and even be used to play simple games (including Rock, Paper, Scissors). It can also work as a simple viewfinder, to make sure you’ve got everyone in the frame before you hit the shutter button.

You can pick up the phone in white or black. One the front, you’ve got a 6.67-inch OLED screen running at a 120 Hz refresh rate and with a 2800 x 1260 pixel resolution. The handset offers IP68 water and dust protection, and the cameras are rounded off by a 50MP selfie camera on the front.

And what about the insides? The Phone 3 is running a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor from Qualcomm, matched with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, or 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. There’s a 5,150mAh capacity battery here (up from 4,700mAh on the Nothing Phone 2), with 65W wired and 15W wireless charging rates.

Software duties are handled by Nothing OS 3.5, which is based on Android 15. We are expecting a pretty major update with Nothing OS 4.0 (based on Android 16) in the near future, however: The upgrade is due before the end of September, and Nothing CEO Carl Pei has dropped several hints that big AI features are in the offing.

As we speculated last month, the price might be a tough sell: The Nothing Phone (3) starts at $799 for the 12GB/256GB model, so you’re paying as much as you would for a Google Pixel 9, an iPhone 16, or a Samsung Galaxy S25, which is some tough competition. Opt for the 16GB/512GB version, and that price rises to $899.

That’s flagship-level pricing for not-quite-flagship-level specs: The Phone 3 doesn’t use the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, like the Galaxy S25 does, for example. However, the unusual looks and quirky features of the handset may make it appealing enough to a broad set of people—and it certainly has enough power for most.

The handset will be available to buy on July 15.

The Headphone 1 cans have a chunky appeal

Nothing has also launched its first over-ear headphones, the Nothing Headphone 1 (using the singular form in the name). Again, you can see a reluctance to follow conventional thinking when it comes to the design: Passers-by will definitely be able to tell you’re not wearing a standard set of cans on your head when you’ve got these on.

Developed in partnership with audio experts KEF, the headphones boast 40 mm drivers, and bring with them active noise cancellation (ANC), a transparency mode, and spatial audio with head tracking (so sounds from supported sources will shift as you move your head). Nothing says you’ll get up to 35 hours of battery life with ANC on.

The Nothing Headphone 1 also sports an array of physical buttons, and 3.5 mm, USB-C, and wireless Bluetooth connectivity. As with the Nothing Phone 3, your color choices are black or white, and they’ll set you back $299. They’re also debuting on July 15.

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When run-tracking app Strava bought run-coaching app Runna earlier this year, everyone’s immediate reaction was: We can get a deal to subscribe to both, right? The answer at first was no, but now a combo subscription has appeared. It’s a good price, but there are some caveats.

If you need a refresher on what Strava is, it’s a mega-popular social app for tracking and sharing your runs and cycling activities. It’s honestly the best run-tracking app out there, despite its sometimes poorly handled privacy issues. You can use it for free, but a subscription ($11.99/month or $79.99/year) opens up a ton of extra features for mapping routes and analyzing training data.

Runna is an app that delivers customized, structured training plans to get you better at running. It’s another favorite of mine—it’s easy to use and the programs are better than what you’d get from any watch or free app. Runna is a paid app ($19.99/month or $119.99/year) with no free tier, aside from a one-week free trial. 

How to get the bundled Strava/Runna subscription (and what it costs)

The Strava/Runna bundle costs $149.99 per year, and it is only available as an annual subscription. There is no monthly option. 

You can buy the combined subscription from Strava here, or buy it through the Android or Apple app stores. If you already get a discounted Strava membership, for example through a military discount or family plan, those discounts do not apply to the combo plan. 

Why I’m excited about this

First of all, it’s a good deal—add together the cost of the Runna and Strava annual subscriptions, and you’d be paying about $200/year. This combo deal knocks $50 off that price. (The companies are advertising this deal as “up to 60%” savings, but that’s when you compare the annual combo to separate monthly subscriptions, so it’s not quite apples-to-apples.)

I have some reservations about the price and the way they’re rolling this out, which I’ll explain below. But overall I’ve been pretty happy as a Runna customer since the merger. Runna keeps adding new features and seems to have a ton more planned. Just yesterday I started on one of their brand-new “general training” plans (still in beta), customizing how much I wanted to run and what kind of training I wanted in the mix, without having to pick a race distance or set a race date. 

The app recently added “B-races,” where you can plan for a low priority race in the middle of your training for a bigger one. They’re also revamping their mobility training sessions, and have a big ol’ roadmap with lots of new features on the way. 

(I can’t really say the same about Strava—not many Runna-inspired features have made it to Strava yet, unless it’s stuff that’s happening under the hood. But it’s still early days, and more may be coming.)

Why I’m a little disappointed

For one thing, I’m disappointed that there isn’t a monthly option. More and more companies are encouraging annual instead of monthly subscriptions, or making that the only option, and it sucks—sure, it’s a lower “monthly” cost if you do the math, but it’s still a big lump sum that you have to cough up at once. That’s a lot to ask for an app that you may not know if you’ll like, or that you may not end up using year-round. 

The other big disappointment is that there’s nothing in this deal for people who were loyal customers of one app—longtime Runna subscribers, or vice versa. One of the biggest reasons for excitement at the companies’ merger was that customers of each app were hoping to be able to add the other at a discount. But that’s not an option. At least they have given some thought to annual subscribers (but not monthly folks—they’re on their own.) 

If you already have an annual subscription to Runna, you can buy the combined subscription and then contact customer support to ask them to extend your membership rather than having the timeframes of both overlap. Runna has a FAQ here for customers upgrading to the combo subscription.

If you already have an annual subscription to Strava, it’s simpler—Strava will calculate how much time you have left on your old subscription, convert that to a dollar amount, and give you a partial refund. (So, if you’re six months into a subscription, you’ll get back half the money you already paid.) This will apparently occur automatically. 

Importantly, the discount works differently on the Strava website versus in the app. If you buy the combo subscription on the website, your refund will be applied as a discount to the combo subscription, so you only pay the difference. If you buy through the app, you’ll get your prorated refund before being charged the new subscription price. It’s the same bottom line either way. Strava’s FAQ on switching your subscription is at the bottom of this page. 

July is the month you’re supposed to get a break from your garden. With most of the planting already finished, you should be sitting back, enjoying a fresh berry margarita in the garden as your plants fulfill their destiny all around you.

But the cycle of summer gardening never truly stops, which means you also need to fit in some weeding and harvesting in between heat domes. Here’s what you should focus on this month.

The daily survey

Take a daily lap around the garden (I try to do mine before the sun gets too high in the sky). Each morning, I do a circuit with my garden hod and a bucket. Take note of how things are doing and what needs more water or perhaps a fertilizer boost, and look for infestations. If you see a weed, pick it and chuck it into the bucket (spoiler: You’ll see many weeds). If something needs to be harvested, add it to the hod. Top up your water features and bee stations and try to spend a few moments appreciating all the hard work over some raspberries or the last of the snap peas. 

Water, water everywhere

The headline for this month is bringing in irrigation, since it’s likely the first time this year you’ll really need it on a consistent basis. As temperatures climb, it’s imperative to have consistent water at the root of your plants. If you do this, they will grow resiliently, forming strong roots and stems that won’t need babying under shade.

Test your irrigation or watering systems if you haven’t yet and get them turned on. Check in for the first week or two and make sure the ground is getting moist about six inches under the topsoil, and adjust the water as necessary. It’s never too late to mulch to conserve water and protect plant roots. Remember that you want a nice thick layer of mulch—an inch isn’t going to do much—but make sure to keep that mulch away from the stems of your plants. 

Deadhead to create stronger and more prolific blooms

Most of the summer blooming flowers are “cut and come again” blooms.  Your snapdragons benefit from a good chop; they’ll branch and grow two blossoms in the same place. If you stay on top of your sweet peas, you might be able to stretch them into late July, but if they start to set pods, don’t be afraid to pull them out to make room for another climbing vegetable or flower. You should be seeing the start of your echinecea, dahlia and daisies at this point of summer, so be sure to stay on top of deadheading so they last into fall. Some flowers, like sunflowers, are single bloom (they bloom only once, on one stem, so one chop and it’s over), so be sure you know which of your flowers are single bloom so you don’t cut away the only bloom you’ll get.  

Turn over peas and other spring vegetables

At some point around now, your peas will start going yellow and crispy from the bottom up. This just means it’s time to turn over the space for summer—hopefully you have some climbing beans or something else to go into the space. I use mine to plant green beans and sugar pumpkins, which will climb up the trellis and hang from the arches. Your spinach, boy choy, and spring broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage have all also flowered by now, so those spaces are ready to turn over for summer or fall as well. Consider bolt resistant lettuce, tomatillos, beans, cucumbers, melon or squash in their place.

Sometime this month, garlic is going to be ready to come out of the ground too. Wait for three or four brown leaves and then harvest with a hand spade (do not try to just pull them out of the ground). Your garlic needs to be dried in order for it to last until winter.  

If you got potatoes into the ground in spring, you can start harvesting them as soon as the plants begin to flower. Use a spade to turn over the earth and then use your hands to find all the baby potatoes. You can let really tiny seed potatoes fall back into the bed, which will help it perennialize. 

Succession plant flowers, lettuce, radish, scallions, beets, kohlrabi and other greens

In the newly empty spaces, remember to keep succession planting going. Get seeds in routinely or plant starts from the nursery. If you go with seeds, you’ll need to work harder to keep them hydrated so they germinate once they’re in the ground. 

Harvest your berries

It is berry season, so be sure you’re getting all of your berries harvested as they’re ready. Raspberries should be coming to an end, with blueberries in full swing. At some point this month, strawberries will be dunzo too, which means you can cut them back fully so they can focus on roots for next year instead of growing runners. (I run the lawnmower over them to accomplish this.)

It’s also time for early fall planting

You should have your fall starts started by the end of July, if you’re growing from seed. These starts won’t go in for a month or two, which gives you enough time to get a tray of seeds going now.

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Summer is DIY season, and if you have some projects planned, you might have noticed that the price of tools can add up quickly. Luckily, whether you’re working on a vehicle or a rain collection system, there are some good deals from Amazon on tools ahead of Prime Day.

Cordless tools

A good cordless tool set will make DIY projects easier to accomplish and save you some time as well. If you already have a set and are looking to expand, or you want to start a tool set, these will keep your DIY momentum going through the summer.

• The DeWalt 20-volt cordless drill set is on sale for $99, 38% off its regular price. This set comes with a drill, a 2-amp-hour battery, a charger, and a tool bag. This is a perfect starter set, as this tool can be used for drilling holes as well as driving hardware, and it comes with a battery so it’s ready to use straight out of the box.

• The DeWalt 20-volt cordless impact driver set is on sale for $99, 38% off its usual price. This set comes with a quarter-inch impact driver, a 2-amp-hour battery, a charger, and a tool bag. This is a good addition to your cordless set if you already have a driver, as it allows you to drive fasteners into tougher material with less effort because of the impact assistance. You can also use this tool as a drill with a bit designed for a quarter-inch impact chuck, making it a versatile tool for a home DIY kit.

• The Makita 12-volt material cutter is on sale for $98, 58% off its typical price. The set comes with a material-cutting multitool, a 12-volt, 2-amp-hour battery, a charger, and a tool bag. This tool can be used to cut rubber, vinyl, and carpet, making it great for flooring, heavy-duty upholstery, and arts and crafts projects.

• The Milwaukee cordless 18-volt random orbital sander is on sale for $102.20, 37% off its regular price. This is a “bare tool” deal, so it doesn’t come with a battery or charger, but it does have a dust collection attachment and a couple of medium-grit sanding discs to get you started. This is a good tool for finishing woodworking projects.

• The DeWalt 20-volt cordless tire inflator/compressor is on sale for $109.94, 39% off its typical price. It’s a tool-only deal, so it doesn’t come with a battery. This is a good addition to a home garage shop or roadside emergency kit, and can be used to inflate car and bike tires.

Bits, wrenches, and drivers

You never truly appreciate the power of having the right-sized wrench or socket until you’ve gotten 90% of the way through removing a panel on your HVAC system to perform some maintenance, only to discover that you can’t undo the last three nuts. A good socket set can help you get through most common home and vehicle maintenance, and is indispensable if you want to save money on handyman costs by tackling chores yourself.

• The Craftsman 159-piece mechanics tool set is on sale for $99, 41% off its regular price. It comes with three ratchet handles, a set of metric sockets and wrenches, a set of SAE sockets and wrenches, a hand driver with an assortment of bit types, a set of bit extensions and adapters, and a toolbox. This is a good set to start out with for most DIY auto maintenance, as well as for projects around the house like changing filters or assembling furniture.

• The Craftsman 230-piece mechanics tool set is on sale for $99, 50% off its regular price. This set comes with a range of both metric and SAE sockets, a set of metric and SAE wrenches, three ratchet handles, a hand driver with an assortment of bits, ratchet extensions and adapters, a set of socket-drive fastener bits for screws, a set of hex wrenches, and a three-drawer tool box. This is a good set to build a top-notch DIY tool kit for your home shop, and can work for driving most types of fasteners.

• The Craftsman two-driver set is on sale for $4.98, 50% off its typical price. This set is just one Philips head and a flat head screwdriver. This is a basic set, good for building a home maintenance kit or a go bag for when you want to DIY on the road.

• The Makita 100-piece impact driver bit set is on sale for $24.99, 55% off its regular price. The set comes with a variety of driver bit types, including Phillips, flat head, and star tip, as well as a bit extension for reaching into tight spaces. This is a good set to cover most common hardware types and sizes you will come across for woodworking, repair, and maintenance projects.

Have you heard of The Velvet Sundown? Me neither. but the indie rock band has been heating up Spotify’s charts this week, with nearly 600,000 monthly listeners presumably jamming out to the band’s limp, country rock glurge. “Dust on the Wind” (not a cover of the Kansas song “Dust in the Wind”) has over 500,000 plays on the world’s most popular streaming service. So the band’s career is blowing up, as the kids used to say. But The Velvet Sundown doesn’t seem to exist. All signs suggest everything credited to the band is entirely AI generated: the music, the band photos, the album covers. All of it is created by computers.

The fake band’s story has been covered by PC Gamer, our pals at Mashable, Tech Radar and countless other sources. But The Velvet Sundown is not alone. They are one of an army of fake-seeming musicians on music streaming services, and they aren’t even the most successful.

How to tell whether a band exists

It’s not possible to determine for sure whether music was made by computers just by listening to it, so the best you can do is speculate, but I strongly suspect Velvet Sundown’s music is AI generated.

Exhibit one: The music

Their music is so relentlessly mediocre, so devoid of personality, that it couldn’t have come from humans. Everything from the lyrics to the song structures to the instrumentation is boilerplate. It’s not even good AI prompting. It’s not that The Velvet Sundown’s music is bad; it’s that it’s not anything. There’s a difference between the sound of, say, an electric guitar and a soundwave made by digitally smelting, combining, and imitating the sounds of countless other electric guitars. It’s hard to describe the difference, exactly, but it’s there. Also: For what it’s worth, French music streaming platform Deezer’s AI detection tool has declared that Velvet Sundown’s music is “AI-generated content.”

Exhibit two: the photo

The photo above is on the header of the X account associated with The Velvet Sundown. While there aren’t any extra fingers or other telltale “this is AI” signs in the image, it feels AI. Like the music, it’s hard to explain the difference between a human face and an amalgamation of millions of human faces, and it’s hard to explain the deadness in the eyes of AI “people,” but it’s there. More tellingly, though, this is the one of two images of the band I can find online. How many guys in bands do you know who don’t like being photographed?

Exhibit three: the context

Until an X account was created this week, the Velvet Sundown’s entire online presence consisted of a few songs on streaming services. No website, no TikTok, no Instagram, no SoundCloud, no fan forum, no upcoming gigs, no nothing. It’s just not how real bands do things in 2025, where an online existence is expected. Only fake bands suddenly appear on streaming services, especially bands polished enough to be as mediocre as The Velvet Sundown. According to the Spotify bio, Velvet Sunset’s members are Gabe Farrow, Lennie West, Milo Raines, and Orion “Rio” Del Mar. I can find no evidence of these people having played with other bands, or existing.

Exhibit four: The law of averages

Spotify doesn’t announce how much of the music on its service is made by AI, but at this point, I guess the answer is “most of it.” It’s just so much easier to create an AI-generated piece of music than make your own. To be in a real band, you have to spend years practicing music, then find other people who want to play music with you, rent a studio, write the song, etc. It takes years to go from nothing to “here’s my first song.” It took Leonard Cohen five years to record “Hallelujah.” It took me eight minutes (I timed it) to use Claude.ai and Suno to create radio-ready country hit “Waiting to Die.“

The AI music invasion

The Velvet Sunset are not alone. There are entire genres of music online that sound like they were made by machines. The Velvets (as fans call them) are not even the most successful fake-seeming band on Spotify. Take a listen to the Jazz for Study playlist. The first “artist” listed, “The Super Smart Trio,” has no presence online outside of music streaming services, has released a total of 12 songs, and its biggest hit, “Ease Up,” has been played over three million times. Or the “Tate Jackson Trio.” They have over 12 million plays for “It’s in the Middle of the Night,” but they don’t have a website and there’s no evidence they’ve ever played a show. Check out lofi chill, a Spotify-curated playlist where “artists” like “Mellow Mirror” rack up millions of plays, despite only having released 12 songs, and showing no sign of existing. I can’t say for sure whether it’s all AI, but it walks like a duck and it’s quacking really loud.

Why we should care

If someone’s enjoying “Dust on the Wind” while they’re studying or planning a killing spree, what difference does it make if Orion “Rio” Del Mar (the wacky one) is fake? There’s no use in shaking your fist at a thunderstorm; the takeover of everything good and human is happening, no matter how you or I feel about it. But (as illustrated by my country hip-hop masterpiece “Waiting to Die“) we don’t have forever in this life, and I’d like to choose whether or not to partake in AI-generated art experiences. When I hit play on a song, I’m entering into an unspoken agreement that somewhere, somehow, a human being sat down and tried to express something. That’s why I like music.

Back in the 1970s, when Kraftwerk imagined the machine-generated music of the future, at least it was cool: robotic, precise, cold, hypnotic, and undeniably futuristic. The AI music flooding Spotify today isn’t visionary; it’s just mediocre human music made by computers that were trained to be boring. Can we just get an opt-out button? The whole thing has me so mad I had AI write a KROQ-ready pop punk song about it.

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