Behind an unassuming frosted glass storefront on Jefferson Boulevard lies a wonderland of contemporary art aimed at serious collectors. We're talking about Tureen, perhaps the most ambitious project-based gallery to land in our artistically inclined city. Owners Cody Fitzsimmons and Chris Scott intentionally kept the former pharmacy's original tin ceiling and tile floors to set off minimalist and modern works of sculpture, paper and painting to their best advantage. Created by underrepresented talents from early career to museum quality, Tureen's stable has already become a favorite of collectors and art advisers in the know. The gallery's shows are always engaging and thought-provoking, and its location outside the Design District assures that visitors who turn up do so because they really get the spot's sophisticated mix of work.

Outsider art is defined as work "made by self-taught individuals, who are untutored in the traditional arts with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art world." With this philosophy in mind, Ephemeral Space has spent the last year showing a mixed bag of work that ranges from flyers saved from the legendary Starck Club to pencil drawings made in Huntsville Prison and lots more. The beauty of this quirky concept isn't just in its off-the-beaten-path philosophy; it also lies in its affordability. The goods may be odd, but the odds are there is an original work in your budget (even under $100) just waiting to be purchased, making it the ideal gallery for creative weirdos looking to enliven a bare wall.

Country music might be one of — if not the — most big-tent musical genres in existence. Even so, a case could be made for the value in pushing boundaries, and few country-inclined artists are doing more to put their own indelible stamp on country music than singer-songwriter Angel White. The fifth-generation Texan, who hails from Cleburne, has burst out of the gate with his debut EP, Ghost of the West Volume I, which juxtaposes the slow-burn menace of "Outlaw" with the soaring, heavy rotation-ready "If You're Gonna Leave." It marks White as a musician more than comfortable with blurring the boundaries between tradition and innovation.

The news involving DART is almost always a bummer — delays, incidents, construction, suburbs looking to cut funding, what have you — so it was downright refreshing earlier this year when the area's public transit outfit announced a partnership with Dallas legend Erykah Badu on the eve of her 53rd birthday. Wrapped Badu buses and trains, bearing eye-catching designs created by Badu in partnership with DART, pop up here and there on city streets and will continue to do so through the end of 2024. They're a vivid, visual reminder of the value of fostering creativity within a city hard-wired for cold, hard capitalism.

If you've never spent an afternoon rifling through record store bins, only to discover a lost gem tucked away in the stacks, it's possible The Number One Set and Sound might not elicit a delighted gasp of recognition. Local music legends Danny Balis and Jeff "Skin" Wade, who previously joined forces in the late, great Bastards of Soul, re-teamed after that group's dissolution in the wake of Chadwick Murray's untimely death to create Silver Skylarks, a dynamic duo whose sinuous, striking jams evoke the thrill of crate-digging, and whose debut LP delivers one bona-fide, vintage-flavored banger after another.

The Venn diagram of financial planners and singer-songwriters who've turned heads at the Kerrville Folk Festival probably overlaps minutely. Like, maybe there's just one artist like that in all of Dallas? Enter Stephanie Sammons, a Dallas-based financial planner who has also crafted one of the year's most arresting, beautiful records with her debut, Time and Evolution. Produced by folk eminence Mary Bragg, the LP traces Sammons' own reckoning with being queer in a conservative, Southern religious culture. Far from a furious screed, it is instead tender, inquisitive and often profoundly moving. These songs are the textbook definition of soulful.

The esoteric and avant-garde have always struggled for a foothold in Dallas, a land besotted by the shiny, expensive and simple. The fascinating, different or groundbreaking is often relegated to the corners, away from the glare of the mainstream, far from the brunching crowds. So, when upstarts like New Media Contemporary, an artist-run gallery, studio and research space founded by James Talambas, make their presence known, it's a case of run, don't walk for those who value art that pushes the envelope and electrifies the soul. Interdisciplinary boundary-breaking is tough to find — patronize those who prize it.

Many of this year's biggest songs by the most popular artists all have three little words in common: "featuring Post Malone." Taylor Swift and Beyoncé featured Malone on "Fortnight" and "LEVII'S JEANS," respectively. In both songs, he is cast as a love interest opposite the towering pop divas. Not bad for a guy with "always tired" tattooed on his face. He has also been collaborating with country artists, performing with the likes of Morgan Wallen and Reba McEntire to build up some cowboy cred ahead of his country album F-1 Trillion. Artists looking to craft a chart-topping single should be taking notes. A Posty collab seems to be the secret sauce.

We're not usually ones to take sides in drama, but it's hard not to when one side is an established local band and the other is a robot. In March, the Denton-based blues rock band The Infamists learned that an unauthorized album full of 45-second songs had been uploaded to their Spotify page. Between the brevity of the songs and the fact that they sounded like garbage, the band quickly deduced that the album was AI-generated. With the help of other artists who had been through the same thing and an effective social media campaign, the dubious album was taken off streaming. Though we still don't know who was behind this stunt, we're glad The Infamists found recourse to silence them.

When the influential TikTok food critic Keith Lee visited Dallas in January, all eyes were on the restaurants he chose to review. Businesses such as brunch spot Brunchaholics in DeSoto and Pakistani-TexMex ghost kitchen Halal Fusionz in Farmers Branch received praise and experienced "the Keith Lee effect," which refers to businesses receiving a boost based on Lee's recommendation. Food truck Sweetly Seasoned was not so lucky, as a viral scandal involving the owners pocketing a $4,000 tip meant to be shared by the staff resulted in its closure. We may be dealing with the aftermath of Keith Lee Week for years.