I’ve been ambivalent at best about Stieg Larsson’s dark, bloody mega-bestselling trilogy, featuring a crusading journalist and a body art-loving young computer whiz (She may be skinny, but she’s strong! And she’s had a boob job!) who team up to solve crimes. The title character is supposed to be hard-as-nails and independent and wise beyond [...]

Death Cab’s Chris Walla On UGGs, Nine Inch Nails, and Bacon as the New Vegan By Marc Hogan Chris Walla is best known as the guitarist for Death Cab for Cutie, but the Pacific Northwest musician is also a solo artist and veteran producer in his own right. But while Walla produced Codes & Keys, [...]

I’ve suddenly become obsessed with this song. Own it here.

(ricky’s cousin?) A pair of old faves return, plus a whole host of new faves waiting to win your heart. Jay Reatard gets reissued and the Profound Lore label brings us, “pure funeral doom-dirge art.” It’s a crazy morning, so I only have time to all out a few — you tell me what I [...]

What a terrible start to the weekend.

My hero and his band, destroying it in France. After the jump, “Disco 2000″

We’ll let this one speak for itself. Still no word on exactly when Justice‘s second album will actually drop on Ed Banger, but we’re told sometime “later this year.”

Well this is definitely my random/awesome find for the day: Funk/soul singer Nikka Costa recorded a cover of Mumford & Sons’ hit “Little Lion Man.” Costa takes the tempo down a notch and adds a funky reggae flair to it. Grab the song here for just $0.49.

Kitchen Sessions: Killer Mike performs “Burn” from 3 Little Digs on Vimeo. I know there are a lot of people who feel that hip-hop would be a lot more accessible to them it if retained the sociopolitical edge it had in the late 1980s and early ’90s. It’s not something I feel, personally, but I [...]

Battles | Wall Street | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo. On June 7, Battles will end a four-year hiatus with the release of highly-anticipated second record Gloss Drop. So what’s the logical thing to do? Go to Paris with filmmaker Vincent Moon and record inside a room that looks, more or [...]

Happy Birthday, you fabulous asshole.

Is there anything Justin Vernon’s voice can’t do? Alone-in-a-cabin folk music, folk music inspired by Greek mythology, grooving R&B, hip-hop… and Bonnie Raitt? This is awesome.

Bob Dylan’s songs are in rock’s genetic DNA. Here’s another nice way of marking his 70th birthday: looking back at the breadcrumb trail of famous covers of his material. This is just a smattering, because A) to attempt an exhaustive catalog is madman’s work, and B) I’d rather hear you guys chime in with yours. [...]

Relatively light overall today — let’s get started!

Some great stuff this week! Below the jump, we’ll find the new Pete & The Pirates, Art Brut, Comet Gain, Barbara Panther, and more!

Buke and Gass are named for the instruments its members play: Aron Sanchez plays the gass (a homemade guitar/bass combo, using strings from both instruments, quite fascinating to see up close), while Arone Dyer sings and plays the buke (a modified baritone ukulele). Saturday night at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, opening for the amazing [...]

While it’s not exactly the album they’ve alluded to since forming a few years back (that’s not due until 2012), Mexican Summer‘s proper pressing of Light Asylum‘s debut EP is welcome indeed. The vinyl version is still a few weeks away, but you can snag its digital rendition at eMusic right now or sample the [...]

(barely does it justice) Last night at New York’s Bowery Ballroom there was a concert in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Michael Azerrad’s seminal work on independent music, Our Band Could Be Your Life. And it was great. The concept was clever and worked perfectly: a who’s who of today’s indie all-stars (including eMusic [...]

We can sense your skepticism from here. But go with us on this one. Because rather than being a lab-devised, formulaic chart-killer, we see Gaga as the latest in a long line of defiantly strange, proudly odd and fiercely idiosyncratic pop stars. Her latest, Born This Way, purloins the best bits of European techno and [...]

Have a great weekend, everybody. Enjoy some Blondie. See you all here on Monday, when we resume our normally scheduled programming. Couldn’t leave for the weekend without posting this song.