One hot minute with Terri Nunn and Dave Navarro

Dave Navarro and Berlin's Terri Nunn (is there any female musician in town Navarro is not friendly with?) teamed up last week to record Olivia Newton-John's dreamy "Magic" for Los Angeles-based charity organization Project Angel Food. Newton-John was honored over the weekend at Project Angel Food's 15th Annual Angel Awards for her work on the importance of early breast cancer detection. The good folks at PAF were kind enough to give us a minute-long sneak preview of their cover, which will be available in full on Friday at both Navarro's Mania TV website and at Berlinpage.com. 

Oh 1980,  how we miss you still.

--Charlie Amter

For tonight's taping of FNMTV, MTV's Friday night video show glammed up for 2008 with video premieres, appearances and performances, 7,000 people requested tickets. Only 400 made it in to the Hollywood studio but it was a hooting, squealing, dressed and tanned to the nines crowd, all of them amped up to see tonight's featured performer, Miley Cyrus, whose new album, "Breakout," does exactly what the title promises but with a little sugar sprinkled on top.

MTV, what with its reputation, unfairly earned or not, for shortening the kiddies' attention span, is going to be the last channel that keeps anyone waiting, so Cyrus (pictured, left) came out fast and furious with "7 Things," a passionate song that lets her play and vamp. Skipping around FNMTV's circular stage in a plaid mini with chain belts and a mane of brunette curls she tossed about to the delight of the crowd, Cyrus seemed at home on the stage and also consummately aware of her power over it. There wasn't a moment of hesitation -- Cyrus was all movement, smiles, seizing the moment. It was a deliriously confidant performance, and on some level, a relief. A bazillion kids dazzled by the Hannah Montana magic aren't wrong after all. Plus, who doesn't like to see some rock 'n' roll devil horns flashed by a Disney princess?

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

On Tuesday night, I showed up a little early at the Mayan for Bloc Party, whose intricately austere set confirmed they are rapidly becoming contemporary post-punk's ELO, which is needed and awesome. Opener Does It Offend You, Yeah? (whom I've covered before, and liked) surprised me yet again,  because, judging by the audience squeals of hormonal delight at the "Let's Make Out" intro, they seem to have fully crossed over into L.A.'s idiosyncratic sorority-punk mainstream.

But the big surprise of the night was the first opener Friendly Fires, who pulled off a trick I've been waiting for a band to fully realize -- that cowbell-heavy Liquid Liquid dance beats would sound fantastic with gigantic shoegaze-ambient guitars and the shimmering house synths that too many peers, such as M83, can't seem to use right. 

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You know what bothers me about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” -- now officially the song of the summer, after spending five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100? Not the auto-erotic tease of the lyrics, which keeps Perry inside her head rather than beneath the waistband of some lovely’s Victoria’s Secret finery. Not her groaning, quintessentially brunet vocal delivery, which is actually kind of sexy, built around a neo-burlesque bump of a track and the luscious word hook “cherry Chapstick.”

I'm personally astonished that, until Bow Wow's forthcoming video for "Marco Polo," which debuts tonight on FNMTV, no one's made a hit song out of the chant from the ubiquitous but tedious swimming pool game. But I'm not at all surprised that Soulja Boy shows up on this version we caught at Wednesday night's taping, as it seems right up his alley: Take a nonsensical phrase (but this time, a historical reference!), repeat it ad infinitum over doofus synth loops, speed your way through the verses and hope no one notices that your rhymes break new ground in wackness ("This is not the Matrix, but I am the Oracle / Want to get with me? The question is rhetorical").

Remember Amy Kuney? She's the one who does all those fab covers on youtube.com -- a cut above the average gamine songwriter -- and writes some pretty sweet originals to boot. Soundboard featured her take on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a while ago.

Well, turns out we're not the only ones trolling for her vids. Got this note from her the other day:

Hello Ann,

It's Amy Kuney again...

Guess what? Damien Rice saw my cover of his song "Blower's Daughter" on youtube, and has invited me to fly to Iceland to open shows for him! Needless to say...I am pulling my life savings and buying a round trip to Iceland. He has been an inspiration to me since I was 12 and I am still pinching myself. I can't believe it. We leave Sunday. I'm opening some shows, and then I am singing "Coldwater" with him as a duet. I can die happy now... haha

Don't die, Amy! You have so much ahead! And we're rooting for you.

-- Ann Powers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

FNMTV: Miley Cyrus performs; video debuts from Hawthorne Heights, All Time Low, David Banner

For tonight's taping of FNMTV, MTV's Friday night video show glammed up for 2008 with video premieres, appearances and performances, 7,000 people requested tickets. Only 400 made it in to the Hollywood studio but it was a hooting, squealing, dressed and tanned to the nines crowd, all of them amped up to see tonight's featured performer, Miley Cyrus, whose new album, "Breakout," does exactly what the title promises but with a little sugar sprinkled on top.

MTV, what with its reputation, unfairly earned or not, for shortening the kiddies' attention span, is going to be the last channel that keeps anyone waiting, so Cyrus (pictured, left) came out fast and furious with "7 Things," a passionate song that lets her play and vamp. Skipping around FNMTV's circular stage in a plaid mini with chain belts and a mane of brunette curls she tossed about to the delight of the crowd, Cyrus seemed at home on the stage and also consummately aware of her power over it. There wasn't a moment of hesitation -- Cyrus was all movement, smiles, seizing the moment. It was a deliriously confidant performance, and on some level, a relief. A bazillion kids dazzled by the Hannah Montana magic aren't wrong after all. Plus, who doesn't like to see some rock 'n' roll devil horns flashed by a Disney princess?

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

On Tuesday night, I showed up a little early at the Mayan for Bloc Party, whose intricately austere set confirmed they are rapidly becoming contemporary post-punk's ELO, which is needed and awesome. Opener Does It Offend You, Yeah? (whom I've covered before, and liked) surprised me yet again,  because, judging by the audience squeals of hormonal delight at the "Let's Make Out" intro, they seem to have fully crossed over into L.A.'s idiosyncratic sorority-punk mainstream.

But the big surprise of the night was the first opener Friendly Fires, who pulled off a trick I've been waiting for a band to fully realize -- that cowbell-heavy Liquid Liquid dance beats would sound fantastic with gigantic shoegaze-ambient guitars and the shimmering house synths that too many peers, such as M83, can't seem to use right. 

Technorati Profile

You know what bothers me about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” -- now officially the song of the summer, after spending five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100? Not the auto-erotic tease of the lyrics, which keeps Perry inside her head rather than beneath the waistband of some lovely’s Victoria’s Secret finery. Not her groaning, quintessentially brunet vocal delivery, which is actually kind of sexy, built around a neo-burlesque bump of a track and the luscious word hook “cherry Chapstick.”

I'm personally astonished that, until Bow Wow's forthcoming video for "Marco Polo," which debuts tonight on FNMTV, no one's made a hit song out of the chant from the ubiquitous but tedious swimming pool game. But I'm not at all surprised that Soulja Boy shows up on this version we caught at Wednesday night's taping, as it seems right up his alley: Take a nonsensical phrase (but this time, a historical reference!), repeat it ad infinitum over doofus synth loops, speed your way through the verses and hope no one notices that your rhymes break new ground in wackness ("This is not the Matrix, but I am the Oracle / Want to get with me? The question is rhetorical").

Remember Amy Kuney? She's the one who does all those fab covers on youtube.com -- a cut above the average gamine songwriter -- and writes some pretty sweet originals to boot. Soundboard featured her take on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a while ago.

Well, turns out we're not the only ones trolling for her vids. Got this note from her the other day:

Hello Ann,

It's Amy Kuney again...

Guess what? Damien Rice saw my cover of his song "Blower's Daughter" on youtube, and has invited me to fly to Iceland to open shows for him! Needless to say...I am pulling my life savings and buying a round trip to Iceland. He has been an inspiration to me since I was 12 and I am still pinching myself. I can't believe it. We leave Sunday. I'm opening some shows, and then I am singing "Coldwater" with him as a duet. I can die happy now... haha

Don't die, Amy! You have so much ahead! And we're rooting for you.

-- Ann Powers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger: There's life after a one-hit wonder

When I met Sean Nelson in his now-hometown of Seattle in 2001, the L.A. native had already peaked as a pop star.

His band, Harvey Danger, had one big hit perched atop the Modern Rock charts 10 years ago -- “Flagpole Sitta,” a lovely burst of poison sunshine that perfectly captured alt-rock’s transition from grunge-era heaviness to Death Cab-style cheerful neuroticism. (You remember it: “I’m not sick, but I’m not well,” Sean sang, his choir-boy tenor cracking on the high note. If you've forgotten, this YouTube video should jar your memory.)

“10 years ago (pretty much exactly), we had the number one song on KROQ, and sold out the Troubadour, The Roxy and The Viper Room during the summer. Next week we'll play in front of 60 people. And we're happy,” Sean wrote in a recent e-mail announcing Saturday’s acoustic Harvey Danger show at Largo.

On Tuesday night, I showed up a little early at the Mayan for Bloc Party, whose intricately austere set confirmed they are rapidly becoming contemporary post-punk's ELO, which is needed and awesome. Opener Does It Offend You, Yeah? (whom I've covered before, and liked) surprised me yet again,  because, judging by the audience squeals of hormonal delight at the "Let's Make Out" intro, they seem to have fully crossed over into L.A.'s idiosyncratic sorority-punk mainstream.

But the big surprise of the night was the first opener Friendly Fires, who pulled off a trick I've been waiting for a band to fully realize -- that cowbell-heavy Liquid Liquid dance beats would sound fantastic with gigantic shoegaze-ambient guitars and the shimmering house synths that too many peers, such as M83, can't seem to use right. 

Technorati Profile

You know what bothers me about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” -- now officially the song of the summer, after spending five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100? Not the auto-erotic tease of the lyrics, which keeps Perry inside her head rather than beneath the waistband of some lovely’s Victoria’s Secret finery. Not her groaning, quintessentially brunet vocal delivery, which is actually kind of sexy, built around a neo-burlesque bump of a track and the luscious word hook “cherry Chapstick.”

I'm personally astonished that, until Bow Wow's forthcoming video for "Marco Polo," which debuts tonight on FNMTV, no one's made a hit song out of the chant from the ubiquitous but tedious swimming pool game. But I'm not at all surprised that Soulja Boy shows up on this version we caught at Wednesday night's taping, as it seems right up his alley: Take a nonsensical phrase (but this time, a historical reference!), repeat it ad infinitum over doofus synth loops, speed your way through the verses and hope no one notices that your rhymes break new ground in wackness ("This is not the Matrix, but I am the Oracle / Want to get with me? The question is rhetorical").

Remember Amy Kuney? She's the one who does all those fab covers on youtube.com -- a cut above the average gamine songwriter -- and writes some pretty sweet originals to boot. Soundboard featured her take on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a while ago.

Well, turns out we're not the only ones trolling for her vids. Got this note from her the other day:

Hello Ann,

It's Amy Kuney again...

Guess what? Damien Rice saw my cover of his song "Blower's Daughter" on youtube, and has invited me to fly to Iceland to open shows for him! Needless to say...I am pulling my life savings and buying a round trip to Iceland. He has been an inspiration to me since I was 12 and I am still pinching myself. I can't believe it. We leave Sunday. I'm opening some shows, and then I am singing "Coldwater" with him as a duet. I can die happy now... haha

Don't die, Amy! You have so much ahead! And we're rooting for you.

-- Ann Powers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Friendly Fires gaze at their shoes, find them dancing

On Tuesday night, I showed up a little early at the Mayan for Bloc Party, whose intricately austere set confirmed they are rapidly becoming contemporary post-punk's ELO, which is needed and awesome. Opener Does It Offend You, Yeah? (whom I've covered before, and liked) surprised me yet again,  because, judging by the audience squeals of hormonal delight at the "Let's Make Out" intro, they seem to have fully crossed over into L.A.'s idiosyncratic sorority-punk mainstream.

But the big surprise of the night was the first opener Friendly Fires, who pulled off a trick I've been waiting for a band to fully realize -- that cowbell-heavy Liquid Liquid dance beats would sound fantastic with gigantic shoegaze-ambient guitars and the shimmering house synths that too many peers, such as M83, can't seem to use right. 

Technorati Profile

You know what bothers me about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” -- now officially the song of the summer, after spending five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100? Not the auto-erotic tease of the lyrics, which keeps Perry inside her head rather than beneath the waistband of some lovely’s Victoria’s Secret finery. Not her groaning, quintessentially brunet vocal delivery, which is actually kind of sexy, built around a neo-burlesque bump of a track and the luscious word hook “cherry Chapstick.”

I'm personally astonished that, until Bow Wow's forthcoming video for "Marco Polo," which debuts tonight on FNMTV, no one's made a hit song out of the chant from the ubiquitous but tedious swimming pool game. But I'm not at all surprised that Soulja Boy shows up on this version we caught at Wednesday night's taping, as it seems right up his alley: Take a nonsensical phrase (but this time, a historical reference!), repeat it ad infinitum over doofus synth loops, speed your way through the verses and hope no one notices that your rhymes break new ground in wackness ("This is not the Matrix, but I am the Oracle / Want to get with me? The question is rhetorical").

Remember Amy Kuney? She's the one who does all those fab covers on youtube.com -- a cut above the average gamine songwriter -- and writes some pretty sweet originals to boot. Soundboard featured her take on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a while ago.

Well, turns out we're not the only ones trolling for her vids. Got this note from her the other day:

Hello Ann,

It's Amy Kuney again...

Guess what? Damien Rice saw my cover of his song "Blower's Daughter" on youtube, and has invited me to fly to Iceland to open shows for him! Needless to say...I am pulling my life savings and buying a round trip to Iceland. He has been an inspiration to me since I was 12 and I am still pinching myself. I can't believe it. We leave Sunday. I'm opening some shows, and then I am singing "Coldwater" with him as a duet. I can die happy now... haha

Don't die, Amy! You have so much ahead! And we're rooting for you.

-- Ann Powers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Critic’s Notebook: Katy Perry never ‘Kissed a Girl’

You know what bothers me about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” -- now officially the song of the summer, after spending five weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100? Not the auto-erotic tease of the lyrics, which keeps Perry inside her head rather than beneath the waistband of some lovely’s Victoria’s Secret finery. Not her groaning, quintessentially brunet vocal delivery, which is actually kind of sexy, built around a neo-burlesque bump of a track and the luscious word hook “cherry Chapstick.”

I'm personally astonished that, until Bow Wow's forthcoming video for "Marco Polo," which debuts tonight on FNMTV, no one's made a hit song out of the chant from the ubiquitous but tedious swimming pool game. But I'm not at all surprised that Soulja Boy shows up on this version we caught at Wednesday night's taping, as it seems right up his alley: Take a nonsensical phrase (but this time, a historical reference!), repeat it ad infinitum over doofus synth loops, speed your way through the verses and hope no one notices that your rhymes break new ground in wackness ("This is not the Matrix, but I am the Oracle / Want to get with me? The question is rhetorical").

Remember Amy Kuney? She's the one who does all those fab covers on youtube.com -- a cut above the average gamine songwriter -- and writes some pretty sweet originals to boot. Soundboard featured her take on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a while ago.

Well, turns out we're not the only ones trolling for her vids. Got this note from her the other day:

Hello Ann,

It's Amy Kuney again...

Guess what? Damien Rice saw my cover of his song "Blower's Daughter" on youtube, and has invited me to fly to Iceland to open shows for him! Needless to say...I am pulling my life savings and buying a round trip to Iceland. He has been an inspiration to me since I was 12 and I am still pinching myself. I can't believe it. We leave Sunday. I'm opening some shows, and then I am singing "Coldwater" with him as a duet. I can die happy now... haha

Don't die, Amy! You have so much ahead! And we're rooting for you.

-- Ann Powers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

FNMTV: Danity Kane, Bow Wow, Chromeo and Tokyo Police Club debut

I'm personally astonished that, until Bow Wow's forthcoming video for "Marco Polo," which debuts tonight on FNMTV, no one's made a hit song out of the chant from the ubiquitous but tedious swimming pool game. But I'm not at all surprised that Soulja Boy shows up on this version we caught at Wednesday night's taping, as it seems right up his alley: Take a nonsensical phrase (but this time, a historical reference!), repeat it ad infinitum over doofus synth loops, speed your way through the verses and hope no one notices that your rhymes break new ground in wackness ("This is not the Matrix, but I am the Oracle / Want to get with me? The question is rhetorical").

Remember Amy Kuney? She's the one who does all those fab covers on youtube.com -- a cut above the average gamine songwriter -- and writes some pretty sweet originals to boot. Soundboard featured her take on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a while ago.

Well, turns out we're not the only ones trolling for her vids. Got this note from her the other day:

Hello Ann,

It's Amy Kuney again...

Guess what? Damien Rice saw my cover of his song "Blower's Daughter" on youtube, and has invited me to fly to Iceland to open shows for him! Needless to say...I am pulling my life savings and buying a round trip to Iceland. He has been an inspiration to me since I was 12 and I am still pinching myself. I can't believe it. We leave Sunday. I'm opening some shows, and then I am singing "Coldwater" with him as a duet. I can die happy now... haha

Don't die, Amy! You have so much ahead! And we're rooting for you.

-- Ann Powers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Damien Rice goes all Youtube-y for Amy Kuney

Remember Amy Kuney? She's the one who does all those fab covers on youtube.com -- a cut above the average gamine songwriter -- and writes some pretty sweet originals to boot. Soundboard featured her take on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" a while ago.

Well, turns out we're not the only ones trolling for her vids. Got this note from her the other day:

Hello Ann,

It's Amy Kuney again...

Guess what? Damien Rice saw my cover of his song "Blower's Daughter" on youtube, and has invited me to fly to Iceland to open shows for him! Needless to say...I am pulling my life savings and buying a round trip to Iceland. He has been an inspiration to me since I was 12 and I am still pinching myself. I can't believe it. We leave Sunday. I'm opening some shows, and then I am singing "Coldwater" with him as a duet. I can die happy now... haha

Don't die, Amy! You have so much ahead! And we're rooting for you.

-- Ann Powers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

China’s music markets are forbidden cities to some singers

Just as the world media is beginning to dip a toe into the busy Chinese underground music scene, the New York Times has this unsettling story of how in anticipation of the Olympics, the government in Beijing has passed new laws forbidding foreign entertainers who have run afowl of their censorship policies. The vague but fairly sinister new rules ban from China "Those who used to take part in activities that harm our nation’s sovereignty" and also artists who "advocate obscenity or feudalism and superstition.”

It's hard to say exactly who or what qualifies as advocating "superstition" or "fuedalism" in song, but after the government's severe frowning over Bjork's Tibet-amended edition of "Declare Independence" at a Shanghai concert this year, that topic is presumably off-limits for foreigners. It'll be interesting to see how or if these rules will affect homegrown acts, as these new laws apparently also apply to performers from Hong Kong and Taiwan, two territories governed by China but who enjoy a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy.

It's hard to imagine how China can continue to ramp up its economy while keeping such draconian rules about who can entertain its growing concert-going classes, so after the Olympics are over, wait and see if these new rules indicate a larger grab at media and entertainment control by Beijing.

-August Brown

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Feist counts to four on ‘Sesame Street,’ bears most unwarranted commenter hate of ’08

To all you Brooklyn Vegan trolls who think this is anything short of devastatingly adorable, please get some sunshine and a Popsicle or something. Sincerely, Soundboard.

-- August Brown

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Black Iris updates the ad jingle for Cadillac CTS

Every once in a while, a car commercial captures the collective imagination -- all because of its soundtrack. This summer, it's Boston-based advertising agency Modernista!’s sleek spot for Cadillac CTS, colloquially known as “Metal” and officially called "Accessories."

But what happens when the song in question is performed by a musical collective no one outside the ad industry has heard of? Pure chaos, apparently.

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Copenhagen calling: Alphabeat arriving in U.S. this fall

"60 Minutes" is fascinated with Denmark: The venerable CBS news magazine has aired this segment on the country at least twice over the last year (the piece explores why the Danes are at the top of the “world map of happiness”).

And while Morley Safer and company draw few conclusions as to why the Danes consistently top the annual survey that ranks countries by how happy they are (by Britain's University of Leicester), we’d like to offer up one reason why the kids in Copenhagen seem so sprightly: It’s the music. Exhibit A is Denmark’s hot-right-now Alphabeat.

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Emmys give knuckle bump to will.i.am; more videos on the way

Whether it's the Grammys, Oscars or Bravo's new entree into handing out coveted paperweights, awards culture is typically a slow-moving, conservative beast. Too often, the least controversial choice wins. Why do we keep watching? Well, there are all those pretty dresses and occasionally there's a Dickensian twist or flitter of progressive thinking.

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Coldplay is for all of us

It's Coldplay week! With the band's bombastically titled new long-player, "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," officially coming out in a mere six days (this is after the leak, of course, and the stream), fans of giant rock across several continents are preparing to spend all summer thrilling to the poetic fulminations of Chris Martin and his dudes. Sure, the tour was delayed, but bully for us -- L.A. is now the opening city! After that free show in New York, grrr.

Making life even better for little Apple Martin, Dad's new single, "Viva La Vida," is burning up the iTunes charts and almost -- not quite -- toppling Top 100's reigning couple, Lil' Wayne and Leona Lewis. And if you haven't downloaded the thing, you're singing it anyway, because it's in the bestest iTunes commercial ever. Sorry, Bono!

All of this makes Amy Kuney's new cover of "La Vida" all the more pleasurable. The California-based ingenue has some fine tunes of her own; if I were Eleni Mandell, I'd be a little bit worried about keeping hold of my niche. Kuney, who's only 22, loves to cover songs as much as the next YouTube habitue. (Anyone remember Marié Digby?) This is Kuney's latest more-than-karaoke moment.

What makes this clip special is her harmonizing with herself (something she also did covering the Ellen Page-Michael Cera duet from "Juno," playable on her MySpace page) and especially the private quality of the performance -- though her voice is especially lovely, her delivery's quite plain and inward-turning, like someone singing to herself. Which is what so many people are doing right now, thanks to Martin's maddeningly hooky chorus about formerly ruling the world.

So, enjoy Amy Kuney reflecting the reality of singers in the shower across this fine land.

-- Ann Powers

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Au Clair de la Lune: The “Take-Away” videos of Vincent Moon

"[Filmmaker Andrei] Tarkovsky... has a very good quotation in his book about the function of art being a function of communication directly between an artist, in this case, and the community. I think that's really important to the way that I work... I value very much the contact with the local people who are organizing the gig and finding out what their conditions are like and what the music in that area is like and I also value contact with the audience directly... If you're an improviser, you need to have feedback. You can't exist in a vacuum."

-- musician Fred Frith in the 1990 documentary, "Step Across the Border"

In French video director Vincent Moon's world, music is an intrinsic part of the landscape, as permanent and immutable as the artists he films performing on rooftops, urban street corners, tenement hallways and abandoned churches.

"Everything is spontaneous," he said from his home in Paris last Friday. "It should be. I'm going to the reality... I'm not trained to get the shot... more of an improviser."

Today, the online video channel, crackle.com (Sony Pictures' new foray into web entertainment) begins hosting a four-"season" series of Moon's "Take-Away" videos. Over 40 were informally shot at music festivals around the country specifically for the series.

American audiences can check out his faux-documentary style in past videos for such artists as R.E.M., the National (click on the video below), Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Tegan & Sara and Beirut.

The National - Daughters of the Soho R.
by videomoon

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

New fix for Idol junkies: Eurovision finals set for Saturday

While U.S. television viewers have been obsessed with "American Idol" over the last few months, European music fans have been transfixed on "Eurovision," their longer-running (since 1956), song-centric version of "Idol."The second semifinals of the multi-country competition (each country sends a representative act and song to compete against other nations) was held yesterday, leaving 20 countries’ entries still standing and ready to proceed to the finals Saturday in Belgrade, where the event is being held, despite a rough year for the Serbian capital.

The nations surviving Thursday's elimination round are Iceland, 2004 winner Ukraine, Albania, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, Turkey, Georgia, 2003 toppers Latvia and 2001 champs Denmark.

On Saturday, the aforementioned 10 will square off against 10 other countries who won the first semifinal, which took place earlier this week, with their representative acts.

Those countries include early favorite Russia, 2006 champs Finland, 2005 winner Greece, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Poland, Azerbaijan, Norway, Armenia and Norway. Host country (and last year’s winners) Serbia and the four nations bankrolling the entire contest (Spain, France, Germany and England) get free passes into the finals Saturday.

Among the countries not making the cut for the finals this weekend? Ireland (who offered up a turkey glove puppet named Dustin as its entry), Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Don’t ask us how, exactly, the winner will be crowned at Eurovision.  The bizarre selection process for the competition is famously complex, with judges representing various countries often voting in groups. The Baltic states, for example, like to stick together.

And while Russia ("Believe") and Sweden ("Hero") are among those tipped to win this year, we like to think Ukraine has the best shot to take the "Eurovision" crown with Ani Lorak's catchy pop song borne from club music roots ("Shady Lady") .

"Shady Lady" seems to have all the elements of a winning tune: a danceable beat, cheesy lyrics and a "hot" lead singer who knows how to smile for the camera and, more important, the judges.

You can stream the finals live Saturday from several websites, including the official Eurovision site or here.

--Charlie Amter

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Meet Mams, again

How do you become an instant celebrity in Los Angeles? Punching out a B-list actor at a pre-Grammy event in February is a nice way to start, especially if TMZ cameras are there to capture it all, but U.K.-born “rapper” Mams Taylor wants to be known for more than popping "Desperate Housewives" star Jesse Metcalfe right in the kisser.

Taylor recently dropped the video for his first single, “L.A. Girls,” on his rapidly growing group of “friends” on MySpace, featuring such notable, um, "girls," as Carmen Electra and Mila Kunis. Musical collaborator Joel Madden of Good Charlotte also is in the video and on the track.

Taylor moved to Los Angeles four years ago and clearly positioned himself in the right music industry circles. The tattooed, menacing-looking rapper-singer was most recently dating actress and musician Taryn Manning, but the pair have split, Manning's publicist Siri Garber confirmed Thursday. To help heal his wounds, Taylor took in a private Prince concert Sunday, attended by “maybe 30 other guests” at the artist’s Bel-Air mansion, according to his MySpace blog. Taylor has also already lined up respected DJ Tiësto to remix “L.A. Girls," all without support from any major label (Taylor is currently unsigned, as far as we know).

However, judging by his first real single and video, Taylor still has a ways to go before he becomes the next Justin Timberlake. Lyrically, the cautionary tale (actresses doing cocaine in L.A.? You don't say!) of “L.A. Girls” leaves much to be desired. With embarrassingly bad lines like “baking in the California sun/man I think I gotta get me one,” we’re pretty sure Interscope isn’t going to be beating a path to Taylor’s door anytime soon.

Still, Taylor seems to have charisma in spades and name recognition to boot (among the tabloid-watching teen set, anyway). And really, what guy hasn’t dreamed of landing that perfect punch that drops a dude straight to the ground? Just like MacGyver!

Meanwhile, Taylor’s ex has her own new music out. Manning’s band Boomkat released its first single in four years, the haunting "Runaway," in early April. A second single/video, "Stomp," will be forthcoming this summer from her record, "A Million Trillion Stars," which should be out this year on iTunes.

So, where do we stand re: Mams versus Taryn? Right now, we’re siding with team Taryn's music (so far, anyway). Unless Mams comes up with something just a bit more hard-hitting this year, that is. (Please don’t punch us for that one, Mams.)

-- Charlie Amter

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Checking into the Motels, again

If there existed such a thing as an aural dictionary, Martha Davis of the Motels’ voice would be a nice choice under “longing.” The Los Angeles-based singer’s stellar vocals (filled with the kind of subtlety and late-night pathos someone like Courtney Love would kill for) were on full display Monday night at Spaceland in a rare live gig announced just days ago and not on the venue’s official calendar.Tipped off by my co-worker Kevin Bronson, I jumped at the opportunity to see the band at the Silver Lake club. Growing up in Denver, I was weaned on a steady diet of Motels videos (and a host of other L.A.-based new wave acts, such as Berlin and Missing Persons, but the Motels somehow out-classed other L.A. bands from the era, even the Go-Go's), thanks to a weekly public television show called "Teletunes" on KBDI-TV.I have nothing but fond childhood memories of watching earnest yet well-crafted early videos like “Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Only the Lonely” from the Motels during the early 1980s, before MTV became a vehicle for higher budget videos from genres other than rock, a la Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Despite overwhelming odds, the Motels briefly were stars in the early 1980s, scoring a Top 10 hit with "Only the Lonely" in 1982 and even performing on "Saturday Night Live" in January 1983.And while nothing can match my memories of a young Davis on SNL and "Teletunes" on a decidedly down-market RCA screen at my childhood home, Monday's concert came damn close.

Davis’ new band blew away the small audience lucky enough to catch the set. Who’s in Martha’s new lineup? An immensely talented bunch of lads, including Clint Walsh on lead guitar (Gnarls Barkley’s touring guitarist), Eric Gardner on drums (Gardner is also in the touring version of Gnarls), Jon Siebels on bass (a former Eve 6 member) and Nick Johns on keyboards (who often tours with Ben Lee).

The embarrassment of riches on display served Davis well; as her backup band perfectly meshed with Davis’ pent-up vox on several classic Motels tunes such as “Only the Lonely” and the show opening “So L.A." The only complaint? No “Take the L” and a somewhat abbreviated set (the Motels were stuck on the bill as the first of several acts at Spaceland).

If you have the chance, try and catch this lineup the next time they play in the area (Sept. 19 at the L.A. County Fair). The band’s manager, Jason Burkhart, says they are “working right now on putting together some more [earlier] dates for L.A.” We’ll keep you posted.

-- Charlie Amter

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Thoughts on ‘Five Dollar Foot-Long, Extended Dance Remix’

When Soundboard first heard the insidious, summery jingle advertising Subway's new (and recession-friendly!) deal for $5 foot-long subs, we had no choice but to admire its weird pop craftsmanship and go buy a bunch of sandwiches. The weird, muted vocal harmonies, that unexpected Beatles-y shift to a minor modality in the verse; seriously, if Earlimart wrote a similar song about foot-longs as a tribute to Bingo, the mayor of Silver Lake, it'd be the smash single of May. But when we discovered that there is an extended dance remix available for download right now, we were forced to ask some uncomfortable questions about pop music: Are the sandwich-centric lyrics the only thing preventing this from being boilerplate respectable blog-house? Who out there is currently on the fence about Subway sandwiches, but upon hearing this dance remix, will be convinced of their need for a Veggie Delight on honey oat bread? Am I that person? Are commercial jingles the ultimate expression of pop utilitarian bent, or its most insipid? In an age where the sellout stigmas have lost their fangs and even radical leftist indie acts gladly license tunes to Nike, what will become of the professional jingle auteur? Did I really just devote 182 words to blogging about a sandwich-promoting dance remix? Either way, Happy Gilmore is stoked right now.

-- August Brown

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Soulja Boy supermans that Stephanopoulos

Finally, someone mashed up the two most impeccably stupid cultural events of 2008: the ABC Democratic debates and Soulja Boy's "YAHHH!" Props to Jay Smooth at Ill Doctrine for giving ABC's inane flag-lapel-pin-based line of questioning the respect it deserved (and the most adept use of "Stephanopoulos" in triplet meter rhyme to date). See also: Smooth's nimble eviscerating of Freudian rap-preoccupied TV pundit Bill O'Reilly.

--August Brown

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Conchords on a roll

If you happened to be at Glendale’s Moonlight Rollerway on Sunday night, you’d have been treated to the sight of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, a.k.a. Flight of the Conchords, wobbling unsteadily around the rink as the crowd of hard-core regular skaters zipped past them. No, neither Conchord was celebrating a birthday — the duo was on wheels in preparation for a video they’ll be shooting this week for the song “Ladies of the World.”

We suggest they also watch this clip from “Xanadu” for inspiration:

Next month, FOTC will roll out on a national tour in support of their self-titled SubPop album, with the final show at the Orpheum Theatre on May 30.

-- Pauline O'Connor

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

A moment of ‘motorik’ silence

Billboard is reporting that Klaus Dinger, the iron-limbed drummer for Neu! and an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, died March 21 of heart failure. As odd as the time-lag seems between that date and today's sad announcement from Neu!'s label Grönland, it makes a strangly perfect kind of sense given the comparable lag with which most listeners came to hear of Neu! -- many years removed from their '70s heyday (I'm looking at you, Stereolab fans).

Blessed with lovingly remastered reissues on Astralwerks in 2001 (which are, of course, now out of print), a whole new generation became acquainted with Neu! and Dinger's signature, relentless "motorik" beat, which inspired crate-digging underground acts ranging from the aforementioned Stereolab to Tortoise to Wilco (remember "Spiders (Kidsmoke)"?). If you can get your hands on a copy of one of these Neu! reissues, particularly their debut, you'll be amazed not only at how contemporary they sound some 30-odd years later, but also how if anyone deserved to do something as unlikely as copyright a drumbeat, it was Klaus Dinger.

Naturally, there's limited to no video reference for Neu!'s work to post in tribute, but there's something beautiful about this fan-made clip. There's no wiggy camera work, no storyline, just the band's self-titled debut spinning placidly on a turntable as the driving, druggy weirdness of "Hallogallo" spins right along with it. Danke schön, Klaus.

-- Chris Barton

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Akon and T-Pain eat a vocodered lunch

Yes, we're about 12 hours late on posting this video, but the nuances are just now revealing themselves, particularly the question of where in the mall one finds a restaurant that serves Greek and sushi? Hurry kids, today's your last day to go to Masa in Echo Park and order a "butternut reduction" without being a latecomer dweeb.

-- August Brown

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Stephen Malkmus does Fox News

The promo junket may take bands into unlikely terrain to pitch their wares, but watching Stephen Malkmus jockey with Fox News' resident blowhard Greg Gutfeld on his late-night stoner show "Red Eye" is, in effect, a Republican version of Narduwar. Malkmus parries with sheepish good humor about the whole ordeal, which amounts to Gutfeld reciting things he read on a Google search and waiting for Malkmus to respond (though I didn't know he was Cate Blanchett's singing voice in the Bob Dylan pic "I'm Not There"). Maybe Steve ran into Julia Allison in the lobby on the way out, which would make Gawker's collective head explode into tiny fragments.

-- August Brown

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B: English swing meets Texas swagger

Dizzee Rascal and Bun B couldn't have less in common as rappers. The former is a snake-tongued young London MC making an unlikely transition from introspective, avant-garde grime into an Anglicized take on American indie rap (his recent signing to Def Jux was apt). Bun B, the surviving half of Houston vanguards UGK, keeps his cocky drawl deeply in the pocket, and sounds best over sweaty, trunk-rattling Southern bass and regal soul samples.

Yet on Dizzee's new single, "Where Da G's," off 2007's infuriatingly neglected "Maths & English," the two have an unusual power balance: Dizzee as the whip-smart kid already aged before his time from label politics and crushing hype; Bun as the veteran professor of the Houston scene just now getting his due, but still reeling from the death of his UGK mate Pimp C. In the video, they kick it in Bun B's home turf and lay ample hate on fake gangsters over a stark electro beat, and both have earned their vantage point to do so. They sound great for wholly different reasons -- Dizzee firing his impenetrable patois in every direction, Bun coolly dismantling the beat with Texas swagger -- but it adds up to a charged collaboration.

Bun plays the House of Blues on Friday, and Dizzee's at the El Rey in May. Anyone interested in contemporary hip-hop should check out both.

-- August Brown

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Incoming: Neon Neon, Oppenheimer

[The post-South by Southwest tsunami of bands is headed toward Los Angeles, beginning tonight. Here are quick first impressions of albums from two of them -- and, really, wouldn't we all want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a guy named Rocky O'Reilly?]

Neon Neon, "Stainless Style" (Tuesday, Lex Records): Out of the brine of this era's dancefloor vacuousness comes ... an electro concept album? Sleek disco, hip-hop lite, fuzzy guitar pop -- this collaboration between Super Furry Animals main man Gruff Rhys and L.A. electronic guru Boom Bip has a little bit of everything, including a story line: The album traces the life of auto magnate and hard-partyer John DeLorean. "Stainless Style" is more than just a vehicle for a single or two. Nice.

Oppenheimer, "Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It" (June 3, Bar/None Records): The sophomore release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, duo Shaun Robinson and Rocky O'Reilly walks a tightrope -- to one side bone-rattling squalor, to the other primary-colored pop. Subtract the fuzz, and the twee-pop nation would have another happy citizen. With it (and with guest touches like vocals by Matt Caughtran of L.A. punks the Bronx on "The Never Never"), the album has bite to go along with its catchy title.

||| Live: Neon Neon and Oppenheimer (along with Jim Noir and others) play tonight at the Viper Room. Neon Neon also makes a 6 p.m. appearance at Amoeba Music.

More highlights for Monday, March 17

Explosions in the Sky rock the Wiltern tonight. ... Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong join the bill for Voxhaul Broadcast's Spaceland residency. ... Jason Collett, who has another winner with his new album, "Here's to Being Here," headlines the Troubadour. ... At the Roxy, it's the tongue-twisting Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip, but far more interesting are the Fall-channeling supporting band These New Puritans. ... The Chapin Sisters' residency at the Echo features the album-release show for local quintet the Billionaires, whose "Really Real for Forever" (out April 1) offers nifty slices of boy-girl pop.

-- Kevin Bronson

Here's the video for These New Puritans' single, "Elvis" (album out Tuesday on Domino):

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Flo Rida will rap about sweat pants forever

Flo Rida's "Low" is the only song allowed on the radio. You may think you heard a wisp of Chris Brown or the new Usher, but you were wrong -- it was actually just a station identifer filling space between spins of Flo Rida. KXLU is now devoted entirely to streaming indie rock Flo Rida covers on the Internet, and Larry Mantle is using a vocoder to sound like T-Pain so listeners will think his show is actually a soothing, long-form version of "Low."

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Cave & the Bad Seeds are coming to the Bowl!!!

Los Angeles was home to one grumpy pop critic last week. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds headlined the annual Plug Awards in New York on March 8, and though the ceremony itself was reportedly a yawn, the band's 50-minute foray saved the evening -- even the scribe from Pitchfork had to admit that the awesome Australian and his brothers in noise were totally fierce (though he couldn't resist a swipe at Cave's middle-aged fans -- just you wait, Matt Le May, you'll have a bald spot of your own one day!)

I've been listening to the new Bad Seeds album nonstop for weeks now, and I can't imaging anything besting it for title of Best Rock Album of 2008. "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" comes out on Anti- Records on April 8. Once you hear it, you'll be dying to feel those Herculean new songs emanate from the throat of the master too.

Oh, I know there's a ton of stuff up on the Web to create a virtual Bad Seeds experience. I could have watched the Plug Awards performance on the Dell Lounge webcast, or taken my pick from this page of grainy clips on YouTube. But nothing substitutes for being in the room while cruel Saint Nick does his preacherly, noirish thing. I'd already missed Grinderman, the grimy-gorgeous Bad Seeds blues project, when Cave brought it to San Francisco last year. And I was worried -- Cave takes a little swipe at L.A. in the lyrics of the new album's title track. (For now, you can sample the whole set on the Bad Seeds MySpace page.) Would his SoCal fans never hear that beautiful bellow live again?

Well, I'm delighted to announce that Cave and the Bad Seeds will make their Hollywood Bowl debut performance on Sept. 17.

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Phoenix rises to direct Silversun Pickups’ latest video

A day late and a dollar short but I have news: Silversun Pickups' video for "Little Lover's So Polite" had its world premiere Monday on MTV2 and MTVU. And it's already making waves on the Net thanks in part to the man behind the camera -- Joaquin Phoenix.

Wow. Silver Lake's favorite local band. The star of "Walk the Line." The new video must be one of them big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas, right? Nope. It's just the band playing the fuzzy rumbler on the back of a pickup truck that's driving through downtown L.A. at night. No explosions. No fancy editing. No effects. Just a smidgen of fog.

Perfect.

-- Liam Gowing

And now you can watch it here:

Photo courtesy of Ink Tank PR

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Jeffrey Lewis’ run-in with Will Oldham

If public transportation is your primary mode of getting from Point A to Point B, you are familiar with the kind of dream state that occurs when lulled by the vibrating monotony of trains shooting through tunnels. Seems to me that anti-folkster Jeffrey Lewis is intimate with this state and then took it about five hilarious steps further:

His latest work covers songs by British '80s crusty-heroes Crass. He's toured with Adam Green and Kimya Dawson and he makes cool cartoons. Let's all go see him and the Jitters Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Troubadour, opening for the Mountain Goats. I'll bring the flask.

-- Margaret Wappler

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

There’s a Will, there’s a way

Will.i.am has done it again. The multiplatinum-selling rapper-singer-producer behind the Barack Obama-boosting viral blockbuster “Yes We Can” posted a new music video promoting the Illinois senator’s presidential run this morning. Check out "We Are the Ones" here.

Since going online in early February, “Yes We Can” (which features various and sundry boldfaced names including Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar singing and reciting an Obama campaign stump speech) has been streamed some 16 million times. “We Are the Ones” similarly showcases an eclectic array of boldfaced names -- Jessica Alba (pictured, from the video), Ryan Phillippe, Macy Gray and George Lopez among them -- chanting “Oh-bah-ma! Oh-bah-ma!” over a hip-hop beat with sparse piano accompaniment. Some of them also sing or alternately explain their aspirations for candidate and country.

“I think the thing that inspires me the most about Barack Obama is that he really is going to be the president of the United States,” says actress Kerry Washington. “He’s not going to be the president of the top 10% or the president of the most powerful corporations or the president of the most powerful lobbyists. He’s going to be our president.” According to a spokeswoman for the video, will.i.am put the song’s music together in just two hours. And he didn’t so much enlist the celebrity contingent (which also includes “Ugly Betty” star Eric Mabius, John Leguizamo, Regina King, actor Luis Guzman and rapper-singer Tyrese) as they enlisted him. The Black Eyed Peas frontman went forward after scores of famous well-wishers asked him if they could be part of a subsequent pro-Obama viral video. “Everybody came to him,” spokeswoman Elina Heng explained of will.i.am. “There wasn’t too much outreach on his part.”

-- Chris Lee

P.S. Some members of Arcade Fire will also be stumping for Obama in Ohio at free concerts on March 2 and 3.

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

You can stand under my epilepsy-inducing laser show

Yes, Rihanna's enlistment of synthy post-punks Klaxons as her backing band for her performance of "Umbrella" on last night's Brit Awards is blood in the water for music bloggers. But the pairing makes a bit more sense than, say, Fergie and John Legend, as Klaxons' biggest single was essentially cyborg girl-group pop, and Rihanna's been inching ever closer to Kylie-land house cuts. There's a long history of dance music traversing from England to the Caribbean and vice versa, so this set isn't the disaster it might have been if this were, like, Kings of Leon or another one of those bands that only Brits seem to understand. That said, if anybody in the live audience needed Lasik surgery in the near future, they can probably go ahead and cancel that appointment now.
--August Brown

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Incoming: The Duke Spirit, the Raveonettes, British Sea Power

[In a decade long ago and far, far away, the 1990s, I used to shell out import prices for British bands I'd get excited about. Their releases always predated the U.S. distribution of their albums, and on many occasions I Just Couldn't Wait. Now that I receive music in advance, those mail-order companies don't get as much of my paycheck. But this installment of from-the-hip blurbs about new albums features three bands I'd have opened the wallet for (even at $23.49 on Amazon):]

The Duke Spirit, "Neptune" (April 8, Shangri-La; Feb. 12 in the U.K.): Talk about a voice -- I'll see your Feist and two photogenic MySpace songstresses and raise you Liela Moss. Her foreboding delivery seems to come from down here, imploring you to care very deeply about her slightly bent diary entries. Take the pluck from the best couple tracks of the quintet's nice debut, "Cuts Across the Land," and imagine that over a full album, and you have a band U.S. audiences ought to heed. The Duke Spirit haven't had much luck in America, but a strong tour and a little support for "Neptune" (which was recorded in Joshua Tree) could change that.

||| Live: The Duke Spirit plays the Echo on March 5.

||| Stream the album here.

Watch: Video for "The Step and the Walk" here.

The Raveonettes, "Lust, Lust, Lust" (Feb. 19, Vice; Nov. 12, 2007, in the U.K.): It's as if everything Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo tried to align on their first two albums has suddenly coalesced. Fuzzy, dark, simmering, shimmering and nodding to decades-ago girl groups and surf guitar outfits, "Lust(x3)" is like a churning ocean in the waning light. When they played as a duo last summer at the Little Radio warehouse downtown, I had no inkling some of these songs would end up so fully formed.

||| Live: The Raveonettes have dates March 1 at the Glass House, March 2 at the Detroit Bar and March 4 at the El Rey Theatre.

||| Download: "Dead Sound."

British Sea Power, "Do You Like Rock Music?" (Feb. 12, Rough Trade): You hear the Brighton quartet wrestling with the big issues on this album, and the title's question feels almost like a challenge. Listening is like riding a beast; BSP's unvarnished, delightfully meandering anthems sound larger than life. Bring on foliage and military uniforms, lads, we're prepared to salute.

||| Live: British Sea Power plays Feb. 27 at the Echo and Feb. 28 at Spaceland.

||| Watch the video for "No Lucifer": "No Lucifer" by British Sea Power

-- Kevin Bronson

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

English girls, approximately

So, that Kate Nash song "Foundations" came on the radio this morning (after much deliberation, I've finally decided I despise it), and it got me wondering if this whole ostensible English-girl-belittles-ex-boyfriends-with-many-many-words trend is valid. I don't think it is, and I don't say that just as a preemptive strike against any future Brit I might date and do wrong by -- it culls together too many artists who have nothing to do with each other and smacks of lazy sexism. Nash, Lily Allen, the Winehouse-gone-coffeehouse Adele and the quite-wonderful teenage folkie Laura Marling (whose video for "My Manic & I" [above] is a dead ringer for the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," and not just because Marling looks like D'Arcy Wretzky's Karen Dalton-worshiping little sister) only share recent release dates and a propensity for thickets of language, usually about loutish dudes and the havoc they wreak. Like, well, almost every female pop singer ever. The quality varies, but take this spate of creative singer-songwriters as they come, please.
-- August Brown

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

The many faces of Herbie Hancock

Preeminent Jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock received three more Grammy nominations this year -- for album of the year, best contemporary jazz album and best jazz instrumental solo. Tonight, he added to the 10 he already has by winning album of the year for "River: The Joni Letters."

Hancock has had a career that has spanned, to employ the cliche, the sublime to the ridiculous; high art to the crassly commercial. There was never a slow decline, as with so many other important jazz artists of the '60s. He's managed to mix it up and come out smelling of roses and earning the respect of everyone in the industry.

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Warner gets criminally adorable children to DJ Grammy party

These two are so wee, so cute, so capable on those decks that it hurts to watch this video. DJ Sara, 8, and DJ Ryusei, 5, will be making their U.S. debut at the Warner Grammy party this weekend. Don't spill any liquor on their wax, yo; they're reputed to deliver the harshest of beat-downs. (Yeah, right!)

-- Margaret Wappler

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur

Tune in to Don Was’ channel

I think I found the cure for the common TV. Of course, it's right here on your very own Internet.It's My Damn Channel, a portal that is home to offerings from musician extraordinaire Don Was, along with the likes of Harry Shearer, David Wain and others.

Was, a bassist, music supervisor, documentary director, Grammy-winning producer and a driving force behind the cutting-edge funk outfit Was (Not Was), has seldom been more sublimely entertaining than as the cool-cat host of the "Wasmopolitan Dance Party" -- a webisode filmed in the showroom of the Furniture Outlet, a budget joint in North Hollywood. [Pardon the ads, but the installment above is well worth their intrusion.]

There is singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, gamely playing her beautiful songs from behind a dining-room set as shoppers mill about looking at recliners.

"I can't compete with the setup on Letterman" Was says with a laugh. "But doing something like this, we asked, 'What could we offer that's different?' The answer is, the stripped-down and personal stuff."

Was says the idea of an in-store was inspired by the AM radio stations of his boyhood in Detroit, where DJs often would do their shows from their sponsors' businesses. "I love the interaction with the guy who owns the store," he says. "It's just the right combination of terribly wrong and 'Yes! We should be doing this.' "

It works -- and, yes, having sponsorship helps -- where so much of today's Internet video content doesn't. "I'm worried that in a DIY culture, people can just throw anything up on the Internet," Was says. "People should know that you shouldn't put up crap just because you can."

Was' channel offers songs for download -- Sobule (who is having an online telethon to finance her next project after having released six albums for four labels) has an especially nice new song, "San Francisco," here.

And Was also rescued the L.A. girl group Rocket after the quintet was eliminated from the Fox television show "The Next Great American Band." He brought the band into the studio to record (and do a video for) a new single, "I Wanna Love You.""That show was really awful -- Fox has already tur