• The sheik move of the moment is creating art in clusters known as collaborations; often known by the term ’supergroup’. Yet another fine specimen has cropped up, with Kim and Kelley Deal lending their sisterly vocals to the latest endeavor from The National’s brotherly guitar duo, Aaron and Bryce Dessner. Titled The Long Count, the piece also features contributions from visual artist Matthew Ritchie and contributions from Shara Worden and will debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on October 28th, 30th, and 31st.

• If you haven’t heard of Blakroc, where have you been hiding? The brainchild of Damon Dash and The Black Keys, the project finds the Ohio twosome playing with 11 of hip-hop’s biggest and brightest talents. The debut album is due November 27th — Black Friday to shopaholics — but you can see samples of what went down when Pat and Dan worked with the likes of RZA, Mos Def, and Raekwon in three webisodes hosted on the Blakroc website.

• Continuing the theme of super groupings, The Dead Weather just released a new video for “I Cut Like a Buffalo” from this year’s surprise rocker, Horehound. The song will be released as a 7″ single at the end of October via Jack White’s own Third Man.

• Daniel Lopatin, also known as Oneohtrix Point Never, is having his triumphant triology of Octagon, Zones Without People, and Russian Mind packaged as a two-disc collection under the name Rifts. The set is due November 17th via No Fun and will include extra tracks from out of print cassette, vinyl, and CD-R releases.

• If you should find yourself the subject of a RIAA lawsuit, you’d be wise to forgo the attorney and court costs according to a recent article from Ars Technica. Using the magic of bar graphs, the article displays how much it cost notable defendants to try to fight the RIAA lunacy (as much as $90,000 for one man who went to court twice to fight charges) and how much it costs to ignore the urge to lawyer up and embroil yourself in a battle you’re likely not to win ($7500, or $750 per song).

• Not a lot to set your DVR’s for on the late night talk show circuit this week, though Phoenix on Friday’s Late Late Show and Regina Spektor on SNL are a must — but if there’s any day to stay home this week to catch up on new music it’s Tuesday with the Avett Brothers, The Mountain Goats, and Gossip all vying for your attention, plus They Might Be Giants are about to tour on the 20th anniversary of Flood, so you might hear a bit of that on Jimmy Fallon. Here are the highlights:
  Monday, October 5

  Last Call: Pete Yorn (R)

  Tuesday, October 6

  Late Late Show: The Avett Brothers
  Jimmy Fallon: They Might Be Giants
  Colbert Report: The Mountain Goats
  Jimmy Kimmel: Gossip

  Wednesday, October 7

  Jimmy Fallon: Lenny Kravitz
  Ellen DeGeneres: Michael Franti & Spearhead

  Thursday, October 8

  Jay Leno: Ben Harper & Jack Black
  Jimmy Kimmel: Motorhead

  Friday, October 9

  David Letterman: Brett Dennen & Natalie Merchant
  Late Late Show: Phoenix
  Jimmy Fallon: Cory Chisel & the Wandering Sons

  Saturday, October 10

  Saturday Night Live: Regina Spektor

Dan Muller

• Live recordings of shows performed at Seattle’s landmark venue, The Crocodile, from 2002 to present, are now available at the University of Washington’s library thanks to soundman Jim Anderson. The archives contain hundreds of shows including some from Apples in Stereo, Andrew Bird, Ben Lee, Bishop Allen, Brandi Carlile, Crooked Fingers, Damien Jurado, Death Cab For Cutie, The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes, Harvey Danger, Iron and Wine, Josh Ritter, The Long Winters, Matisyahu, Mountain Goats, Mudhoney, Nada Surf, Okkervil River, Pedro the Lion, Presidents of the United States of America, Regina Spektor, Rilo Kiley, Tegan and Sara, and Unicorns.

• This Tuesday, Pearl Jam performed an unusual mix of rarities and brand new songs in London. Eddie Vedder and company were joined on stage by The Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood. Their mini European tour will hit Rotterdam, Berlin, Manchester and London’s O2 Arena. The band recently announced more U.S. dates this fall and will also play a half-dozen outdoor gigs in Australia and New Zealand. Their new record, Backspacer, is due out on September 20th.

• Before their show at the Royal Oak Music Theatre in Michigan on Tuesday, The Decemberists decided to perform in impromptu set on the street outside and were cited for busking, but not before apparently making $2. Lead singer Colin Meloy tweeted the ticketing.

• A trailer for Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus hit the web Tuesday. Among other (equally notable) details, the film features Tom Waits playing Satan and Heath Ledger’s final filmed performance.

• It is with great sadness that we must report that The Verve are breaking up. Again. After reuniting for the third time in 2007, it seems the BritPop megastars are going their separate ways. Guitarist Nick McCabe and bassist Simon Jones are focusing on a new band called Black Ships.

• Vibe Magazine, after folding a month and a half ago, will be returning as a web-focused publication, printing 300,000 copies quarterly. This influential urban music and culture magazine and its website are being acquired by Uptown Media.

• Ghostface Killah plans to record his next album with Wu Tang’s Raekwon and Method Man. The trio’s LP is expected sometime this year.

• Who else but Elton John has a guest appearance on the new Alice in Chains record. The track, Black Gives Way to Blue, off the forthcoming record of the same name, pays due tribute to fallen singer Layne Staley.

• Before Bon Iver was The Volcano Choir, a collaboration between Justin Vernon and Milwaukee’s Collections of Colonies of Bees. The debut release of The Volcano Choir, called Unmap, some three years after its inception, arrives on September 22nd on Jagjaguwar. You can listen to the first single here:

• A large-scale and star-powered tribute to Michael Jackson is planned for September 26th in Vienna. Jermaine Jackson will be announcing the concert lineup soon, but is expected to feature at least 10 top artists performing 15 to 20 Jackson hits. Austrian media have reported that Madonna, U2, Lionel Richie and Whitney Houston might be among the performers. (Tribute site)

• According to The Sun, UK rock band Kasabian’s frontman, Tom Meighan, has come down with Swine Flu while on tour! Yikes, is that still happening?!?

• Although Thom Yorke has told The Believer that Radiohead won’t be working on a new album any time soon, the band’s output remains unchecked. Last week, they released the one-off “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” Another new song leaked this week, supposedly called “These Are My Twisted Words.” The Stranger’s Line Out adds a bit of Yorkeian text, which may or may not be legit. Either way, this is a truly productive hiatus.

The biggest release this week is obviously The Dead Weather’s debut. As if The White Stripes and The Racounteurs weren’t enough, Jack White teamed up with the The Kills’ Alison Mosshart for yet another project of raw bluesy rock. This time, though, White takes a back seat, but only physically, behind the drum kit and lets Mosshart front the band with her ragged vocals, like Grace Slick through broken glass (and actually just incrementally different than White’s own voice). White’s pals, fellow Raconteur Jack Lawrence and Queens of the Stone Age’s Dean Fertita, who also tours with The Raconteurs, join in on bass and guitar respectively. And White also produced the album and released it, partnered with Warner Bros., on his own label, Third Man Records. As heavy a role as White plays in the project, it started really as a fluke, when at the end of a tour shared by The Raconteurs and The Kills, White effectively lost his voice and The Kills lost their tour bus (well, actually, the driver took off with it). To decompress, White and Mosshart started a jam session and a suggested 7″ led to the full length out today, Horehound. Since then, several videos and a performance on Conan have followed, and this week The Dead Weather have begun a North American tour. All this in less than a year!

There are other albums coming out this week to, by the way. You’d be negligent not to check out the latest from The Most Sererene Republic, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Ty Segall, and the others found on Largehearted Boy’s list. So before you run over to your nearest record emporium to pick up Horehound, try a few of these on for size.

• Barely a week before AthFest, Athen’s Georgia Theatre was destroyed by fire last Friday. The iconic venue was one of the music spots in town and hosted everyone from John Mayer to Drive-By Truckers, R.E.M. to Ghostface Killah. A saddened Wilmot Greene, the owner of the theater who was in the midst of renovations, was quoted to say: “Even if the insurance pays for it and we can rebuild, it’ll never be the same. They don’t build them like that anymore.” The festival will continue on without the historic venue.

• All Tomorrow’s Parties has just announced the new festival, 10 Years Of ATP, to celebrate the series’ 10th anniversary, on December 11-13, the weekend after the Nightmare Before Christmas ATP event. Scheduled so far for the event: Explosions In The Sky, Shellac, Tortoise, Melvins, Dirty Three, Fuck Buttons, Deerhoof, and many more. Tickets on sale today.

• Jarvis Cocker, Fatboy Slim, The Kooks, The View and others are blue for climate change. As part of a new Oxfam campaign, the Glastonbury performing artists are asking fans attending festivals this year to help raise awareness of global climate change by painting themselves blue. Little Boots, one of the participating artists, says, “Go blue, demand that the Prime Minister takes the lead in protecting the people of this beautiful planet and kiss goodbye to climate change.”

• There’s no vindication to be had for the mother of two found liable of copyright infringement back in 2007 and fined $222,000. A second jury thought Jammie Thomas-Rasset should actually pay record companies $1.92 million instead, that’s $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she illegally downloaded via peer-to-peer file sharing… that’s $80,000 for Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”

• Here’s something you can download for free! Noah and The Whale are offering the title track to their upcoming album, The First Days of Spring, “with absolutely no restrictions of access.” Enjoy.

• Two very DIY labels are putting together two days of terrific bands in Brooklyn on July 3rd and 4th. The lineup for the Woodsist/Captured Tracks Festival at Broadway Backyard was just announced and features Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls, Blank Dogs, Thee Oh Sees, Woods, caUSE co-MOTION! and Kurt Vile, among others.

• New albums are in the works for Kings of Convenience, Islands, and Air. Simian Mobile Disco is due to release their second album, Temporary Pleasure, in August and have just debuted the first video from it: “Audacity of Huge” featuring Chris Keating of Yeasayer:

• Jack White continues his quest to usurp James Brown’s title of “hardest working man in show business.” While a White Stripes documentary is in the works, his latest project, The Dead Weather, is about to release their debut album in a few weeks and commence touring (Paramount Theatre on August 20). But that’s not all! He’s also recently opened Third Man Records as a combined store, studio and office space. Third Man will release the new album. The Dead Weather was on the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien this weekend and performed “Hang You From the Heavens”:

• Speaking of stellar late night talk show performances, there’s a lot to keep you home at night this week: Sonic Youth, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop with the Brighton Port Authority, aka Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, Dinosaur Jr., Wilco, Grizzly Bear, Pheonix, the list keeps going! Cancel all your plans! … but there’s one you’re going to want to keep coming up, and that’s the KEXP BBQ. One of these bands will be announced soon as the headliner! You’ll never guess which!
  Monday, June 22

  David Letterman: Iggy Pop & the Brighton Port Authority
  Conan O’Brien: Pete Yorn
  Jimmy Fallon: Sonic Youth
  Last Call: Black Kids (R 5/7/09)

  Tuesday, June 23

  Conan O’Brien: Elvis Costello
  Jimmy Fallon: Iggy Pop & the Brighton Port Authority

  Wednesday, June 24

  David Letterman: St. Vincent
  Conan O’Brien: Wilco
  Jimmy Fallon: The Roots
  Tavis Smiley: Femi Kuti

  Thursday, June 25

  Jimmy Fallon: Dinosaur Jr.

  Friday, June 26

  David Letterman: Regina Spektor
  Late Late Show: Chairlift
  Jimmy Fallon: Grizzly Bear
  Jimmy Kimmel: Phoenix

  Saturday, June 27

  Saturday Night Live: Kings of Leon
  

• Jack White continues to give his ghastly white middle finger to leisure time. In a recent interview with Music Radar, White states on the record that The White Stripes will not be breaking up and that a new album should be on the way next year. In case you can’t wait that long, Jack has just wrapped a new 7-inch with the Dex Romweber Duo to be released on Jack’s own Third Man Records, which happens to be home for Jack’s new project, The Dead Weather.

• While fans twiddle their thumbs, eagerly awaiting a new album from French duo Daft Punk, they’ll just have to settle for new music in the form of a soundtrack from Thomas Bangalter. Bangalter has scoreded French director Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void — marking the second time he has worked with Noé. It’s also heavily rumored that Daft Punk will be scoring the soundtrack to Tron 2.0 (if IMDb is to be believed).

• After weather forced its cancellation last August, Lincoln Center is once again moving forward with bringing Rhys Chatham’s A Crimson Grail to fans this August. Chatham is actively seeking 200 guitarists to perform the piece — which originally featured the talents of 400 guitars.

• At a time when print magazines are scaling back — or worse, closing their doors — fashion/pop culture magazine Nylon is expanding its base operations to include a newly minted label, creatively titled Nylon Records. The label’s first two signings: The Plasticines and Patrick Wolf. Both will be releasing albums this year through the new entity as well as heading up a tour sponsored by… you guessed it… Nylon.

• As Isobel Campbell travels far and wide with Mark Lanegan, leaving Belle and Sebastian to collect dust, fellow B&S talent Stewart Murdoch isn’t going to set around and wait to be Pledged. In conjunction with Matador and Rough Trade to launch the subscription series behind Murdoch’s upcoming album, God Help the Girl. Before the June 23rd release, subscribers will receive the 7-inch singles for “Come Monday Night” and “Funny Little Frog,” exclusive videos for the singles, an exclusive 5 song 10-inch EP, a free stream of the album, and limited edition packaging for the proper album.

• Cancel your Friday night plans: it’s a great night to stay in and surf the late night talkshows with Kings of Leon on Leno, Friendly Fires on Last Call, and, get this, Mastodon on Letterman! Thursday, stay up to you’ve got The Airborne Toxic Event and The Decemberists, and definitely don’t forget to catch Steve Earle on Tavis Smiley Wednesday as he promotes is new album, Townes. Steve was incredible on KEXP yesterday, so don’t miss it.
  Monday, May 11

  David Letterman: The Killers

  Tuesday, May 12

  Last Call: Cold War Kids

  Wednesday, May 13

  David Letterman: Wynton Marsalis
  Jay Leno: Yusuf Islam
  Tavis Smiley: Steve Earle

  Thursday, May 14

  Jay Leno: The Decemberists
  Colbert Report: Yusuf Islam
  Jimmy Kimmel: The Airborne Toxic Event

  Friday, May 15

  David Letterman: Mastodon
  Jay Leno: Kings of Leon
  Jimmy Fallon: Yusuf Islam
  Last Call: Friendly Fires
  Jimmy Kimmel: Eminem

  Saturday, May 16

  Saturday Night Live: Green Day

• Pixies are back together for another reunion. This time, however, it looks to be just a one-show shot: June 14th at the annual UK extravaganza Isle of Wight Festival.

• Speaking of Frank Black and Kim Deal: You may recall Frank manned the boards for the new Art Brut album, Art Brut vs. Satan, due in the states May 12th, but you may not know that he also has an album with wife Violet Clark under the moniker Grand Duchy. The first couple of mutilation’s debut is due April 14th. As for Deal, it is believed that The Breeders are recording a new EP. Whether its release will coincide with the band’s ATP: UK performance (The Breeders are also curators) is anyone’s guess.

• Speaking of ATP, The Flaming Lip-curated ATP: NY has added some new talent. The September 11-13th event will now welcome a reunited Jesus Lizard, The Feelies, and The Drones.

• More Jeff Buckley material is surfacing in the repackaged version of the phenom’s only studio album, Grace. The new CD/DVD combo, Grace Around the World, will feature new footage of Buckley performing songs from the original 1994 album — you guessed it — from all over the world. A documentary is also included in the 15th anniversary set. We think, however, it’s time to have an intervention with Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert although it’s hard to say anything when new Buckley footage keeps surfacing.

• Jack White’s new project is a bit of a supergroup: The Dead Weather consists of The Kills’ Alison Mosshart (VV) on vocals, The Raconteurs’ (Little) Jack Lawrence on bass, Queens of the Stone Age’s Dean Fertita on guitar, and Jack White on drums. Check out their first single, “Hang You From the Heavens”:

• Time-out for fun! Have you ever wanted to turn your computer keyboard into a drum machine? Now you can with Keyboard Drums. Note: if you have the slightest bit of timing, you’ll get frustrated quick. If you like syncopation and can type 100 non-words a minute, you’ll become your household’s Dan Deacon.

• Mac McCaughan’s days before Superchunk are being chronicled in a new digital compilation through McCaughan’s label, Merge — maybe you’ve heard of them? The McCaughan-featuring trio know as Wwax now has Like It or Not to spread their long out-of-print 7-inch LPs and cassettes. The 15-track MP3/FLAC download is already available. This is part of a new initiative from Merge, who have already re-release three Richard Buckner albums digitally and promise more re-issues and compilations to help the label celebrate 20 years of productivity.

• Devo has re-evolved, promising a new album by the fall. The news comes on the heels of the band’s SXSW (which finds the band performing with Tricky one evening and speaking another) and ATP: UK performances (the band will perform Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo! in its entirety).

• Don’t forget to set your DVR’s to catch your favorite bands hitting the talk show circuit this week. Here are the highlights:
  Monday, March 16

  Jimmy Fallon: Public Enemy
  Last Call: Adele (R 2/10/09)

  Tuesday, March 17

  David Letterman: Bell X1
  Jay Leno: The Soundtrack of Our Lives
  Jimmy Fallon: The Ting Tings

  Wednesday, March 18

  David Letterman: Modest Mouse
  Jimmy Fallon: Vampire Weekend
  Jimmy Kimmel: MSTRKRFT

  Thursday, March 19

  Daily Show: Bruce Springsteen
  Jimmy Kimmel: The Duke Spirit

  Friday, March 20

  Jay Leno: Chris Cornell
  Late Late Show: Conor Oberst (R 8/7/08)
  Last Call: The Duke Spirit