A divide has formed at Leeds â€' great new music in the tents (Foals! Wild Beasts!) and tired old relics on the main stage, including Limp Bizkit and Blink 182. Now, who's for yet another song about masturbation?

Pictures from Reading and Leeds 2010
Follow our live tweets from the festival
Guns N' Roses fail to rock Reading

The Leeds Festival has a way of suspending reality. It's possibly the one place on earth where you can spray your hair green, stick stars on your forehead, walk around in your underpants and think you look cool. It's also an alternative universe where ageing rap metal bands and generic pop punkers All Time Low â€' hardly household names â€' can double or perhaps even treble the audience for Friday's headliners Arcade Fire â€' a band whose current album The Suburbs is at the top of the charts.

That there are no rules here equally applies â€' for happier reasons â€' to Wild Beasts, whose Mercury nomination for Two Dancers isn't the only sign of their ascendancy. A huge crowd â€' admittedly, some of them seeking refuge in the NME tent from a downpour â€' hear music that is virtually uncategorisable. Are they indie pop? Or are they opera? Genuinely challenging but surprisingly listenable, they're a bit like U2's work with Pavarotti, except that the haunting tenor comes from Hayden Thorpe, a 24-year old from Kendal. Fools Gold are almost...

Read More

Watch the video for the Led Zeppelin legend's new single, taken from his forthcoming covers album, Band of Joy

For his first album since the Grammy award-winning Raising Sand, recorded with Alison Krauss, Robert Plant returns with a new LP featuring interpretations of Americana anthems. "Band of Joy represented an attempt to create, diversify and celebrate the great dynamics of the music scene in the mid 60s," explains Plant. "I just wanted to bring it back into now." As with his cover of Los Lobos's Angel Dance (above), Band of Joy features renditions of Low's Silver Rider and Monkey, the Kelly Brothers's Falling in Love Again, and the Appalachian folk song Cindy, I'll Marry You Some Day.

Band of Joy is released on 13 September.

Beach Fossils photo by Erez Avissar

Three bands from across the lo-fi spectrum will unite in August for a quick tour of North America's Northeastern corners. Brooklyn haze-pop crew Beach Fossils will share a bill with sample-happy production duo Javelin and reverb-heavy L.A. band Warpaint.

All three of those groups have busy summers ahead of them, and we've got all touring itineraries below:

Beach Fossils/Javelin/Warpaint:

08-05 St. Louis, MO - The Luminary Center for the Arts !
08-09 Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
08-10 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop
08-11 Toronto, Ontario - Wrongbar
08-12 Montreal, Quebec - La Sala Rossa
08-13 New York, NY - Whitney Museum !
08-14 Providence, RI - As220 !
08-15 Boston, MA - Great Scott
08-16 Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda's
08-17 Baltimore, MD - Ottobar
08-18 Chapel Hill, NC - Local 506 #
08-19 Knoxville, TN - Pilot Light #
08-20 Nashville, TN - Exit/In #

! without Beach Fossils
# without Javelin

Beach Fossils:

07-01 Brooklyn, NY - Bruar Falls +
07-07 Pittsburgh, PA - Brillobox @
07-08 Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop @
07-09 Bloomington, IN - The Bishop @
07-10 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle @
07-10 Chicago, IL - West Fest
07-12 Columbus, OH - The Summit @
07-13 Rochester, NY -...

Read More

Comedy duo monkey around at festival

The last time Oklahoma psych warriors the Flaming Lips dropped a clip from last year's Embryonic on our noggins, it was for the paranoia-fried jam "Powerless", and featured a girl tied and bound to a chair, accompanied by a monkey. The band's latest video, for fellow album track "The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine", features what looks like the same girl (and monkey) again-- only this time, she's wearing very little clothing and being physically tortured by mysterious, hooded figures. There's tons of blood. So, yeah, definitely NSFW, unless you work at a pretty fucked-up place. Check out the video below, or at Pitchfork.tv.

Photo by Will Calcutt

Dance music mastermind Matthew Dear maintains a gang of different pseudonyms, cranks out big-time remixes, and DJs around the world. His last full studio album under his own name was 2007's Asa Breed. His new LP, Black City, comes out on Ghostly International (the label that Dear co-founded) on August 17 in North America and a day earlier everywhere else.

Up above, you can stream the twitchy Black City track "I Can't Feel", or you can head over to Dear's website to download it. The package design for the limited edition version was put together by the design firm Boym. We've got the tracklist below.

Black City:

01 Honey
02 I Can't Feel
03 Little People (Black City)
04 Slowdance
05 Soil to Seed
06 You Put a Smell on Me
07 Shortwave
08 Monkey
09 More Sugery
10 Gem

Photo by Erez Avissar

Brooklyn psych-pop crew Bear in Heaven are taking their show on the road. Right now, they're finishing a European tour. After that, they'll open a few dates for Metric in May and then playing headlining shows all through North America, including one leg with recent Rising inductees Twin Sister. And come August, they'll make it back over to Europe for a few shows.

Below, we've got all their dates, as well as a remix of their track "Lovesick Teenagers" by the Danish group Oh No Ono.

MP3:> Bear in Heaven: "Lovesick Teenagers (Oh No Ono Remix)"

Bear in Heaven:

04-27 Paris, France - Point FMR
04-28 Roubaix, France - Cave de Poetes
04-29 Groningen, Netherlands - Vera
04-30 Aarhus, Denmark - Pop Revo Festival
05-01 Bergen, Norway - Bergenfest
05-02 Berlin, Germany - Bang Bang Club
05-04 Hamburg, Germany - Molotow
05-05 Malmo, Sweden - Debaser
05-06 Gothenburg, Sweden - Jazz Huset
05-07 Stockholm, Sweden - Hornstull Strand
05-08 Copenhagen, Denmark - Loppen
05-10 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso
05-11 Antwerp, Belgium - Trix
05-12 Nijmegen, Netherlands - Merleyn
05-13 Brussels, Belgium - Les Nuits de Botanique
05-16 New York, NY - Terminal 5 *
05-18 Columbus,...

Read More

The video for the Flaming Lips' damaged six-minute Embryonic psych jam "Powerless" involves a girl tied to a chair and a curious monkey. It starts out tense and drawn-out like Once Upon a Time in the West, and then it turns completely inexplicable like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Lips frontman Wayne Coyne co-directs, alongside longtime Lips visuals guy George Salisbury. Watch the video below or at Pitchfork.tv.

And speaking of brain-expanding Flaming Lips activities, the band will perform on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" this Friday, April 16. They'll play a song from their full-length cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. That's the day before Record Store Day, when that full-length Dark Side cover comes out on limited-edition vinyl.

In the past couple months, Broken Bells, the new band that features Danger Mouse and Shins frontman James Mercer, played their first shows ever, one-offs in L.A., New York, Paris, and London, as well as a few SXSW gigs. Now, the Mercer/Danger Connection is launching its first-ever full-scale tour. The band will spend May and June crossing North America. San Franciscan indie crew the Morning Benders (who just earned themselves a BNM for their new Big Echo) will open.

Before that tour kicks off, the Morning Benders will play a bunch of smaller headlining dates in the U.S. After, they'll play a couple shows in Central Park with the Black Keys. We've got all the dates for both Broken Bells and the Morning Benders below.

Broken Bells:

05-18 San Diego, CA - Humphrey's Concerts by the Bay *
05-19 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre *
05-21 San Francisco, CA - Regency Ballroom *
05-24 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom *
05-25 Seattle, WA - Showbox at the Market *
05-26 Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom *
05-29 Denver, CO - Gothic Theatre *
05-31 Chicago, IL - Vic Theater *
06-01 Detroit, MI - St. Andrews Hall *
06-02 Toronto, Ontario - Queen Elizabeth Theatre *
06-04 Boston, MA - Royale NightClub *
06-05 New...

Read More

Artist: Duran Duran
Albums: Duran Duran and Seven and the Ragged Tiger
Release Date: March 30
Label: Capitol/EMI

Tracklists:

Duran Duran:

CD1:

01 Girls on Film
02 Planet Earth
03 Anyone Out There
04 To the Shore
05 Careless Memories
07 Sound of Thunder
08 Friends of Mine
09 Tel Aviv

The B-sides:

10 Late Bar [from "Planet Earth" 7" and 12" single]
11 Khanada [from "Careless Memories" 7" and 12" single]
12 Fame [from "Girls on Film" 12" single]
13 Faster Than Light [from "Girls on Film" 7" and 12" single]

CD2

AIR Studios Versions [recorded July 29, 1980]:

01 Girls on Film *
02 Tel Aviv *

Manchester Square Demos (recorded December 8, 1980):

03 Anyone Out There *
04 Planet Earth *
05 Friends of Mine *
06 Late Bar *

BBC Radio 1: Peter Powell Session [recorded June 19, 1981; transmitted August 11, 1981]:

07 Night Boat *
08 Girls on Film *
09 Anyone Out There *
10 Like an Angel *

The Versions:

11 Planet Earth (Night Version) [from "Planet Earth" 12" single]
12 Girls on Film (Extended Night Version) *
13 Planet Earth (Night Mix) [released on Strange Behaviour]
14 Girls on Film (Night Mix) *

DVD:

Music Videos:

01 Planet Earth
02 Planet Earth (Club Version)
03 Careless Memories
04 Girls on Film (Long Uncensored Version)
05 Girls on Film (Short Censored Version)
06 Night Boat

07 A Day in the...

Read More