“Don’t believe the hype,” Public Enemy warned us way back in 1988, and as on their eerily prescient “Cold Lampin’ With Flavor” which made the surprising case for Flava Flave’s longevity, they were right, of course. And hype, by definition, should always be suspect. From the moment Vampire Weekend, the quirky New York quartet began making the blog rounds and collecting the sort of adjectives that pointed their way toward them becoming The Next Big Thing, we, as a music community, needed to take a breath, sit down, and just relax. Losing our shit about inventive New York rock debuts are just going to result in another band like The Strokes, and we all know where that got us....

Swedish pirates turn the tables on Big Media! Arrr! Iranian Prez Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University today. Myanmar: Buddhist monks stage largest anti-government demonstrations in 20 years. $100 laptop to hit market in North America this fall. The White House switches its strategy on having peace talks with "evil" countries. The Governator is calling for a boycott of firms who do business with Iran. Study: Less sleep = more dreams......

The age-old question: “What makes a hit?” Ever since the American music industry was born, record companies have engaged in the endless search for that magic formula that will predict the “next big thing” with reliable accuracy. So far, no success. Record companies may have plenty of information at their disposal, but when you get down to it, choosing to market one artist over another is still little more than an educated guess. A new......

"At the end of touring on a record, you're just so sick of all your songs, and you don't have any prospects for new ones, so it feels like you're in limbo. Even though that's when all your success comes, for us it's like ... old news, and we just wanted to move on and get started on something else..."...

New York City indie rockers The Walkmen made it big with 2004's Bows and Arrows, an aggressive, exuberant, and borderline-theatrical production that ended up on tons of year-end "best of" lists. Over the past two years, the guys have gone through some big changes: the Harlem building housing their personal recording studio, dubbed Marcata (where B&A was born), was bought out by Columbia University, in the school's ever-accelerating expansion north of Morningside Heights. After......

As if we needed to be more aware of the pain, this week is National Headache Awareness Week. A whole week dedicated to being completely aware of that pounding, that vice grip on your head. We propose a National Let's-Get-Drunk Week (no, that's not every week!) so we can really justify those headaches. A man in Kiev was not protected by God when he jumped in to the lion's cage at the zoo. Brian......