Brooklyn-roaming power-metal rockers Diamond Nights have a self-proclaimed rogue in their posse. A skier!

Michael Stipe is proving his activist persona is still alive, well, and kicking out the jams, with the release of a six-song EP to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina.

While millions of people were watching beer commercials on TV and praying for their favorite football team to win Sunday night's Super Bowl, Jenny Lewis and an all-star lineup of guest musicians filled a former synagogue in New York's Lower East Side for their own form of worship. M.

It's been an undeniably triumphant year for Maximo Park. When they debuted their first seven-inch single, 2004's The Coast Is Always Changing/The Night I Lost My Head, they were a relatively obscure act from Northeast England. But Maximo rose rapidly through the effusive NME hype machine, managing to have four top 20 hits on the U.K.

Music fandom is a very bizarre beast. It's one thing to scour the Internet to buy overly expensive tickets for a band you've been worshipping for years, arrive at their show with said tickets two hours early to ensure you will be within arms length of the band, and then proceed to lose your shit during the first few chords of every single song.

This is the first in a regular series that revisits SPIN.com Band of the Day alumni.