FACE TIME: Ever since A-listers lined up to virtually duet with Frank Sinatra in 1993, pop collaborations have become devalued as events, even as they've increased in frequency. But unlike your standard rap remix featuring phoned-in cameos, the cavalcade of stars guesting on N.A.S.A.'s The Spirit of Apollo -- the brainchild of Squeak E.

James Allan didn't grow up dreaming of being a rock star. The Glasvegas frontman had a more modest goal: becoming a professional soccer player. "At school, anybody who played guitar was just weird," he says. "In the east end of Glasgow, nobody played music. It was all gambling, going to the pub, going to football matches."

She may be a bottle blonde with a taut midriff, but Pip Brown is sick of getting pegged as a would-be Britney. "People assume when they see me live for the first time that my drummer wrote all the music," says Brown, a.k.a. Ladyhawke. "If it was a guy standing up there with a guitar singing, nobody would assume he wasn't the writer."

Usually when someone says, "Music should be as free as water," it's safe to assume they don't make music for a living (or pay for water). Charles Hamilton is one exception. Since he signed to Interscope nearly a year ago, the Harlem-bred, stylistically scattershot producer/MC/singer/blogger has put more than 70 tracks online gratis. Label honcho

[INSERT SHEEP-HUMPING JOKE HERE]: No band is an island. But according to Nick Johnston, singer for Auckland, New Zealand's Cut Off Your Hands, it helps to be from one. "Because the country is so isolated," explains the 24-year-old frontman, "our music ends up being very pure.

Arish "King" Khan, 32, describes his current stagewear as "a mix between Cleopatra and Rick James." Just picture a long-limbed, beer-bellied, pencil-mustached Indian Canadian in sequin-belted hot pants, layers of chains, a pouffed black pageboy wig with a gold headband, foam genie shoes, and a gold lamé veil, duck-walking his guitar across the stage.