October 25, 2011 – One year ago, the Black Keys received their Video Music Award for Breakthrough Video ("Tighten Up") and learned MTV had mistakenly printed the Black Eyed Peas' name on it. Some would argue that's all you can expect from a network that literally removed the word "Music" from its name. Though MTV apologized, calling the incident a "clerical error,", the Keys were unimpressed, and in a new GQ interview, when singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach was asked to revisit the incident one more time, he threw a few additional jabs at MTV. But he mostly picked apart the Peas. His first reaction upon seeing the incorrect plaque: "I was just like, Wow. A channel that's never respected us or played us to fuck us like that?" he told GQ, laughing.

October 20, 2011 – Congratulations, indie-rock superheroes Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, and Florence + the Machine — you are now officially well-known enough to compete against Linkin Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Maroon 5 in a battle for rock supremacy (really just the People's Choice Award for "Favorite Band"). Other nominees include Beastie Boys (who curiously are not up for Favorite Hip-Hop Artist), Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Mumford & Sons, OneRepublic, and Radiohead. See what happens when you win a major Grammy and Rosie O'Donnell learns your name? "The People" will name their top entertainment picks for the 38th annual time on January 11, 2012 on CBS. Idolator whipped out their calculators and determined Katy Perry leads all music nominees with six nods, followed by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Pitbull with five apiece.

October 20, 2011 – Conservative cultural commentators aren't the best judges of pop music, though we will give Sarah Palin a dollop of respect for making the bold (though ultimately incorrect) assertion that hip-hop fell off after 1979 and Tim Pawlenty his due for rightfully recognizing the best moment in Lady Gaga's HBO special. Now the suits at Fox News have gotten into the business of critiquing Maroon 5 songs — after frontman Adam Levine attacked the network on Twitter for using his music. "Dear Fox News, don't play our music on your evil fucking channel ever again. Thank you," Levine tweeted on Wednesday. Fox host Greg Gutfeld responded, "Dear Adam, that's not music" (a mild har-har), and cohort Andy Levy put on his critic hat and wrote back, "Dear @AdamLevine, don't make crappy fucking music ever again.

October 14, 2011 – If the demise of R.E.M. didn't put the final nail in the '90s alternative-rock dream, this news sure will: Sonic Youth super-couple Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore have split up after 27 years of marriage â€" and the future of the band they've played in together since 1981 is unclear. The pair confirmed the news in a statement from their Matador Records rep that reads, "Musicians Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, married in 1984, are announcing they have separated. Sonic Youth, with both Kim and Thurston involved, will proceed with its South American tour dates in November. Plans beyond that tour are uncertain.

October 11, 2011 – Yesterday two public figures with creatively spelled nicknames squabbled on Twitter for our amusement. After Jersey Shore's Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi tweeted she'd be watching MTV's new movie DISconnected — a serious look at the consequences of living online — because "I hate digital drama & abuse," Deadmau5 fired off a 140-character message at the diminutive reality star reading, "okaaayyy....strange twist of events here... Isn't your entire career owed to getting punched in the head on TV?" Well... yes. This is a valid point that probably stung Snooki worse because she is actually quite a Deadmau5 fan. As the Village Voice pointed out last week, the Canadian electro producer is the only artist who gets a shout-out in A Shore Thing, the book Snooki most certainly did not write that still has her name on the cover that came out in January.

September 9, 2011 – By the time Cymbals Eat Guitars' Joseph D'Agostino was 15, he'd already amassed a formidable stockpile of ?instruments in his suburban South Jersey bedroom. There was the Stratocaster knockoff, a big ol' Hammond organ he'd bought from an aging jazz musician, and the 12-track digital ?recorder he'd pleaded with his parents to purchase for him. "They were like, okay, dude!" he says, laughing. "They were willing to go the extra mile." Though his nascent career has since rewarded his folks' faith, D'Agostino wasn't always sure of himself. As a teen, the singer-guitarist, now 22, was a prolific songwriter -- nurturing deep loves for Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham -- but a reluctant fraternizer.

August 14, 2011 – Earlier this year, the young punks in Iceage were profiled in a Danish newspaper under the headline "Teenage Bullies Full of Anger and Anxiety." So here's a public service announcement: Those bullies have explosives. Lots of them. According to surly singer-guitarist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, 19, the Copenhagen quartet stocked up on fireworks and torches before shooting the grainy video for "New Brigade," which shows the band literally playing with fire. (Not to mention taking bong hits and popping switchblades.) The song is also the title track of Iceage's pulverizing 12-song, 24-minute debut, which ?finally arrived in the U.S. via the What's Your Rupture? label five months after its release in Denmark.

July 28, 2011 – Two years ago a young Englishman named Daniel Blumberg was on vacation in Israel, wandering the desert in a Daniel Johnston tee when a dude in an Animal Collective shirt served him iced tea at a kibbutz. The two struck up a conversation about New Jersey punk upstarts Titus ?Andronicus. "Then we started singing songs together -- it was beautiful," ?recalls Blumberg. The eventual singer-guitarist for London fuzz-rockers Yuck had just met his future drummer, a Jewfro'd college student from Jersey named Jonny Rogoff. Blumberg, 20, befriended his first musical confrere, guitarist Max Bloom, under less unusual circumstances (at school) when both were four. The two played in the indie-pop outfit Cajun Dance Party as teens.

June 17, 2011 – After a historic debut and hype that would have undone lesser bands, Alex Turner and mates' fourth album in five years proves they're only getting better, if not quite bigger. If this were as easy to do as they make it sound, how come so few others have? Alex Turner was watching closely earlier this year when Mick Jagger shimmied and vamped across the Grammy Awards stage in a metallic emerald tuxedo jacket, skinny black trousers, and a bulky pair of sneakers. The footwear choice was not lost on the Arctic Monkeys' 25-year-old frontman. "I like his Nike Air Max," Turner says, sitting in an upscale Manhattan restaurant and offering his closest approximation of a full grin from beneath a haircut that's evolved from a Joan Jett shag into more of an homage to Jagger's own circa-'69 mop.

May 17, 2011 – In March, tUnE-yArDs mastermind Merrill Garbus found herself in the strange position of having to bolster Yoko Onos confidence after sharing a bill at the South by Southwest festival. Recalls Garbus, "She said, '[After the show] everyone only talked about you, and I was like, 'Well, and you, too, and we both giggled, because shes one of the most famous people of all time." A surreal moment? Definitely. But Ono wasnt fibbing: When the 32-year-old Garbus re-creates her quirky pop live, jaws dont just drop, they become temporarily unhinged. Her dizzying new w h o k i l l (4AD) sounds like Beck and M.I.A. hosting a cabaret in the middle of the Sahara--off-kilter African beats roll under ukulele chords, blasts of brass, distorted reggae bass lines, and field noises that she recorded herself (e.g., tweeting birds and ambulance sirens).