May 2, 2013 – The Flaming Lips may have gone full doom for their Essential thirteenth album The Terror, but some things never change. Band mastermind and recent SPIN interview subject Wayne Coyne has maintained a long-running fascination with casual nudity and futuristic scenarios, two concepts that collide very strangely in a new video for the Phantogram-featuring "You Lust." The version above is a tight edit of the 13-minutes-long original (sadly, we miss out on that lengthy "drunk dial from the Close Encounters of the Third Kind spaceship") set to a bizarre experiment that involves a whole lot of uneasy nakedness. In one room, Coyne and Phantogram's Sarah Barthel (both clothed) lay on a bed with their heads within the receiving end of an unfamiliar device.

May 2, 2013 – To some, the act of twerking is a near-spiritual form of expression. To others, it's "basically a slutty dance derived from strip clubs" (via Urban Dictionary). But to 33 San Diego students, it's the reason they won't be returning to Scripps Ranch High School this week. The entire group was suspended after using school equipment to film a twerking video on campus, during sixth period no less, and then uploading it to YouTube.For those unfamiliar, "twerking" is the act of bouncing and jiggling one's booty in an unnatural/acrobatic manner. The most popular version of the act finds the participant in a handstand, feet propped against a wall while the aforementioned activity is taking place.

May 2, 2013 – "The cheesiest songs all end with a smile," sings Majical Cloudz main man Devon Welsh at the start of "Bugs Don't Buzz." He then confirms what we already know: "This won't end with a smile, my love." The Montreal duo, rounded out by Matthew Otto, specializes in high drama and minimal scoring. Moreover, these two seem to have a thing for death. Last month we saw the shadowy video for "Childhood's End" (starring Devon's father, Twin Peaks actor Kenneth Welsh), a song about our lifelong slog toward the grave. Now we have a new taste from the forthcoming Impersonator LP, due May 21 via Matador: "Bugs Don't Buzz," which is another song about endings. Whether Welsh is singing about the big sleep or the last moments of a romantic relationship isn't wholly clear, but he sings with much gravity over thudding piano hits, electronic fuzz, and ghostly cooing.

May 2, 2013 – By now, many of Daft Punk's dedicated fans have sat through an entire hour's worth of the Parisian pair's "Collaborators" waxing a wee bit hyperbolic about their forthcoming album Random Access Memories. We've witnessed conversations with Giorgio Moroder, Panda Bear, Pharrell, Nile Rodgers, Todd Edwards, and Chilly Gonzales, and may have hit our limit when the latter shared his thoughts on "the joyful challenge." Thankfully the fine folks at Funny or Die are here to provide a little levity with their own entry to the series: Andrew the Pizza Guy. In the above clip, an enthused pie-flipper from Scottsdale, Arizona explains that, "Every now and then some people come along and make an album that will ... change the universe for eternity. And somebody needs to serve those people some pizza.

May 2, 2013 – Vampire Weekend are the subject of a pair of new ocean-spanning radio features that help shed more light on their forthcoming, recently delayed third album, Modern Vampires of the City.

May 2, 2013 – Kurt Vile's brand new Wakin on a Pretty Daze is a SPIN Essential (duh) and a real testament to putting a great deal of effort into making something feel effortless. In sum, his brand of strum offers "us the opportunity to get in touch with our quieter, better selves, the ones we struggle to make room for in our daily routines, the ones that would like to set aside the bullshit and take a walk in the park."In the new video for "Never Run Away," Vile strolls through his beloved hometown of Philadelphia, clean white outfit both contrasting with his dilapidated surroundings and somehow seeming like the perfect thing to wear. Vile's only real companions in the clip are his guitar and a large white bus, making for an effect that's equal parts comic and cool.

May 1, 2013 – Angel Haze is one of a handful of rising and/or fairly established rappers featured on the brand new, DJ Drama-hosted XXL Freshman Class Mixtape. (Action Bronson, guys? Really? Dude's at least a junior at this point.) For your ease-of-listening and free-downloading pleasure, the already Broken Out MC has handily uploaded her two contributions to SoundCloud. The first is "Lofticries," which will be a familiar word to fans of the elven trap-pop progenitors known as Purity Ring. Much like Danny Brown before her (via "Belispeak") Haze goes in over the Shrines standout, although a second verse wouldn't be too much to ask for. Thankfully, she provides a second song: "Element," which finds the New York spitter getting intimate over a similarly hazy beat produced by HiriiThe$kyGod.

May 1, 2013 – The dance-addled dudes of Mad Decent left fans scratching their heads when they shared the lineup for the 2013 installment of the annual Mad Decent Block Party touring festival. To devotees of the label's winning mishmash of international dance trends and left-leaning rap, most of the talent would've looked familiar. But there was a mysterious name in the mix alongside headliners like Flosstradamus and Major Lazer: Jack U.Label head Diplo later clarified the situation via a nonchalant tweet: "Jack u... Means skrillex+diplo together.." Oh, that's all? His followers spread the news of the monumental pairing far and wide, plus suggested a couple of monikers that might have saved Diplo the trouble of, you know, typing and clicking: Skriplo, Diplex, Dilliplex. Might we suggest a few anagrams? Lord Pixel Silk, Old Killer's Pix, or, best of all, Dork Sex Ill Lip. But hey:Jack u...

May 1, 2013 – Late last month, we heard the first taste of Janelle Monáe's second album — The Electric Lady, due out this fall — and it was hardly your standard hype-building fare. "Q.U.E.E.N." is a self-empowering soul-funk workout featuring a beguiling guest turn by fellow iconoclast Erykah Badu. The song shouts out twerking in front of the mirror, playfully challenges sexual mores, teases the self-righteous and jostles racial stereotypes before arriving at its thesis: "Categorize me? / I defy every label." Now the track has a video to go with and it's just as good. Building on the sci-fi themes of Monáe's masterful debut, The ArchAndroid, we pick up in a distant future where a tyrannical organization has created a "Living Museum" stocked with "time-traveling rebels" caught in suspended animation.

May 1, 2013 – The family of civil rights icon Emmett Till has responded to Lil Wayne's non-apology for sullying the 14-year-old lynching victim's name in song. As SPIN previously noted, Weezy's statement regarding the offending lyric fell short of actually apologizing for the since-pulled remix of Future's "Karate Chop," in which, as Dr.